Blooms!

Today found me (finally!) able to attend a full-day session of training with the Nature Nuts, our local chapter of the West Virginia Master Naturalists. Given my overly-packed life, I will probably never get certified, but the training itself is the point for me. Wandering around the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge and the Williamstown Wetlands with a bunch of (mostly middle-aged) self-confessed "nature nuts" is an excellent way to spend a Saturday. We spent the morning learning about nature interpretation (and how wonderful it would be to work for the National Park Service as an interpreter!) and the afternoon about wetlands, a training that involved looking at muddy muskrat footprints on the boardwalk and baby duckweed under a hand lens. How much excitement can one stand?

Finally arriving home a little after 5:00, I dragged my long-suffering spouse on a tour to see what was blooming in the yard. Besides all the standard early spring stuff like daffodils, the afternoon's excitement was discovering not one, but two, kinds of moss blooming in the back yard! Photos to come.