Gratitude Monday: local beauties

After a bizarrely coolish Spring and early Summer, we’ve finally been experiencing seasonal temperatures for the past few days in the District They Call Columbia. I’m not heralding this with joy, because “seasonal” weather for June, July, August and early September is blazingly hot, unspeakably humid and mosquito-infested. This is the price we pay for gorgeous Autumns and frequently breathtakingly beautiful Springs.

However, the heat and humidity does kind of bugger your plans for outdoor exercise, unless you get up at oh-dark-thirty and just suck it up.

I did not go so far as to get up at the crack of 0500 yesterday, but I did finally haul my sorry butt out around 0800 with the intention of walking over to the new gourmet grocery store in the FauxTownCenter nearby.

I typically start the walks that take me along the W&OD Trail by passing through the beautifully landscaped grounds of a neighboring corporate center. A big feature of their campus is three man-made mini-lakes, one of which has water lilies. They must die back in the winter, because over the past couple of months I’ve noticed that the pads have gradually taken over more and more of the water surface. And only in the past two weeks or so have they started to bloom.

Well, yesterday morning they were just going cray-cray in the flower business. And as I rounded the curve to the lake, I came across a phalanx of photographers with multiple cameras armed with zillion-mm lenses on tripods, just snapping away.

I pulled out my trusty little pocket camera and did my best, as well. Because these things just make you smile with joy to see.

  

(Water lilies always make me think of the Waterlily House in Kew Gardens. Kew was one of my weekend pleasures when I lived in London.)

It was too early in the day for the turtles in the second lake to be out basking in the sun. But here's one from another day’s walk (turtles are surprisingly quick when they're escaping possible danger):

In the end, I bagged the gourmet store and walked up to Target to buy some cleaning stuff. On the way I met a fellow out walking what at first appeared to be a pony, but turned out to be a mastiff of some sort, who’d just celebrated his eighth birthday the day before (with a cheeseburger).

By the time I got home, I had 8K steps on my pedometer, only one new bug bite and I was shvitzing pretty thoroughly. But it was a lovely way to start out the month of July, and I’m grateful for having such beauty around me.