Catching up

The sun struggles to pop through the cloud layer to brighten our days, and occasionally it succeeds.  Spring has been a mixed bag, weather wise, with more than a few zephyrs clocking in at speeds too high to put a small craft on the water.  Bruce recruited me for paddling last weekend, but we ended up having to call off practice due to high winds.

My camera has still been in use .. I'll poke through the mish-mash ...

April 15

Robin's Den playpark is situated on the Linley Valley walkway system and is the entry point for our way today.   Basically, it;s a small kids playground located in a cul de sac .. but behind it is some pretty fantastic and challenging walking.  Keith managed to lose one of his cute little leather and sheepskin shoes on this walk, so we traversed this terrain twice. Good news .. we found it!

The pathway starts out quite smooth ...

... gets a bit more challenging ...

Ooops .. roadblock!

April 16

Front flower beds weeded and new flowers appreciated.

Late afternoon sunlight promises some great patio times ahead.

The white and pink Pieris bells race each other in an attempt to fill the hedge with their own colors. 
I can watch this competition as often as they care to put it on.

Aunt Sandy .. I think you asked about Pieris in an email.  Here is what Wikipedia has to share ...

Pieris is a genus of seven species of shrubs in the family Ericaceae, native to mountain regions of eastern and southern Asia, eastern North America and Cuba. Known commonly as andromedas or fetterbushes, they are broad-leaved evergreen shrubs growing to 1–6 m tall. The leaves are spirally arranged, often appearing to be in whorls at the end of each shoot with bare stretches of shoot below; they are lanceolate-ovate, 2–10 cm long and 1-3.5 cm broad, leathery textured, and with an entire or serrated margin. The young leaves in spring are typically brightly coloured. The flowers are bell-shaped, 5–15 mm long, white or pink, and arranged in racemes 5–12 cm long.

And now you know what I know.