More Neighbors

It was surprisingly difficult to get in my 10k steps yesterday. Usually, I do them in slices, but I figured a walk around the perimeter of this large RV park would get me at least halfway there. It turned out to be a disappointing 3,500 steps. Obviously, I'm going to have to start sooner in the day. Despite being fewer steps than anticipated, it's a good place for walking. There are lots of streets to walk up and down and see different things. Here are some things I saw in yesterday's walk through the neighborhood.

Of course, I'm thrilled with every blooming thing. Even with traveling, it's been a long cold winter.

Not sure what this is. It reminds me of honeysuckle, but I don't think I've ever seen it in this color. The bees seem to like it.

What a pretty pot...and that's a peacock to the right of it.

Or how about this one?

These signs gave me a chuckle:

The call of a bird caught my attention, and I looked up to see this Common Kestrel up high overhead. It was hard to get good pictures with so many tree branches.

Here's a better image from the internet:

(image source)

At first, I thought it was feeding some offspring. The nest was located to the right in the same tree. You can see the bird's tail just to the right and at the top of the nest in the image below.

But after watching it for a while (and trying to get a better picture), I realized it was in the process of building its nest. It was tearing off sticks and then flying to the nest with them.

So I'll keep an eye on it and maybe we'll get a chance to see something interesting happen. It would have been nice if the nest were in a place a little easier to photograph. As usual, the bird did not consult me. This might require a tripod outing.

Walking on, I came to the dog park. This is an off leash park, and there are two in the RV park on opposite corners.

But what do we care about dogs, huh? We were more interested in the cats.

Here's a roadrunner made from golf stuff.

And this was an operating fountain. The bottle on the right had water pouring into and overflowing the glass into the receptacle below.

Early in the afternoon, the farmer's market came to town. Yes, we have no avocados. Bummer. Nevertheless, they had some good stuff for sale. Lots of different flavors of honey and bee products. There were candles, bee pollen, and gift boxes. They also had sections of honeycomb with the honey.

When my dad and I used to raise bees together, I loved getting a bite of the honeycomb and chewing it until the honey was gone. Yum. I tried this with my own kids when they were younger. We were in a store that sold jars of honey with a hunk of the honeycomb inside. They weren't impressed. I guess you had to be there with the bees to appreciate it.

This guy had some nice produce for sale: carrots, beets, onions, tomatoes, several kinds of lettuce, two kinds of kale, cabbage...you name it, and he probably had it.

This guy had dried fruits and toasted nuts and legumes in different flavors.

Here were jellies and marinara sauce. The marinara sauce was tempting since we've used all eight quarts I brought with us on this trip.

The only thing I bought were strawberries. Yum. Mike can't eat them, and so I have these all to myself.

The farmers market comes every Tuesday afternoon. If there are more strawberries next week, I might buy enough to make two servings of strawberry shortcake, diet or no diet. I've been known to cut the seeds off the strawberries so Mike can have some too. I can't eat strawberry shortcake in front of him, and I don't want to go without either. Cutting off the seeds for him is a small price to pay.

Smitty kept a weather eye out for the cat next door, and there it is! Just walking around like it owns the place. I'm telling you, the insults never cease around here.

We've had Smitty out a couple of times since he turned into Fang. We just make sure the other cat is nowhere in sight. It might make sense to ask the other folks to keep their cat in for 15 minutes or so, just to avoid any hard feelings...and by "hard feelings," I mean the feeling you get when your hand is nearly bitten off.

The weather was lovely here yesterday. It was the first time this trip I've worn the shorts I brought along. In fact, the whole trip, I've worn only long sleeves and jeans, with the exception of one day in New York City when I wore some capris. Now that's sad, don't you think? (I'm sure you Nor'easter people are crying your eyes out just about now.) Anyway...it's a little more overcast today, but we're still expecting temperatures into the high 70's. Time to get out for my first walk of the day.