Outside Our Door Again

Shortly after we moved here, I wrote a post about the nature preserve behind our apartment building. As the Sherlock Holmesian of my readers may have discerned from the title of this post, that is what I am going to do once again. I have been accumulating a ridiculous number of photos so I am going to dump some of them here. The first and most exciting of our recent nature sightings is the mother deer and her two fawns who have been regularly ambling past our balcony. One of the downstairs neighbors puts out bread for the animals and the deer love it. I don’t know if it is good for them but they were so thrilled that they followed him at a distance waiting for him to put it down.

One lovely thing about my family is that every time I want to go for a walk in the park one of them wants to go with me. Well, that is mainly a lovely thing. I must admit that occasionally I want to walk in silence, at my own pace, wandering where I please, and sitting on a bench with no impatient family member pretending to be patient. One evening recently I snuck out the door and did just that. There were very few people on the trail and I met up with another deer in the woods. The deer and I stood and watched each other for a long time.

Most of the trails in the park are paved but there is one half-mile section that goes through the woods that is not paved. I like to walk there and pretend I am in the middle of the forest instead of in a small park in an urban area. Views like this make it almost believable.

All around the lake and stream is a tangle of wildflowers. It is fun to watch them changing with the seasons. Right now, there are splashes of purple and orange. Earlier in the year, there were wild roses. I am sure even the winter will be pretty in its own way. Actually, I can’t wait for it to get colder. Today it is 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) and horrendously muggy. My husband is on his second walk of the day but I am home in the air conditioning because hot and muggy is guaranteed to make me a crabby, unhappy, puddle of a human being.

There is nothing like a ramble through nature to improve your mood. Well, except for a cup of tea in a nicely air-conditioned apartment on a hot and muggy day. I’m going to go put the kettle on.