Special Surprises

I was going back through the pictures from our walk in the park the other day and I found a couple more that were surprisingly good. I was originally looking for pictures to illustrate the poems I had in my head, and I guess I kind of forgot to notice what was potentially great about the others.

Even though Shae is making kind of a goofy face here, I really like this picture, and I am thinking about putting it in a Daddy-and-Me frame. If I can find one. I think I already have one around the house, but Heaven only knows where it might be.

Aside from quaking aspens, which I really like because of their name, white birches are probably my favorite tree. I love the iridescent translucency of the leaves, the delicate jaggedness of the edges, the way they always seem to flutter, even when there is no breeze. And I love the distinctive bark, that soft gray-white, the knobbiness of the branches. I could spend days under a cluster of birches near a creek, reading paperback novels and grazing on grapes and chunks of melon and cold chicken salad and crusty bread and sparkling wine, listening to the birds singing above me and the water rushing past me and the fish jumping around me.

Hmm. I may have just talked myself into a new favorite tree. Romance is not dead, after all.

I love phlox. They have them all over the opposite bank of the stream. Mostly darker purples and whites, but some pink strewn in here and there. Sometimes I see stands of phlox on the side of the highway while I am driving home, and only honking traffic and fear of poison ivy keeps me from stopping and burying my face in the blooms. (Note to self: get phlox seeds for the back beds.)

We walked along a path that went right down to the water, where there was a badling of ducks. They let us get pretty close when they were on land, but not so much when they were on the water. Not that Shae can be thwarted by common waterfowl, of course. You can't see it here, but she has her hand in the water.

I have never seen a duck do this before. If you zoom in to the large-size picture you can see the water droplets flying off. Fascinating.