#AudioBlog 🎧 ⬇️

“Hey, ya want to take a walk with me? I know, how ‘bout we ride the motorcycle to Retzer Nature Center and take our walk there! Would you like that?” I asked.

My husband made a move for his shoes and off we went! It was a beautiful summer day in the 80’s and sunny. Sometimes is does one good to get out in nature.

We began the hike and hadn’t gone too far, before I stopped and squatted down, whipped out my phone to take some photos of a plant with red berries. It was the first among many.

Michael began to point his phone toward plants and flowers using an app called SEEK which identifies them, but I continued on. All of a sudden I heard him exclaim from twenty yards behind me, “This is FUN honey!”

When he caught up to where I stood I inquired, “What do you like about it?”

He quickly replied, “the fact that you learn things as you take pictures of pretty things.”

We took a few more photos each.

“It will only get me to the genus of Golden Rod, but it won’t tell me the species!” He said. He was a bit dejected, as we slowed to a halt.

My Nike app interrupted, “pausing work out “ then once we started down the path again she chimed in “resuming work out!“

I laughed, Well, this isn’t really a work out” while Michael exclaimed, “This is better than work out this is educational!”

Much later, after many more photos were taken and my phone battery died, we came around the bend into an intersection in the board walk area. There we met a dad and his young daughter who was maybe six years old. She was a thin girl with beautiful soft curly blonde hair. She was so excited to have a bird identifying pamphlet with her. She stopped to show us some pictured birds as she unfolded its accordion pleats.

I was amused because she kept talking and pointing at the birds all the while her extended pamphlet was upside down. I asked her, “Do you see the bright yellow one down on the third row? They’re called goldfinches. We saw three today as we rode in.”

She worked to get her long hair, which was a bit wind blown, out of her face, then she looked up at me and squinted because it was bright. She asked in her high picked voice, “but don’t you think cardinals are the best?”

Next, her mom and sister came walking and drew closer, “Hello,” she smiled. The sister seemed about the same size, perhaps a twin she never looked up or spoke but she was armed with a butterfly net! I assumed they too were going to have an identifying adventure like we had.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” Psalms 24:1-2 NIV

#AudioBlog 🎧⬇️