Just a walk in the park...

Today was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Won't you be my neighbor?

Josiah's Daddy. Aka The Studly Muffin. Troy (as his mother likes to call him) is out on a boat somewhere with my Little Bro.

Josiah and I needed to do some errands so we grabbed some frozen custard (don't judge) and swung by one of our local parks for a nature study.

I brought the usual. Water. Camera. Sketch Stuff (always supplied by my Mama) and our Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study. 

The park we visited isn't one I generally use for this purpose. It is a beautiful park, but I prefer some of the other parks in our neck of the woods are just more conducive to the study of nature.

When Josiah and I got to the park there were peoples. And more peoples. In fact, too many peoples for me. Josiah loves the peoples. He spent more time watching people than he did nature.

I think I need a hammock to carry with me where ever I might go. I'm browsing pinterest for some do-it-yourself inspiration.  Stay tuned.

 The Dogwoods are out in full force. And just plain gorgeous. This one is looking a little sparse, but I won't hold that it against it.

Josiah kept inching closer and closer to the peoples. He's a fan. He did more people watching than nature watching.

More beautiful dogwoods.

A Dogwood closeup. Did you know that the official state tree of Missouri is the flowering Dogwood?  Or Cornus Florida. Though why Florida had to get involved....

This park has some old trees. I could imagine little fairy creatures making their homes in the base of this tree. Josiah told me it just looked dead. Fine. Just suck all the joy out of my life!

This photo is Josiah's contribution to our pictures here. He told me he liked it because it looks like a Christmas tree. Well, of course!

Just Darlin' ...though I probably need to disclose that this isn't the first time I have seen this shirt on Josiah Bevan this week. It must have been handy. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday...and Friday.

For our sketch today, we decided to draw the persistent Dandelion.
 

Very intense work here.

Here is my sketch.

Josiah tried to talk me into letting him color his dandelion red. Normally I am all for artistic impression. However, this is a sketch of what we are observing in nature. When I explained this to Josiah he said, "But I could create some sort of new dandelion never seen before." Then we had a little discussion of Creation and the term "observing in nature." Then we had to talk about an episode of Clone Wars he just saw on Netflix. Rabbit Trails!

Before we left the park I wanted to get a picture of us together. This is our attempt at a selfie. I told you I'm horrible at them.

Josiah is certainly of his generation. I was going through some old pictures and found this gem of a selfie.

 

Isn't it precious? There are many more where this came from.  It had to be from a few years ago. He's lost some of those caps he's so proudly displaying. 

Have a great weekend!