This morning after I dropped my daughter off at work, I stopped by the Missouri Botanical Gardens for a walk. There's something especially peaceful about going there on a cold wintry day. In the spring and summer the garden is just packed with visitors who come to ooh and ahh over all the flowers and greenery. In fact, I am one of those visitors too, I spend a lot of hours at this garden. I plan my summer around the Whitaker Music Festival which is a free concert series in the park on Wednesday nights (10 in a row). When I am bored with nothing else on my agenda, I just go to the park.
But during the winter, especially when there is a good coat of snow on the ground and the lake is frozen! Now that is one of my favorite times to visit! Why? Generally, the park is pretty empty. You can walk, sit, talk out load, think, sing or whatever and no one will likely be observing. Always with camera in hand, I just walked and took a handful of photos. Mainly of the Robins. I love to bird watch and for some reason, as I look back at lots of my bird photos, the majority of them are Robins. This thought came to me last night in another context that I am not going to reveal here, but they are one of my favorite birds. Such a common bird, especially here in the midwest. Today they were mainly eating berries off of the hollies and other wintering berry shrubs. In a few months when spring comes and the ground is soft with the April rains, I will be sitting at my patio table watching the Robin's tip their head to the side and stand quietly listening and then suddenly drive that beak into the ground and pull out the worms.
This is my ritual, I am a bird watcher, I keep my feeders full to attract them to my yard, I supply them clean water, I sit and watch and photograph. Oh yeah, and I talk to them too! :)
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