Sunday, March 23, 2008

A Spring Walk

The weather has been too beautiful for me to exercise indoors, so yesterday I took a walk in the neighborhood. I don't think I got much exercise, though, because I found myself slowing down for every blossom and blade of grass. Perhaps now that I've taken some pictures I'll be able to take a walk and actually get some exercise.

It started with the incredibly blue sky as a backdrop for my neighbor's tree. I did not saturate the color on this photograph.
Although our dogwood tree is not yet in bloom I believe this neighbor's tree is a type of dogwood. If anyone knows otherwise, please correct. (please see comment #5, where I correctly identified this tree as a Bradford Pear tree.)

The next two are natural wild groundcovers.


I'm happy that our neighborhood has many natural little creeks.

Each time I take a walk she barks at me the first time around the block, but not the second or third.

This is a pinecone wannabe!

Down below the wannabe are last year's cones. I wonder if the wannabe gets creeped out by all the dead bodies below her? Perhaps, instead, she gets encouragement since her ultimate quest is to be a pinecone too.

I looked up to see the other pinecone wannabes and saw what looked like a bed made with the needles from the very same tree. I half expected a chimp to settle into the bedding for a long, lazy nap. I wonder who built that and uses it. Squirrel nests are much more compact. Hmmm?

Lovely forsythia.

And then there's always the rude awakening. Usually it's a beer can. Yesterday it was a condom wrapper. I guess I should be happy someone's using protection, but I feel like my walk through paradise has just been forced into a reality check.

Next door to the yard with the condom wrapper are some children playing. The little girl in the middle wanted to know if I was taking their picture. I said yes, I had taken one. She said, "Ok... I just wanted to know." Cute, pre-condom kids.

Back to paradise with some narcissus.

And some vinca.
Hopefully today's walk will actually get my heart rate up; I'd better leave my camera at home.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's the difference between a narcissus and a daffodil?

- Your Big Sis

Ingrid said...

Since I have only my childhood memories of what mom used to call things I went to wikipedia. First, I corrected my spelling of the flower, which I noticed was wrong when you spelled it correctly. Secondly, I learned that Narcissus is the genus of a group of flowers from the Amaryllis family, and that "daffodil" is the common name. In my memory of what mom used to call things, the yellow ones were daffodils, and the pale one with the yellow trumpet were narcissus. WRONG!

Anonymous said...

I'm not saying you were wrong, except maybe for the spelling. I think of narcissus as a small, white flower which grows from bulbs. But when I googled photos of narcissus, I got photos that looked much like yours. I was thinking maybe it was a difference between northern and southern plants. Just trying to learn...

Shirin Modaresi said...

I've been enjoying the forsythia and daffodils too. However, it's been freezing here today...well, not literally freezing, but way too cold for spring. I'm not walking til it warms up a bit!
-Shirin

Ingrid said...

And I'm wondering too if the second pic which I thought might be a type of dogwood might actually be a Bradford Pear tree. Yes, I'm sure that's what it is; I looked it up.

Tita said...

How pretty! :) I think Sienna the doggie has last a couple pounds since i last saw her.