Loose Leaf Notes

So we spent Friday in Blacksburg. While Joe was at a counselor training, I hung out at the Virginia Tech Duck Pond and made friends with some quacks.   The ones in the above video clip sound more like dogs than ducks.  I called them “the twins” because they were they were the only ones of their type, looked alike and stuck together.

And this was their side-kick.

Mallards are like iris, in that they are common ducks that I thought were exotic when I first saw them as a kid, in the same way I thought Iris were too exotic to grow so plentiful, even around run down old houses. 

Back in the day when someone would ask, ‘if you had to come back as an animal,  which would you be?’ I always answered ‘a duck,’ because they can  swim and fly. I’ve also watched them skate across ice.

This was an idyllic scene. We brought our bikes too.

After the training, Joe and I rode our bikes and ended up at Tech’s Hahn Horticulture Gardens where I got entranced by these globe thistles.

There were gazebos and winding pathways, exotics and naturalized plants.

I felt like I was at Monet’s Garden!

And OMG! There was even a lily pad pond with Koi fish!

“Are you sure they’re not piranhas?”

That’s what I asked a girl and her mother who were feeding the fish, after the mother commented about how aggressive they were while feeding (see the video above).

We had talked about driving to the beach (5 hours from here) as a get-away for the long Memorial Day weekend but found a day trip right in our  neighborhood that was as fun as any vacation. It was an exquisite day that we topped off with a good meal and some craft beer.

 ______Our World Tuesday