Garden State of Mind

We visited with my mother-in-law over the weekend. She is still recovering from emergency eye surgery a few weeks ago, when she had a retinal tear and they ended up doing something with lasers and gas bubbles to fix her all up. I'm not really sure of the particulars, really, but she wore an eyepatch for a week or so, which Shae thought was awesome.

My MIL lives in a different part of the same town that my parents live in. Her house and yard are much smaller than my parents', and nobody really has a green thumb quite like My Anonymous Mother, but MIL's yard is still rather charming in its way. She has a lot of violas all over the place, and various things in pots, and these irises, which I love. Irises are periodically my favorite flower, in heavy rotation with hydrangeas, delphiniums, Gerbera daisies, and sunflowers.

She's set up her backyard to look like a little courtyard cafe is tucked back there. She has a lot of solar lights and tchotchkes and a beautiful birdbath made of mosaic tile with lots of reds and yellows and blues in it. And, since it had water, Shae spent most of the day playing with it.

All afternoon she would scoop out water with her little plastic shovel, pour it into her bucket, and after she did that half a dozen times or so, she would dribble the water out of her bucket onto some poor unsuspecting weed, or pair of shoes.

She takes right after my mother. It was more than a little disturbing, seeing a miniature version of my mom taking care of my MIL's garden. Very meta.