This morning, I took the girls along to check out a Japanese garden at one of our local parks. We first discovered this place about a year ago, but hadn't been back since last year. At the time, the Japanese tea house was closed to the public (it still is, mostly) and the gardens were only open during limited hours - ones that I never seemed to be able to fit in between Miss Pie's many naps.
I'm not entirely sure how I managed to forget about the gardens (given my love of all things Japanese) but a random chat to another mum at our usual park last week had her mentioning the koi pond in the Japanese garden at Brand Park, and how her toddler loved it... so we found ourselves there this morning. I didn't have my camera with me today, but the above photo is one I took last year.
It was a gorgeous day to go, and the three of us are suckers for small critters and wildlife, so we had fun admiring not only the koi and shimmery mallards, but the many turtles lazing on rocks, intensely coloured dragonflies, butterflies, and - exciting for me 'cause I can be a nerd - a bird of prey, perched in a tree near our car.
Once we got back home, the ornithologist in me came out - urged on by the Faery to find out what kind of bird we'd seen and heard. Don't you love the internet? It's fabulous for stoking those nerdy fires, I find. I came across a useful site for identifying birds, and narrowed what we'd seen (and heard) down to one of two. I'm pretty certain it was a Red-Tailed Hawk:
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- a Flame Skimmer (dragonfly):
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It sounds just lovely! I am so jealous!
ReplyDeleteThank you - I'm sure there must be lovely parks where you are, though... surely?
ReplyDeleteHow beautiful is this place? So glad you've got the nice weather to enjoy it with!
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely warmed up over the last few weeks, that's for sure. I'm grateful for P's midday sleeps because it means we don't have to go out in the heat then! The mornings are still nice and fresh, not too hot yet.
ReplyDeleteI think August is the hottest isn't it. Santa Ana winds and all that.
ReplyDeleteFrom memory, that sounds about right. At the end of last July, we had to hand back the rental car. August consisted of daily supermarket visits (on foot) at 8am because it was too hot to walk any later in the day - what with palm trees providing such limited shade and all! That was a hard month - thank god we have a car now.
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