Daily Walks

Every morning I get up early, four-thirty to be precise, drink a large glass of water and take my vitamins and supplements, pour a mug of coffee and head upstairs to do a few crosswords and read a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Around five-fifteen I put on my gym shoes, pop in my earbuds, and head out for a brisk morning walk for the next hour. I love my daily walks, every day I see something of interest, spring flowers, pretty snowfall, fall leaves, cats, raccoons, turtles, a variety of birds, newly unfurled leaves, beautiful sunrises, the moon in all its phases, no matter the day or time of year there is always something to spark joy.  

 

 

I often take my grandchildren on walks, or probably a stroll as the pace is much, much slower than my early morning walks. And the children, just like me, always find things of interest. Lately we have had a lot of rain, so we have seen many, many earthworms and that generated a lot of questions, so we watched a documentary on worms, and learned a lot. Another day we saw a number of big bumblebees, they were worried about being stung, no one was. When we got back to the house we looked up some information about bumblebees and learned they can sting over and over again as their stinger is like a needle, but a honeybee can only sting once. The honeybee's stinger is barbed and when it is used it won't pull back out so instead a portion of the honeybees abdomen is ripped out and it dies! This past Wednesday we were on the lookout for turtles, this time of year in northeast Indiana they are on the move, we didn't see any. But yesterday morning on my walk I saw a nice size turtle so I took a picture to show the grandchildren. This morning I saw a mother raccoon with four babies, they were crossing the road, so I waited until they all made it across, the boys were very interested to hear all about it.

Throughout the spring I have visited local parks to walk the trails, I love finding woodland flowers, so many colors and they really are a beautiful sight in the woods in early spring. A week or so ago I headed into Fort Wayne to visit the farmers market with our almost five year old grandson Masen. We were walking from one market to another and were passing the Botanical Conservatory, there were some plants in full blossom, I had Masen stand in front of them to take a photo, he is a bit of ham for the camera. Suddenly I noticed some Lily of the Valley in bloom. I said, "hey, Masen, look this is Lily of the Valley". Apparently my phone was listening to me, because its computer voice piped up, "Lily of the Valley, a small woodland plant, highly poisonous", at which point Masen yelled, "it's poison, it's poison" as he ran away from the plants. Ahh, the joys of technology.

Lily of the Valley, a small woodland plant, highly poisonous :)