Another Walk

Perfect day for a noontime walk.

One of the neighbors had the sprinkler going.  It was barely 50 degrees outside.  Why, oh, why?  Must have been some winter grass, it was a stand-out green.  Wonder how it will handle the next round of frost tonight. But it did make tiny rainbows.

With all of the trees now bare, I had a excellent view of the lush tussies of jade mistletoe, its every bough heavy with the pearls of berries.   Makes me wonder:   if people are so keen to affix a desiccated sample to a doorway during the holidays for the sole purpose of stealing a kiss,  why are not masses of people heavily smooching beneath oak trees crowned with the most vibrant of specimens?    I might need to start a reform campaign.

I went northward on the newest Greenway section.  I walked only as far as the bridge over Aldridge Creek to St. Stephen's Episcopalian Church.   The flowing water was warmer than the weather belied.   Shoals of minnows crowded facing upstream in the currents.   I say minnows, but they could have been fingerling trout for all I knew. One was at least six inches long, bossy and speckled brown.

Crickets chirp on the far bank, winged nymphs dart from bamboo.

Not a turtle or frog to be spied. All good amphibians gone to brumate.

Birds.  There were birds!  Two hawks emerged from the tree line, wheeling about each other, for a moment.  The red cedar was filled with blue drupes and the usual quarrels of starlings.  Robins dug and barked in the leaf litter.  My eyes could barely catch the running stitch of finches in the reeds.  As I headed back to the south, a sight caught my eyes-- a solitary heron upon a rock and framed by the trees of the creekside classroom trail.

The sun was bright, the wind was light, the deeper waters scintillated and sparkled. I paused, allowing my mind to be born off and returned.

Despite nature's surround, the man-made, manipulated, still abounded.  Pumpkins waited in uncharacteristic aquatic patches. Below the Hobbs Road bridge lay a computer monitor, the CRT kind.

Nurture does affect nature.  Witness: this short pine, who had to compete with its fraternal twin lightpost.

While nature always affects the nurture.  I will return to this corner and collect more windfall hickory nuts and learn to open then.

Providence provides a banquet for the senses.

All we must do is receive.