Mother Nature in action

This amuses me:

That's a Salvia Clevelandii, which blooms purple but has two random white blooms. Why? Because it can.

As an aside, deer HATE the smell of this plant. They were boldly eating my roses until I planted this single plant, and they haven't been back since.

And then there was the Leonardo DiCaprio of Yuccas:

"I'm king of the world!!"

Lastly, as I was sitting on the back patio recovering from digging up a big stupid stump, two little birds landed on the grass and started squawking furiously. I walked over towards them, thinking maybe a baby that had fallen out of a nest? They flew up into the trees above the fence, but kept screaming. 

As soon as I sat back down they went right back to the grass to yell some more, so I walked back over there and looked around more carefully. Turns out they were yelling at this:

I was mildly freaked out - I've never encountered a snake before, and there he was right by the back patio! I never saw one in my old garden and we didn't have those in Hawaii either, so I don't have a lot of practice dealing with them. He was looking right at me and I did notice that his head wasn't diamond-shaped, so I thought that meant he wasn't poisonous? 

I hollered for Ryan (who took the picture as the snake took off), and apparently it's just a rat snake. Glad I didn't kill him. Even more glad I didn't encounter him during any of the ba-zillion times I was sitting on the ground panting from digging the stupid stump out. From now on I guess I'll look before I flop!