May your shade be sweet this Earth Day.

In early celebration of earth day, my husband and I went for what turned into a long walk last night. We traveled the perimeter of our property by using the nearest roads. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out when we were directly behind our house as we traveled the road to the north of the old farm. My sense of direction and location used to be bang on, but as I finish up my fourth decade in life, my instincts seem to fail me more and more. My husband, on the other hand, who has misplaced countless, never to be seen again reading glasses, and I do mean countless, was bang on. I checked on google maps. I hate being wrong..again.

There was lots to see, and of course always a pleasure by foot, especially for the first time. We spotted snowdrops, camera-shy sheep, gorgeous work horses, prehistoric horsetail grass, beautiful barns that held both of our envy, and a lovely rock bed creek that will take me the next ten years to duplicate at home. Fate, however, saved us the best for last.

As we turned the corner onto our road, we startled a goose nesting beside a pond. She swam off quickly, too quickly; another good photo op lost. She joined her mate on the other side of the pond, and while I was still debating on whether or not I could take a worthwhile shot of the pair, my husband pointed out how they had quickly abandoned their nest to divert our attention away from it. He was right. I was so busy trying to get another photo of the pair that I didn't even realize that mother goose had been sitting on her nest. I went in for a closer look and there were three large eggs inside. I took that as my fortune for a good photo op and we continued on our way.

As we casually sauntered away, they continued with their charade, actually getting out of the pond, up onto the bank and without so much as a pause turned around, ducked back into the water and made a beeline towards the nest. Under my breath, I apologized to them, sorry that they couldn't call our pond home and that I wouldn't be able to watch them rear their three babies in our backyard. Call me a city girl if you'd like, it would still be fun.