This morning, Catherine took pictures on our morning walk for a photo essay she planned to write about on her blog, Reading to the Core. Her version of our walk is well-illustrated. Me? I had to steal a photo (below).
We walk early in the morning on the weekends and during the summer….usually 6:30 or 7:00 AM.
We have been walking on Saturdays and Sundays through our town’s fairgrounds for almost 20 years, trying to answer life’s burning questions while we burn a few calories.
Despite the predictable routine, there is always something of a surprise.
Catherine is very observant. She calls my attention to natural phenomenon…a hornet’s nest, a gaping hold that was once a knot in a tree, a pair of hawks sitting in trees, a frosted spider’s web, a pond full of fat tadpoles. This morning, she snapped this photo of pussy willows growing beside that pond lying dormant, waiting to stir with fat tadpoles.
The furry little “flower buds” in her photo are covered with soft, silvery hairs. These are the bud’s “fur coat” that helps to keep the developing reproductive parts of the flower warm. These hairs trap the heat from the sun in a kind of insulating wrap. The willow flowers will be fully “open” when the yellow pollen and stigma are visible.
Barring bad weather, we will be walking past this pond next weekend and the weekend after that. We will notice the same changes we have seen over 20 years on our walk…and still, there will something that will surprise us.