Today, thanks to a friend, we discovered a new (to us) park.  Typical of this region of Ohio, Creekside Reserve combines prairie with wetlands, as these photos will demonstrate.  There were mallard ducks and other critters in the creek, and fields of prairie wildflowers.  An old railroad used to run through here a long time ago.  Unfortunately, they got rid of a lot of the railways around here.   Now there are trails, and a paved bike path.  It’s nice to see an example of intentional habitat restoration here, instead of the usual quarrying, dumping, and development.

On the way home, we stopped for a pizza, and I tried a Yellow Springs Ohio “Of the Dark” rye whiskey barrel-aged Belgian dark strong ale with hints of maple and coconut, 11.6 ABV!  I mean, OMG, who needs pizza, anyway?  This brew was a hearty meal in itself.  Perfect for a cool, rainy day.    One thing I’ll say for Ohio, they have some decent microbreweries, and impressive craft beer menus in your average restaurant.  (But don’t expect drinkable coffee.  It’s all insipid brown water, probably piped in from the polluted waterways.)

Gardening for the short run, knowing we can’t invest anything in our apartment garden, as we’ll be shipping out soonish, can be frustrating, but keeps us honest.  So it’s annuals, veggies, and some perennial wildflowers and herbs for now, not all the cool long-term trees, natives, and perennials we’d like, but it’s still therapeutic.  It keeps me sane.  In an area where half the barrack-like houses are vacant or boarded up, and the rest are mostly devoid of any landscaping to speak of, as if everyone has just given up on life and creativity, I try to beautify wherever I am, and hold out hope for better surroundings.  If the future owners trash it all, so be it.  At least we took some pride in our humble circumstances.  Hopefully I’ll even have some surplus to share.

Well, I did it.  All the plants are outside in the garden.  Now we just wait with forks, chopsticks, and other implements of devouring at the ready.  If the varmints don’t beat us to it!

[Frog and Toad © Arnold Lobel]

After all the rain, today was 75 and sunny, so we dropped by the fen, where huge frogs were jumping and hanging out.  If you squint, you can make out a couple of them in my photos.

What more could a person want?

Also, happy birthday to my 6-year-old granddaughter.