I know we’re all fighting a lot of fires right now, some not even metaphorical. But we also need some times of rest and sanctuary from the…waves hand vaguely.
I found it today at the Bonnie View Nature Sanctuary. Wouldn’t you like to experience a respite vicariously through my photos?
I saw a cool playground. Got to admit, I was tempted to do some climbing on these structures.
I saw several birds but got no photos of any of them. However, the Merlin app took a stab at identifying them by sound.
Screenshot
A crane your neck to see the top tall tree:
Some really beautiful prairie grass, even if it is dormant season. The mix of hues and shapes is breathtaking if you take the time to really look. One view from across the way and one view from what it might look like for a tiny animal taking refuge in the brush. (I stuck my camera right in.)
And despite the fact that our last snow fell on *January 10*, a little bit of it remains here and there.
If all of the…waves hand vaguely…has got you stressed and anxious, try to go out into nature and move around for a while if possible. When you come back, I almost guarantee you’ll be better able to deal with it.
I’ve had two different inclement weathers days off work this past week, which made me nostalgic for the snow days of yore when my kids were young. Sure, there was some inconvenience involved, but also so much magic and fun. I loved sledding, snowball fights and sculpting creatures to decorate our yard.
I admit, I also realize I took for granted the level of energy I had back then. The work of getting through winter takes more out of me now. But I still want to enjoy it. I wonder how weirdly people would take it if I showed up alone at one of the popular sledding hills in town all on my own, just this 60-year-old woman.
I’m still healthy and strong enough to wield a shovel. But the big yard where the kids could play when we bought our house came with a long stretch of sidewalk that takes a while to dig out. We have a shared driveway with an apartment building, and the owners hire someone to remove snow. However, for the Sunday/Monday weather event, he had equipment problems, which meant a huge mess at the end of the drive where the city snowplows repeatedly left a lumpy, frozen wall, and our neighbor with a large pickup kept driving through it.
Where the driveway ends you’ll find snowplow debris there.
I knew if we were to get our own cars out I had to move mountains before the overnight Monday freeze. My husband was wrapped up in telework deadlines while my son was under the weather. And I don’t believe any of the next-door tenants own shovels. So this heavy labor fell to me. I took a break for a photo about halfway through the job. After 90 minutes, I finally had it passable for cars.
After that, my arms were jelly, and I only wanted to sit quietly with a cup of tea.
Along about Thursday night, here came a second snowstorm, one that kept accumulating all Friday morning. For that one, the apartment owners found someone who had a heavy-duty truck with a plow on front. He got the apartment lot and driveway passable pretty quickly. But in the process, he walled in all egress points from our house. After the snow stopped, I went out our side door believing I only had to clear our porch steps and front walkway, but encountered this:
Fortunately, it was fresh with no melt and refreeze, so not tooooo difficult to work through. And then there was the wall blocking the front walkway from our porch to the drive and the wall built up behind our cars at the edge or our carport.
That snow wall is higher than it looks.
This all turned into another hour and a half session. However, the temperature was perfect for being outdoors in snow – right around 30 degrees with no wind. I was pretty tuckered again, but not so much I didn’t consider at least making a small snowperson.
However, I decided our block was represented well enough by the neighbors’ large one.
I was able to take a few minutes to enjoy the sights, so joy found its way through the drudgery. I do love the beauty of winter.
Good footwear is essentialSunflower/snowflowerArtfully draped
Someone else was traipsing through the snow.
But it wasn’t this guy, who doesn’t know what all the fuss is about.
He did keep me company while I rested up with a cup of tea. So he earned his keep in that way.
Today I told my husband I was going on a short bike ride and then didn’t come back for three hours. I didn’t know how much activity I could manage because I woke up with allergy symptoms and a headache. But thanks to OTC medicines and suddenly mild weather, I felt pretty good after I’d been pedaling a short while.
I felt so good, I kept going and made a half day of it, stopping occasionally for water/snack/photo breaks. In fact, I set a new personal record for miles ridden in one day with a 24-mile round trip.
Freida and I made a friend along the way.
Skink investigating.
Curious five-lined skink gets to know Freida
In my quest to have new experiences, I explored a part of the Katy Trail I’d never been down before. It was a lovely, mostly level, mostly shady stretch.
