Life happens just about everywhere

Today found me at another favorite park, this one Sidecut Metropark in Maumee, Ohio. The trail where I took my brief meander runs along the Maumee River, which, while on some levels not as impressive as the Ohio, is certainly gorgeous

(even with the US 20 bridge and a War of 1812 monument visible from some spots).

Despite the proximity of lots of humans and dogs, lots of wild life was going on this afternoon. Geese and swallows were doing their avian thing in great abundance, as were butterflies (mostly cabbage whites, but dancing white butterflies are still a cheering sight, and there were a few tiger swallowtails and an exquisite tiny blue of some kind). Everyplace, even the edge of a well-traveled paved trail, was bursting with life.

The forest floor (if tiny patches of second-and third-growth woods can be called forest) was covered with greenery that thrives under low-light conditions, and every patch of sun found something blooming, even if much of it was European wild mustard (which plant was doing a lot of business with butterflies, sweat bees, and tiny flies).

A dead tree stump was host to a colony of quite handsome fungi.

Some kind of polypore, maybe?

 In the water, the remnants of a dead tree's roots have formed their own small ecosystem.

It didn't find its way into the picture, but when I approached, a northern water snake, which had been sunning itself on the flat section of tree on the lower right, plopped itself back into the river before the large potential predator (me) could get too close.           

Today brought nothing exotic, nothing exciting, no life birds or rare plants--but lots of the kinds of life that goes on in very ordinary places every day.