The lizards are back. Once, they populated my garden by the hundreds. I’d walk around my garden in the morning and they’d scuttle away from me, changing in a flicker from green to brown and back again. I’ve always kept an organic garden, and they rewarded me both by feasting on any excesses of undesirables and by bringing a smile to my heart as I watched them leap from wisteria to jasmine, honeysuckle to orange tree. After the storm, they were gone. No lizards. No birds singing. Only one squirrel survived: a white-eared runt we nicknamed Pablo, who became so desperate for food and companionship that he befriended us. (Yes, I know squirrels carry rabies. But that’s one problem our area doesn’t have at the moment.) He still comes on the run when he sees us, leaps on our shoulders and chatters excitedly. Nuts! Nuts! But lately, Pablo has a girlfriend, a lady squirrel who’s wiser than Pablo and knows humans are scary things to be avoided.
Then today, as I wandered through my garden, I realized the lizards are coming back, too. The garden is awash in color: gardenias and day lilies, plumbagos and gauras, a half a dozen different kinds of jasmine, mandevilla and marigolds and roses. Dozens and dozens of roses. What didn’t die beneath the briny floodwaters has evidently flourished on the nutrients the water washed in from the bottom of the lake and out of the canals. Who’d have thought?
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