I was getting stir crazy so tied my boots on and went outside to visit a friendly cat and walk around.  I gathered four eggs and picked up some garbage off the lawn (tis the season).

Then, the schoolbus came and let off Seth and Sarah and suddenly I had a willing little friend to walk with me.  We thought we would go to the end of the road and back but she said “Can we go in the woods?” and naturally I said, “Of course!”

We couldn’t help but admire all the moss, I wonder if it was because it was the only green in the forest and it just naturally drew our eyes.  We liked how it lifted off the rocks just like a rug.  Sarah put it carefully back.

We even reclined on moss.

We saw the first frog eggs of the spring, always worth bending down for a look-see.  Sarah would NOT touch them.

But I don’t mind the feel of frog eggs, I quite like it.  The water was like ice, though, and my motherly heart just knew they would need a few warm days in order to hatch.

She was determined to take me to Murkwood, one of Grace’s old haunts that she found and named and showed to her little sister.

Going on this walk made Sarah’s imagination kick into high gear and soon I was being called BrightHeart instead of mom.  Her name was FlameStar which I never could get right.  She seemed more like a TwinkleToes to me.

Mostly she said, “Come on, BrightHeart” but one time when I was in front of her she said, “Slow down BrightHeart, you don’t want to get too far ahead of your leader.”  And then I knew she really was imagining things.

I thought I found a hedgehog but then I realized it was just moss again.

(I started imagining things, too)

I carried this pretty twig the whole walk and guess what?  Sarah, I mean FlameStar, changed my name!!  To TwigHeart.  I wasn’t sure what to think of that.  I guess I have a heart of wood.

This made my heart happy.  I saw in the distance a flow of sticky pine pitch down the side of a tree so we went over to take a look and discovered a tick STUCK fast to the pitch.  As I look at this photo I can also see a tiny black caterpillar stuck there, too.  The tick was still alive, too, but stuck.  I was intrigued but Sarah looked off into the distance and waited in disgust for me to be done.

Skunk cabbage, I broke a piece off to have Sarah smell it and she hated it.

She’s particular about what she wants to experience.

However, she loved the water… she loved the rocks …she loved the trees …she loved the moss.  She was happy.  Just please don’t show her ticks or make her smell skunky things.

There are many different kinds of moss.  If you touch them, some are soft and some are rough, some are wet and some are dry.  Some look like tiny ferns and some look like underwater grasses.    Some is short like carpet, some is fluffy and makes you wish you were tiny enough to snuggle within it.  Some is bright green, it hurts your eyes, and some like the moss growing on this boulder, is the deepest darkest forest green.