Trailhead / reststop on the Katy TrailPerche Creek
One highlight was when I saw a couple of eagles flying circles in the sky. But I only had my phone camera and couldn’t capture an image.
For many years, I never had the time for this kind of excursion, certainly not to be made on the spur of the moment. I try not to take it for granted.
At the start of the year, I stated my ambition to explore as many local walking paths and trails as possible. That has…not happened much. But I had the day off work today, the temperature was perfect, my to-do list had several things crossed off, and my son-in-residence was willing to join me. No excuses not to go exploring.
These photos are from the Bear Creek Trail in Columbia, MO. We found the creek, but no bears (because there aren’t any in this part of the state so far as I know.) Not pictured are the spots where we discovered an unofficial connector between two trails by navigating rock-to-rock across a narrow part of the creek, in the process startling dozens of tiny toads on the opposite bank. It was a good old-fashioned nature walk after all.
Be still my heart — not just one, but two wooden footbridges! I have an unreasonable attraction to wooden bridges. I must have been a troll in a previous life.
All in all, a very satisfying 2.3 mile micro adventure. The jaunt wasn’t too short or too long, not too hot or too cold, not too scary or too boring, but in every aspect just right.
We are still enjoying our vacation in Bellingham, Washington. The whole family enjoys outdoors activities and our budget appreciates free or cheap outings. Fortunately, we came to a beautiful location at the right time of year. Today’s walking discovery was the Cornwall Rose Garden. It’s just a small plot in the middle of a residential neighborhood, but it contains an impressive variety of roses. I don’t have a lot of commentary, but I hope you will be as fascinated by the diversity as I was.
Despite seasonal allergies, a slightly sore back, and the need to report to work this afternoon, I got out on my bike for a short ride this morning. I ended up at a wetlands area I frequent because there’s a nice shelter house, yet it’s at a spur off the main trail, so few people seem to stop there.
Thanks to a recent Facebook post from a friend, I realized this morning that there’s an abundance of poison hemlock growing there, and not harmless Queen Anne’s lace as I had always thought. I used the Seek app to verify the species. Since I don’t aspire to die like Socrates, I’m glad I never touched any back when I was misidentifying it!
One clear way to tell the difference between the two plants is the stem. Poison hemlock has smooth stems with purple spots. Queen Anne’s lace has hairy stems with no purple. I found a helpful article that provides more information.
Now you know. If you see this plant, make like anyone who is not Socrates and avoid it.
The goal is to find and identify ten varieties of flowers…
I’m a winner!
My son accompanied me on today’s walk. We’d just received a good amount of rain, so we didn’t seek out any trails, but simply stuck to ambling about the neighborhood. I was able to hear how his work is going and also find enough flowers in bloom to complete the iNaturalist Wildflower Challenge on the Seek app.
The goal is to find and identify ten varieties of flowers, and I had already done seven before setting out. On our stroll, I found three more.
The last time I posted, I’d been looking at some fake skeletons. This morning, I found a real one. Some work colleagues and I participated in a city-wide cleanup effort. We were picking up trash along a busy roadway that had a line of brush a few yards back. In the midst of blown plastic grocery bags and other debris caught in the scrub, I stumbled upon some bones.
Fake skeletons last week, a real one this week.
I sent the photo to my oldest son, who knows quite a bit about wildlife. He believes this was an opossum once upon a time. I’ll go with that, as on first glance, I thought it was someone’s little family dog that had probably been missing for a long time. I left the bones in place. It seemed like the natural order of things.
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My second walk took place this evening right before sunset and was dedicated to enjoyment rather than civic improvement. How about these magnolia blossoms creating a perfect frame for the moon?
Magnolia moon: photographic alliteration
My little phone camera always shows the moon a little blurry, but I like the shot anyway.
I haven’t been taking many walks due to days of cold, drizzly rain and a hurt back. All has improved now, though. The son and I went out for a two-mile stroll on this fine spring day, and I was so revivified I wrote a little poem about it.
First the photos:
Late Spring Walk
Forsythia and daffodil
Hellebores, Siberian squill,
Yellow, yellow, pink, and azure
After winter, winter, and winter
White and gray and gray
Spring returns one day
As we have faith it always will.
Nomadic Noesis 