mmmulch

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. June 7, 2010.

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I really really enjoy watching for - and then seeing - the first few harbingers of spring/summer.

Like yellow lady's slipper orchids. Or those white mushrooms that look exactly like teeth. Or the variety of native violets, strawberries and other low shrubbery that is now in bloom.

And then there's that corridor where you're surrounded by wild roses. And the smell of being surrounded wild roses. I mean, it's no stinkhorn funk, but it's pretty nice.

Most fun, of course, is watching M sink in the soupy mulch mud puddles that is much of the forest right now, given all the rain we've had this month AND given that most of the paths in the forest are built of successive layers of mulch.

I particularly like it when he grunts and yelps as he blunders from one spot to the next. And then stops and looks back and me.

I laugh because what is a pratfall without an audience...and pick my way delicately to where he is, because I'm a delicate flower. Gentle. In need of protection from the elements.

By the time we got back to the parking lot, both of us were wet and mucky practically to the knees but we STILL kept an eye out for the woman and her leashless dogs-as-big-as-ponies we'd seen entering the forest just before us.

(M muttered, "I'm sure they chased down a deer..." "...And are now FEASTING." I finished.)

But it was great fun to meander after a haphazard go-go-go weekend. And it was good to walk repellent-free this one last time, because according to the great entomologist in the sky, they're going to be BAD this year.

I mean, I hate dousing myself with repellent (in my hair!) but I hate being infested with hungry bugs MORE.