A Garden with Purpose, Reason and Rhyme
Welcome to an ongoing film project documenting
the comings and goings of a low water maintenance
garden in the heart of urban suburbia. This is
a story of the flora and fauna that come to this
garden for sanctuary and subsistence. Cameras
and audio recording equipment are setup throughout
the small back yard and are capturing a big story:
survival, migration and acceptance.
The garden has its dramatic moments
One cactus spire produced three elegant blooms
at the same time.
Garden details are worlds within themselves
Brick patterns and voids create canyon worlds
for plant litter.
Mockingbirds provide sonic depth to a neighborhood
Mockingbirds have as many as 240 distinct
phrases that they can recite.
To see more Mockingbirds
24 hours in the bloom of the queen of the night
When the flower explodes open a sweet fragrance
fills the night.
From spectacular flower to colorful fruit
From what was a flower begins a long journey
to be a fruit.
Big Drama in the front yard
April 12, 2012 – The century plant is starting to
bloom and we were there. I looked forward to
documenting the entire process.
An amazing energetic photo subject just
outside the front door 
The sheer mass and detail will provide continuous
film opportunities. We will follow this developing
chapter in another amazing urban garden saga.
This story ended up being told in four chapters:
1. Grow… 2. Bloom… 3. Decay… 4. Fall…
Not all is peaceful in the garden
Life and death is a continuing sub-plot in
Anders’ garden film.
To see more Cats
Out in the front street the movie carries on
The big birds of the neighborhoods are the crows,
the witty crafty crows.
Bees help the world go round.
The bloom opens up. the bees come, and within
hours the bloom closes.
Video of bees and a cactus bloom
And the world goes round and round with the
help of all things great and small.
The Queen of the Night cactus bloom opens
up and it’s sweet fragrance fills the night.
With the light of morning bees arrive.
At times it is but one. Here is a moment
where a small gang of bees busily gather
pollen. By late afternoon the flower will
close and the bloom is over.
Music by SonicAtomics.
This is the dove’s first day out of the nest.
A pair of young doves, less than two-years-old,
now have two live chicks in their second nesting
attempt using a decorative ceramic pot placed on
an exterior chimney ledge under the patio.
The female sat here quietly for weeks while
the male perched in a nearby tree, or on
back-alley telephone wires, always with a view
of the nest. In the late fall of the previous
year the immature mother abandoned her nest
leaving a dead chick and an unhatched egg left
inside. I took the pot off the ledge and
put it on the ground to photograph in the
sun. Minutes later, when I returned with a
camera, both the dead chick and egg were gone.
Halloween early morning visitor
After the first cold night an Opossum soaks
in morning sunshine.
To see more Opossum
A good rule for a low-water garden is plant what grows well on its own
View of the garden looking from the west to
the east, all is good.
Another day, another cycle in the life of the garden
A low-water garden benefits from elements that
to not need watering.
Butterflies spend the sunny afternoon with
the colorful lantana
The blooming lantana, a durable, sturdy plant,
attract fluttering butterflies.
A visitor perches a the brilliant bottle bush
The bottle bush attracts a wide variety of bugs,
birds and cats.
For every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction.
This pigeon appears to have died and fallen from
the telephone wires about. There were no signs
of trauma on the body. The image on the right
is after three days on the ground. The first
to begin dismantling the body were ants
going for the pigeon’s eyes.
Eight days later all that is left are feathers.
The pigeon became a daily photo study of
what would happen to the body. Ants,
flies, crows, possum, skunks and others
found food as the body disappeared and
scattered over the days. I found this
indicated the garden was a living
system where flora and fauna that
took care of their own.
Patterns of man and nature come together in the garden
Water captured in household sinks with plastic
coffee cans services late summer needs.
a Spider and its shadow.
Waiting, waiting, waiting and then
the shadow will move.
The wait is rewarded with captured prey.
The wait is rewarded with food in a wrapped
cocoon. See more spider action
To see more Spiders
Time to leave the yard, cross the street, and visit another yard
All in a day, we each have our journeys that
take us where we go.
Twin Pipe Organ Cactus Flowers
©2012-2015 Anders Tomlinson, all rights reserved.