Landscaping and Lizards

I took some photos yesterday afternoon of the front yard.  Yikes, what have we done..??  Just kidding...it's great to start with a clean canvas, so to speak.  Matthew has saved many of the pines, and several shrubs we wanted to keep; their root balls are now encased in burlap to await the transplanting.

Here are some before and after shots...

 

Fairly dramatic difference.  The only plants still in the ground--besides the Birch trees and the Pine--are the Rhodies by the front deck.

 

Looks pretty barren and awful, doesn't it..??  Oh well, with any luck and a lot of skill from Matthew, this will be an amazing transformation in a few months.  Today he's been busy hauling all the discarded shrubs and debris to the dump, but I think later this afternoon he's going to level the front in preparation for the stone wall.  Rusty, the sidekick, is on holiday for the rest of the week, so I'm not too sure how much Matthew will be able to do on his own.  Still, they have already made such a difference, I really can't wait to see what happens next.

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I was out on the front deck when the guys shouted up to me that if I wanted a photo of the Alligator lizard, they had just found another one.  (And good grief..!!  How many of these darned things are there in the garden..???)  Thankfully, this one was small--at least half the size of the one earlier in the day--though its tail was (**shudder**) so long and snake-like it still made my skin crawl.  The sun was blazing, so the wee lizard was just lazing about and didn't seem mean or nasty like the bigger ones.  Frankly, if they didn't get larger than this, I would be very happy.  Too bad I saw the Komodo Dragon one first...

 

For perspective, the body on this one was about 4-5 inches long, but yuck, the tail was double that.  Just imagine the Komodo I saw in the morning with a body about a foot long, then add in that horrific snaky 50-foot tail.  Okay, okay...maybe not exactly 50 feet, but you weren't there so you have to trust me when I say:  It was long, it was gross, and it creeped me out.  It was like a snake attached to a lizard.   

EEEeeeewwwwww.  Enough already.  I can't type with my knees up around my chin.