This is My Forties

My Mother's Day week was fabulous.  I saw 2 of my favorite wetland areas with all my favorite people and we got to check off more of our Maryland herps (reptiles and amphibians).  I also got to go to another park with Josh and Brennan earlier in the week.  That's 3 parks in one week!  I had basically stopped going to parks, which was probably a bad idea.  No one usually wants to come with and I am not a solo traveler.  Never have been. I don't know why I love swamps so much.  Maybe it's because they only seem dead, but they're actually some of the most "alive" places on the planet.  So much goes on there.  Anyway... I also hosted a couple people from school and their Moms for an end of semester BBQ, which is a big deal for me since I normally get so anxious about social gatherings, especially hosting them and meeting new people.  Not this time!  And I only obsessed over everything I said and did afterwards for a few hours i...

I love this time of year!  The dragonflies, cicadas & butterflies are all out in full force.  The weather is still pretty bearable and the parks aren't packed with summer crowds yet.  We've been spending most of our time outside exploring.  I've got yet another new park in Southern Maryland that is officially on my top five favorites list now: Flag Ponds Nature Park .  The beach here is amazing!!  That's not all, though.  There are the woods packed with gigantic old sweetgum, oak, pine, and maple trees that you can tell have been alive for centuries.  The trails wound their way through ponds and swamps as we crept closer towards the Chesapeake Bay.  To me, it resembled scenes from Lord of the Rings. We arrived with the intent of hiking and flying our kites, and we did that indeed.  We had such an amazing adventure!  We found a cactus that Tristan and Brennan tried to pick up and bring home, which resulted in a lot of pain ...