Lately our free time on the weekend seems to be spent going to parks, often multiple parks in one day. Today’s selections were Little River (morning) and West Point on the Eno (afternoon), where the construction/landscaping work that’s been going on for the past few months is finally finished, and looking very nice!

The rangers at Little River seem to be engaging in some wishful thinking with the signage on their butterfly garden. 😉

There is no “taking a walk” with a 13-month-old, unless said 13-month-old is in a stroller and mommy and daddy are doing the walking. Left to his own devices, the 13-month-old wanders aimlessly from interesting object to interesting object, periodically getting hysterical when the “interesting object” is a filthy garbage can, patch of poison ivy, rusty charcoal grill with pointy edges, icky old potato chip bag, unfriendly strange dog, etc. that the 13-month-old is encouraged to not play with.

It’s a teeny bit frustrating to take a kid to a park full of trees, frogs, birds, bugs, and other cool stuff, and find that the thing they most want to do is play with their own stroller. Sigh.

Well, at least he liked this dandelion!

The most interesting encounter of the day was in our own back yard. Jag spotted this snake and took Griff elsewhere while I snapped a bunch of pictures. (Jag and I have opposing spider/bug and snake phobias, which is useful in these situations).

It was very skinny and maybe a foot and a half long. It climbed a tree pretty impressively, too.

After a moment of panic while trying to identify it from various online sources (“Oh crap, that was a copperhead!”), we’re 99% certain it was a harmless juvenile black rat snake, which apparently resembles a copperhead at first glance and is often killed by mistake for that reason. I don’t mind killing bugs and spiders, but I’d feel bad chopping up a perfectly harmless snake for no reason. Especially since I kinda like snakes.