Day 415: Another tiny park
May. 4th, 2021 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeFirst, though, I should report that J&D are more or less fine today. That is, J says his energy level has been about 40% yesterday and today it was more like 80%, while D. felt altogether well.
Anyway, on the day we saw the millipedes, I'd used a Google map to figure out where the halfway point in our walk had been, and when I did that, I discovered yet another small park in the neighborhood! I already knew about two, one that I call the "secret park," and one that's even more obscure than that, which my friend B. had shown me - they're each basically just small patches of land where a house wasn't built. This one, though, claimed to be Edgewood City Park, adjacent to the Edgewood School playground where I look for wildflowers, and it might encompass much of the forest where I go for that, but I also found a photo of an entrance to the park, and an address. There's this street just on the far side of the middle school that's too steep for me to willingly walk up it, because I wouldn't be comfortable walking back down the hill again later, and according to Google, if one goes the two-plus blocks up the hill there, it ends in a cul-de-sac surrounded by forest, with a trail heading south into the woods for the "park."
So today, when J. was done with work, he wanted to go outside and enjoy the weather, and I wanted to see if the school had cat's ears blooming yet, so we could show AA, but I didn't want to walk that far. So he agreed to come along with me; we drove. But then, he got interested in a little structure the kids had built with fallen branches, in the woods at the edge of the playground, and I thought, huh, maybe the path here goes north to that cul-de-sac through the "park"? So we walked along the path, which was just wide enough that we didn't have to touch the poison oak all along the side of the trail. It was pretty otherwise, everything all fresh and green. And sure enough, before too long we'd emerged at that official trailhead, at the top of that street I'd never climbed before, even though it's right there in my neighborhood where I've lived since 1992. We walked along the street up there a bit, the relatively flat part - one house had big, beautiful rhododendrons and a shaded "lawn" of moss, and another house also had fine rhododendrons but also had a structure supporting raspberry vines along the street. It was a great little walk. Meanwhile, another person walking a little dog on a leash headed off quite deliberately onto the trail back to the school, so matter-of-fact that they probably do it daily. For them, something so ordinary, while for me, a fun discovery.
Anyway, on the day we saw the millipedes, I'd used a Google map to figure out where the halfway point in our walk had been, and when I did that, I discovered yet another small park in the neighborhood! I already knew about two, one that I call the "secret park," and one that's even more obscure than that, which my friend B. had shown me - they're each basically just small patches of land where a house wasn't built. This one, though, claimed to be Edgewood City Park, adjacent to the Edgewood School playground where I look for wildflowers, and it might encompass much of the forest where I go for that, but I also found a photo of an entrance to the park, and an address. There's this street just on the far side of the middle school that's too steep for me to willingly walk up it, because I wouldn't be comfortable walking back down the hill again later, and according to Google, if one goes the two-plus blocks up the hill there, it ends in a cul-de-sac surrounded by forest, with a trail heading south into the woods for the "park."
So today, when J. was done with work, he wanted to go outside and enjoy the weather, and I wanted to see if the school had cat's ears blooming yet, so we could show AA, but I didn't want to walk that far. So he agreed to come along with me; we drove. But then, he got interested in a little structure the kids had built with fallen branches, in the woods at the edge of the playground, and I thought, huh, maybe the path here goes north to that cul-de-sac through the "park"? So we walked along the path, which was just wide enough that we didn't have to touch the poison oak all along the side of the trail. It was pretty otherwise, everything all fresh and green. And sure enough, before too long we'd emerged at that official trailhead, at the top of that street I'd never climbed before, even though it's right there in my neighborhood where I've lived since 1992. We walked along the street up there a bit, the relatively flat part - one house had big, beautiful rhododendrons and a shaded "lawn" of moss, and another house also had fine rhododendrons but also had a structure supporting raspberry vines along the street. It was a great little walk. Meanwhile, another person walking a little dog on a leash headed off quite deliberately onto the trail back to the school, so matter-of-fact that they probably do it daily. For them, something so ordinary, while for me, a fun discovery.