i think one my very first blog posts was about a canoe trip i took. this morning, i went on my first canoe trip of the summer with the same friend (and her son–also a friend)–a little later in the summer than we normally go, but better late than never! we went to a new canoeing spot (new for me) on a local river bordered by marshland. the first interesting bit of nature was a large bird, flying near the shore–a heron perhaps? we also saw a flock of sparrows and their mud-built nests on the underside of a bridge we paddled below. and near the parking area, a beautiful butterfly–mostly black, but with bright blue around the bottom edges of it’s wings–very pretty, very still and would have been wonderful to photograph… had i had my camera with me.
but my very favorite bit of nature today had to be the lotus patch. from afar, i just thought they were overgrown lilypads, but as we paddled closer, it became apparent that they were a totally different sort of flower. have you ever seen a lotus in real life? i don’t think i had before today. they are amazingly beautiful. i’ll try to take a photo of one in the next few days and post it. (the photo above is a lily from a lily pad that i picked and took home to photograph) their centers have the most interesting, cone-shaped thing in the middle and the petals are a gorgeous, smooth shape. the leaves of the lotus float like lily pads, but are big enough to be bath mats. water rolls off of them (and around in droplets on top of them) in the most curious manner. i felt like i could just stay and look at them for hours, but there were bees inside most of them and the youngest passenger of our canoe is allergic, so we couldn’t stay long.
once again, a completely fantastic way to spend a summer morning.
p.s. my attempts to photograph a lotus have been foiled. the patch of blooms that are closer to my home than those i canoed to are all too far from shore for me to get a good picture of without a boat. maybe next year.
