Lakewood Park

Every time I take my foster son into town to see his therapist, he asks to go to the park.  Well, yesterday we were early for his appointment, so we stopped at the park by the hospital.  It was sunny (but still a little wet) and the park was beautiful.  We had never been there before, there were the obligatory shelters for picnics, and lots of walking trails through the trees, but my son's favorite part was the pond/lake.  (too big to be called a pond, but not quite a lake).  Wooden bridges took us over the creek feeding into the pond, and then we saw them...the ducks.  And then the geese.  And a turtle, but he ducked under the water before I could take his picture.  Maybe he was in the turtle witness protection program. :0)

The geese above were certainly not shy, they followed us all around the pond, probably looking for us to feed them since it was lunch time.  Then I saw these funny looking ducks.  I have never seen ducks like these, and I was worried they would take off before I got a good look at them, but when they saw me walking on the grass towards them, they came over to meet me.  These pictures were taken with my phone, so they aren't the best, but the colors on these ducks were really cool.  A white spotted chest, a bright red mask around the eyes, and the tips of the wings and the tail feathers were an iridescent greenish purple, very hard to describe.

Here's the male...he was being difficult about posing for me.  Apparently I arrived during his bath time. LOL.  And see that goose in the back ground?  That's the same one from the first picture.  I told you, he was stalking me! hahaha

Then came the babies.  There were 2 separate groups of ducklings, one group swam the other way when I walked up to the pond, but I watched these ones (a little older) swim all the way down from the other end of the pond to see what all the fuss was. They were so cute, and my foster son wanted to try and hold one so bad, I started to worry he would fall into the pond with them.  I finally got him to step back from the edge before we both ended up swimming with the ducks.

The last to join our group were the adult mallards.  After about 10 minutes, when all these wonderful birds realized that I had no food, they left.  Just quacked, turn around, wiggled their tail feathers, and just left.  

But it was nice while it lasted.

The moral of this story?  We all need to take just 10 minutes from our busy days to step back, and really look at the wonderful world around us.  I'm glad we did.  Oh, and yeah, we ended up late to our appointment. ((smile))

Be blessed,

Debbi