And so, Dear Reader, we come to the granddaddy of all frogs, the mammoth of Bellevue, the wart-encrusted bronze of doom, the ohmygoshwhatisthat of my morning stroll: this, then, would be the frog.

Or toad, but today’s the F day, and therefore, it’s a frog. Besides. No placard announced its identity, not even an artist attribution – of course, that could be more due to my state of shock as this monstrosity is sitting right there, out in front of dog and everybody, on a corner of a patio-like structure that I don’t think is really meant to be a patio since there is a distinct lack of seating there.

And so, my lonely frog and I confront the solitary condition of man after coffee but before work in his search for meaning.

Dude. I have a Humanities degree. I take these little digressions from time to time. They make me happy.

And it postpones the inevitable, which is this: I chose a topic for the A to Z Challenge, a challenge based on the beginning letter of words and words have specific meanings, and my topic is a topic about which I know few topic-specific words.

It’s like this, Dear Reader: there are two kinds of lady gardeners, according to the inestimable Sarah Ban Breathnach, of Simple Abundance: the first kind is the one with the pretty floppy hat and lovely gardening attire, gardening gloves and neat, well-oiled shears, who goes into her garden to maintain it and knows the Latin binomial of every plant and weed that dares step root in her loam. And then, there’s the second kind, the kind to which I owe my allegiance, the ones with dirt speckling the sweat on our face and the leaves in our hair who proclaim exuberantly, “I like that purple flower over there! No, not that one, that other one! The purply speckled one!”

Which makes it awfully hard, Dear Reader, without a lot of research, to post Garden posts past F is for Flower because one, by necessity, much know the proper name of said flower so that one can allot it to its proper day. Not unlike that lofty first club of Lady Gardeners to which, one day, I may claim some small allegiance but for today, whom I must displease with my exuberant shout of, “Ooh! Pretty! Look, flowers!”

Flowers!

But wait, one more precinct heard from… As I was driving off to work, I saw my two duck friends (well, it may not be the two that live at my complex, but I like to think they joined me at the Garden today with convivial neighborliness) and I’m pleased to say, they are environmentally Friendly (F is for Friendly) parkers! Look!

And that’s all for this week, Dear Reader. Sundays are off for the A to Z, but rest assured, I shall return on Monday with G is for…

Oh, come now. Would I be as banal as to say G Is For Garden?

You’d better come on back to find out, now, hadn’t you?

Cheers!