self portrait challenge - skill

this month's self-portrait challenge topic is skill. a couple of things come to mind for this subject (though not as many as i'd like) but the first and most obvious skill i seem to possess is for putting together a crazy garden.

most days i think it's the tenacity of the flowers and not necessarily any skill of my own that keeps these gardens growing. but i will take credit for having a vision: an empty, landscape-less piece of property transformed by picket fences, twisting paths, riotous flowers, swaying shrubs, a canopy of flowering trees, a vegetable garden (and a lot of digging) into a bird, bee, bloom, and butterfly-filled garden. as soon as j and i bought this place in the hills i announced to my mom that i wanted to look out any window and be able to see flowers. 8 summers later and the gardens have grown up so much i can see almost nothing but the flowers and leaves when i look outside.

i'm not a "master gardener" by any stretch of the imagination, and there are plenty of weeds, mistakes, poorly-chosen combinations and too-big plants in too-little places. but more importantly (to me at least) there's a lot of life where there was nothing but balding grass before, and a place to hide, sip your morning coffee, and stroll after work where there was only a hill exposed to the road when i started. my gardening "skill" might be 90% sheer determination, but as you can see, it's grown a garden up around us!

there are more skilled people sharing their self-portraits here this month. if you'd like to see more of the gardens, welcome. finally, for those of you with good eyes, that little black lump on the hill to the left of the purple flower is vixen, soaking up the sun and posing for what is now apparently our portrait.