A Saturday Stroll Right into a Book!

On Saturday, we invited the Dad's (and their spouses) in our family to come and watch our kids play soccer in the POURING rain, and then back to our place to dry out and eat soup and buns.  

After dinner, when it had finally stopped raining, we loaded the kids  and bikes and drove to the foot of 1 Road, and walked/biked east. I had never walked here before and was taken on a new adventure. There were some beautiful apartment complexes, then a pond with a bridge, and then some old heritage canning buildings. My favourite part though, was the wooden walkway along the river bank where we spotted:

a mommy Mute Swan sitting on her eggs. Not only was it beautiful to see the swan, but it was serendipitous for Theo and I, as we have just started reading the Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. We had just read the chapter about how the female swan carefully built her nest- so to be able to see one in real life, so large, and so beautiful, and practically in our own back yard was very exciting. This image is exactly what I had envisioned while reading E.B. White's written words. Amazing!

We met a couple walking by, with a fancy camera in hand, they also stopped to photograph the water bird. They clearly knew that she was here. They had been keeping track of her. They told us that there were four eggs (even showed us a picture of them on his camera) in her nest and that she had now been sitting on them for a little over 4 weeks. The fear with the locals, is that it is too late. That they won't hatch. We will have to visit again soon just in case.

A little further down the path, we came across a chicken coop. It had one rooster and a few hens. We enjoyed calling to them, and copying their walk, complete with head pecking! The last stop on our little after dinner journey was the ship.