A Mother's Day Walk

I haven't been out much. Well, if you count "out of the neighborhood," I haven't been out at all. So when Rick came in on Mother's Day with the car and said "Let's go for a walk," that meant the walk could be anywhere! We chose the campus of Michigan State University.

Normally it would be packed with students and their parents this weekend, as kids would be preparing to graduate. During our rather long walk we saw all of a dozen people.

It was bliss. Divine, safe bliss.

We started our walk going down beside the Red Cedar River where we saw our first goose family. It wouldn't be the last.

We ended up at Beal Botainical gardens. MSU has wonderful gardens. In the Horticultural Gardens you'll find some gorgeous blooms but at Beal, you'll see interesting and unusual plants and even weeds!

Many things had yet to bud and bloom but I learned that these sweet flowers are cowslips.

And I loved these!

The trillium were in full bloom!

And there were both interesting and informative plaques...

...and unique features, such as these decorative plaques on the stairs leading out of the sunken garden.

We had some company during our walk in the garden. These two followed us around for a bit!

The tulips were out and looking good.

These matched my coat!

We left the gardens and continued our campus walk, noting some beautiful lilacs, the first I've seen to begin blooming.

Beaumont Tower, with its bells that chime every fifteen minutes, is a campus landmark. We did see one student here, having her photo taken by the door. In retrospect, I should have said if she stood back much farther from the tower so she was in the foreground, her photo would have both her and the tower featured, rather than the rather boring door.

Most of the flowering trees were on the way out, but a few were still looking pretty glorious!

We ventured into East Lansing. This area is one of the busiest intersections in this college town. Not today!

Moving on, we went back to campus, passing by a couple of lovely red bud trees.

And then, crossing through, we were back at the river. There were five families of geese on the riverbank -- and at least 25 goslings!

The parent geese were remarkably undisturbed by our passing so close. They neither shooed their babies away or honked at us.

These birds are used to people! And darned cute.

Our day out was really one of the nicest I've had in months. True, the weather wasn't great, but it didn't start to sprinkle until we reached the car.

A day to remember.