herbiehancock

When I was much younger, I can remember reading the book, " The Listening Walk ," by Paul Showers.  The book has been revised with new colorful illustrations by Aliki and a more streamlined text, but the basic story remains the same.  It relays the sounds a girl hears while on a walk. It has been so hot these past few days, that I have been waiting until close to 10:00 in the evening before taking a walk in an attempt to beat the heat.  Generally, I take along my mp3 player and listen to music while I walk, but a couple of nights ago, the battery on my player wasn't charged so I left it at home.  The neighborhood was quiet due to the hour of the day.  Yet, there was plenty to be heard if I listened closely.  It reminded me of reading "The Listening Walk" as a young girl.  I tried to listen and take note in my head of some of the sounds I heard while walking, and this poem is the result. My Listening Walk I hear errant bugs  frying  in the zap...

My new job is keeping me very busy, but I am enjoying it.  As with anything new, there is a lot for me to learn.  My walks through the park in the evening are even more important to me now to help me fight stress and unwind at the end of the day.  I want to share with you a few pictures from my yard and from the park from this week. The first of my daisies have begun to bloom. From the number of buds on the plants, it looks like I will have an abundance of them very soon. These two shrubs (or maybe one's a shrub and one's a tree?  I'm not sure.) are blooming now.  The light pink one on the right has been out for quite a while and the blooms are starting to fade.  Just as they are fading, the darker pink buds and blooms of the shrub on the left are just opening. This is what the shrubs looked like during the winter. By the time I am home from work and have had dinner with my family, it is often starting to get dark before I head out for a walk. We've had a l...

Last night the local weatherman predicted we would have a sunny day today with temperatures in the high seventies or low eighties.  When I heard that prediction, I thought that it sounded like it might be an April Fool's Day Joke, but the weather man wasn't fooling.  It was no joke.   We had an absolutely gorgeous day here today.  I was lucky enough to squeeze in two walks through the park, one in the morning and one this evening.  I might have spent even more time outside than that if I hadn't had to work at the library in the afternoon. I took a few pictures to share with you. The daffodils in my front flower bed now have buds on them, but they haven't yet opened up. I did find some at the park that were a little farther along than mine, though. I saw some hyacinths coming out too.  A bee was buzzing around one of them and decided to be in the picture. Most of the forsythia aren't out yet around town, but I did find a few early ones already out in bloom. ...

It was late when I walked through the park a couple of nights ago. It was dark, but I went anyway. It was quiet for the most part. Just a little chilly, but really not too bad. It was peaceful. It did me good. This is the path through the park that I walk on. The lights in the distance are at the Imagination Station, which is a community built play area. There is a basketball court next to the Imagination Station. Every once in a while, I could hear the sounds of some young men playing a game on the court there while I walked. No one was out having a picnic at this hour. Nobody sitting on the park benches either. Some of the trees looked a little bit spooky. They reminded me of the trees in the movie the Wizard of Oz that threw apples at Dorothy (and her little dog too! ) For the photo below, I purposely took the picture from a weird angle and perspective. If you use your imagination, you might see half of an octopus in the bottom of the deepest black recesses of the ocean w...