I worked overnight last night in Tuscola, and I stopped on my way home to pick up some things I left at Jeanette's. I drove by this pretty sculpture garden, so I decided I had to stop and check it out. Turns out it's a sculpture garden and part wildflower walk.
I should come back and do this walk again. There is a QR code on the sculptures that says, "Scan for the University of Urbana official tour," so that would be kind of cool. But right now I am just enjoying the day and taking pictures of things that are interesting, mainly all these sculptures, and listening to birds and bugs. Cicadas are out in force.
I saw a fat bumblebee on some coneflowers, and I got a decent picture of it. But then, when I tried to zoom in, apparently she realized I was watching and took off. I wonder how they know. I've noticed birds do that too. It's almost like they can feel you looking at them, and then they decide that it's not safe to be watched so closely, and then they take off.
I think one of the things I love most about this form of journaling is that if you don't have to be precise, you don't have to decide what you want to keep and what you want to throw away, or what's worth saving or what isn't, because the space is literally unlimited. If I take a picture I don't like, I can throw it away later. I can take two or three angles and decide which one to keep later on. If I want to keep everything and not touch any of it, that's fine. If I feel like later I want to go back and edit it heavily, that's okay too. It is literally like the most flexible way to do anything.
And in spite of what I said earlier about the bumblebee not wanting to have their picture taken, some of these insects have been so amazingly cooperative today. I've got a bumblebee and some other kind of a honey bee, and a lightning bug on a flower, and a dragonfly hanging out on the sidewalk. So far this is a beautiful pollinator field, and I bet I'll find a lot more if I pay attention.
I got a great picture of a young bunny rabbit just hanging out next to a sculpture. He had little light-colored circles around his eyes, and he made me think of my bunny Guinness.
Speaking of which, wildlife sightings have been pretty much what you'd expect in a city park. Besides my bunny rabbit friend, I saw a squirrel and all the bees and insects I mentioned, red-winged blackbirds, robins, a grackle I think, some starlings, and I'm pretty sure I hear a cardinal.
I collected so many pictures on the sculpture garden trail that when I changed over to the wildflower trail, I actually had to start a new entry. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but it seemed like the thing to do.
Now I also saw a black butterfly with blue spots. It was some kind of a swallowtail, and a monarch butterfly zipping around here. I found so many new plant species, I started snapping pictures of all of them to add to iNaturalist so I can put them on my life list.
I think I've discovered a way to add more interest to my summer while still keeping up my hours. If I choose to work overnight on a Sunday or a Tuesday or Thursday, then I can spend time enjoying things in this area. There's a horse ranch in Potomac that does Fallen Fridays for veterans every Friday morning, and if I worked overnight it would be easy to get there without incurring more expenses at Jeanette's, because right now I'm thinking I'm going to continue thoroughly enjoying this garden, and then I'm going to stop for lunch.
I guess I shouldn't have split my entries, because even on the wildflower walk and all the way up into Meadowbrook Park there are sculptures everywhere. So it would have made more sense to just make one long entry, but I didn't realize that at the time.
Meanwhile, I have discovered there's also a huge prairie behind this park that I'm going to come back and explore another day, because I'm already hungry and I've already found so much I've just been...
I was just lamenting how my summer calendar didn't fill in the way I had hoped it would, and I didn't have a lot of interesting things planned after all. A lot of veteran cycling things were in June and I missed them, and a lot of other things are going to coincidentally land on days when I have to work. But if I start also looking for things to do in this area, I will have more opportunities to find fun things to do. I can also start looking for halfway decent mystery shops in this area as well, because if I'm down here and there's something good, I might as well pick it up.