Serenity Now! at Randolph Park in Dublin

                                            A walk on the wild side at Randolph Park, Dublin

      Our first real picnic in the spring with my transplanted, (somewhat autistic) sister Debra was at a cozy little park not too far from us, Randolph Park in Dublin (Virginia, not Ireland). Around 4 p.m. the three of us (Sis,  husband Frank and myself) took a little stroll down the rather level, handicapped accessible trail in the Randolph Park woods. I think Debra appreciated the fact that it was level, with all kinds of foliage. On more than one occasion she'd marveled at the fact that we have "thousands" of trees in our area -- she came from the desert of Nevada and didn't see any real greenery, and they have "dirt" mountains there, especially around Vegas.
    I noticed aging mayapple leaves, and wild berry plants (probably blackberry or raspberry) just beginning a bit above the forest floor, with Solomon's seal, red maple, red or black oak and sassafras (the last mostly around the pond bordering the woods) about.
    Debra, with her arthritic feet, didn't walk all that far. We went on the bordered walkway with quotes inscribed in stone every so often (I can only remember Robert Browning's "God's in his heaven/ All's right with the world".) She looked around herself in this peaceful place and said "this is nice. Serene." We got up and walked some more and the path curved around, birds chirping up in the trees. We spied a squirrel not ten feet ahead on the path, which looked odd. It was gray with a reddish tail. Frank surmised that was not normal. He also pointed out the nuts the squirrel  had previously stashed, which you could readily see, on a tree with rather shredded bark.
    We pivoted back toward our picnic spot, which had the gazebo that overlooks a little pond. But after we finished our hot dogs, I, then Frank, went down to the green, murky water. Among the reeds we spotted "6" green frogs; one had to be a fat male, who'd called every so often. Debra called that a bull frog, but I think there were only green frogs with muddy backs out there. One was really small, light bright green and white underneath, and really cute. 
    And then a turtle made an appearance.
    "Hey, I see a turtle!" said Frank.
    "Where?" I asked.
    "It peeked out its head and then went back in."
    We came back home and I made a banana bread mix she'd given us the previous week. After it came out of the oven Debra and I had half apiece (at least 360 calories -- how will I ever lose weight). There's only a little left, along with the memory of a calming day at Randolph Park.

Tree Walkng for state champs at Virginia Tech

   It was cold -- a great day for a tree walk? Not really, though the good news was our leader, Jeff Kirwan and a few other ladies, were quite knowledgeable about the trees we were going to see. And we met in a gray parking lot. On Virginia Tech campus.
    Virginia State University and Polytechnic Institute -- a land grant college, with actually a lot of land-- 2600 acres -- is a good place for studying animal husbandry, self driving cars, water testing and nature at thee Hahn Horticultural Center. And on this big campus you find a variety of trees, from white pine to red hickory to a tree dedicated to comic Stephen Colbert!
   Wearing my furry black winter coat and red hat, I went off with several others, starting out in the duck pond area off of Duck Pond Road/Drive. After a handful of steps Jeff brought us slightly uphill, eyeing the president's home in the distance, to a few knotted old trees, what he called state champs. I believe one was a maple. There was also a white willow, on the east side of the duck pond, as we crossed a little foot bridge, also a champ. I think this was the one where it was so wide we couldn't tell its age.
   On the campus proper we headed down the west side of the Drill Field. I was really surprised when he pointed out there was "one" tree left from when the Drill Field wasn't an open area at all, but an arboretum. It is a "burr oak" with  huge acorn cups, a sign near it saying it was planted in 1895, I believe. That's an old and grand tree! Fellow naturalist Beth U. instinctively starting yanking off the English ivy around. It's sad they tore out so many trees for a field.
   With state champs they measure the height and circumference and possibly the rings too. Jeff, a former student, was there when a grand old tree fell in what is "Stadium Woods" behind Lane Stadium, where the football games are played. The rings were measured on the fallen tree and it was 300 years old! No wonder they want to save this woods of white and black oaks! This unique urban woods needs to be preserved. And it is also where a great oak with the sign "Colbert Oak" is nailed to it, as a means to entice comic Stephen Colbert to come. At least, they hope he will come visit, is my understanding.
    In the Hahn Horticultural garden we spied a few interesting, new to me trees, like the triofolate orange, the Alaskan yellow cedar and the kind of hanging down limber pine, also state champs. We traversed part of the garden I hadn't seen before, with a lot of brown wooden planks around a small goldfish pond and curving trails going back out toward the road and parking lots. The weather warmed up; our coats were open, and it was time to get something to eat.
    All in all, it was informative and a few hours of good exercise. Every town should have a "tree walk" like this.

Adventures at Randolph Park, squirrel barking

    There she blows! Or there they went. When I reached the beginning of the trail just off the little gazebo picnic shelter across from the frog pond at Randolph Park (Dublin, VA) and the beginning of the trail wasn't much of a trail at all. The 'derecho', a Spanish term I'd only heard of recently, decided to blow through these little woods. The derecho or wind storm precedes a thunderstorm with high winds in the area of 80 mph. Some might question it, but "climate change" is making the weather more capricious and unpredictable.
    So the trail looked like a semi-cleared area, most of the trees and shrubs and tiny plants and the brown leaf litter in its place instead. Where was the trail? Who cared? This was a walk with adventure. Farther on there was a big leafless tree just to the side of the trail I did happen to find. It was oddly in front of a concrete engraving that read " Let Hope keep you joyful". A bit beyond that I almost got tangled on a blackberry bush, the sweet berries hanging close to the ground. There were also some young guys judging the distance to a frisbee target close by,but I walked beyond them. 
    Beyond that there looked to be a big, bricked in wishing well. It turned out to be a humongous fire pit and in back of it were ampitheater seats in four or five short rows. Not sure when it was last used -- the nymphs of nature, the inspiration of poetry and spring, probably held a concert of natural sounds there --- bird tweets, cricket chirps, and  the whistles of wind and whining, moving branches. (But there was no such concert happening as I walked by.)
    As I was  coming out of the woods a squirrel skirted across a picnic shelter table and jumped down and over to a young, not too tall tree, possibly a young tulip poplar. He eyed me suspiciously and seemed very unhappy I was crossing his path. As I got to the tree he started to make the oddest sound at me.
    Some people call it barking. I think it sounds more like low pitched quacking. He'd quack-bark and moved around the tree, then quack-bark some more and go higher in this 12 foot tree, then stop and bark again. He was annoyed with me; well, I was annoyed with him too!
    This last time son Zeb came with me. He decided to lie down on a picnic table in the gazebo as I scouted out the nearby frog pond. Delicate, lilac colored "monkey flowers" dotted the edge of one side of the pond and I heard whoosh, whoosh a few times. Then Zeb came by and there was another whoosh, whoosh. When I'd visited after the derecho I'd spied a big green frog, his ear circle prominent, and pointed it out to few kids who were happening by. This time there were no kids, no frogs I could actually see. Just the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
    Zeb decided on entering the far end of the little trail filled woods and came upon some fencing topped with barbed wire (he said they used 'razor' wire on the fence at the prison where he was librarian). There was a big hole in the fencing and he wanted to see what was beyond. So we trekked up a rather slippery, dirty hill to a woods which was, instead, fronted by old railroad tracks. There were nonnative species growing up in the tracks, including pepperweed, burning bush, and spotted knapweed. Zeb thought it was weird the train tracks seemed to be in the middle of the woods--- did they actually go anywhere? We didn't know but quickly forgot about it and went back toward the car.