Away From Nature

Well, of course I'm never really away from nature. It surrounds me every time I take a few steps outside my front door. But for this post, despite being in my usual surroundings, I'm taking a step away from nature and showing you a few of the things that caught my eye, aside from bodies of water, plants, birds and other wild animals.

First up, I'm about to talk trash. Our city has collected the parks' plain black trash cans and returned them full of.. not trash, but colour. They were painted by volunteers at a recent lake stewardship meeting.

Here's another one - kind of a before and after concept.

This colourful kidlet was strolling along the park path near Frank's place. Her tie-dyed shirt reminded me of a pinwheel. Can you see it?

How about now?

Each year, both Frank's community and mine hold rubber duck races to raise money for charity. Each participant buys a numbered ticket which corresponds to the number on the bottom of a duck. In Frank's town, the ducks are tossed into the creek, where they go with the flow toward nearby Lake Ontario. The first ducks to make it into lake wins. I assume there are prizes in his town as there are in ours. When we set out for our walk a few days after the event, we'd wondered if we'd come upon any of the ducks that never made it all the way, as we had in past years. Sure enough, Frank spotted this little casualty down by the dam - nowhere near the lake.

Back to my own neck of the woods, this is just a small portion of a picnic table top. I liked the way the light was illuminating the wood and this tiny leaf. You can also see the rusty red bolts which secures the table top.

And here's the edge of that same table top. Late-day sunlight makes everything look interesting.

If you haven't seen me around in a while, it's because I'm still away from home, enjoying my time up at the cottage. This, along with the previous posts was scheduled before I left home. I'll be back to catch up before too long.