Spring Exuberance

While we were enjoying our soft serve and the flowers at Ward’s Berry Farm we decided to check out the 4H buildings. Ward’s supports the 4H Clubs of America by allowing them to have some of their livestock there. We’ve seen the little lambs in the past and the miniature horses but today the goats stole the show.

The first one we saw was the old guy. 🙂 I don’t know his real name but I called him Billy Goat Gruff.

Give him a good scratch and he just about falls asleep. Can’t you just hear the contented sigh?

Next to him was another pen where a Mama goat was resting. We didn’t spot the kids until we went around to the back of the shed. That’s when we got the springtime show!

Man, those little guys were fast and like kids everywhere, into everything! 🙂

April Showers bring May Flowers

Seems that the April Showers have continued into May with an annoying persistence. Oh I know we need the rain. I know that since we had so little snow that we are starting out in a drought (not good) but it would be so nice to have a little sun peek through.  One acquaintance asked “Why can’t it rain at night and be nice during the day?” So as I sit here listening to the rain pitter patter on the deck I am counting my blessings that I got out on Monday..the one sunny day we had, and enjoyed some time in the outdoors.

I picked Nancy up about 11 am. We drove to Hingham where I had some business then grabbed lunch at Panera. By 1pm we were free for a few hours. Like a couple of kids playing hooky we kicked around our options. In the  end we headed over to Sharon to explore the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary. This is another of the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuaries.

There are 20 miles of trails through fields, forests and wetlands. We chose to try the Vernal Pool trail. It looked pretty easy on the map but I think we got twisted around a few times. It was very quiet. There were occasional bird calls but we never spotted the birds.

We did upset a black snake. In fact I almost stepped on it. Too bad it was too fast to catch on camera. All I got was empty trail!

 The only other wildlife we saw was a gray squirrel but he was also quite far from us on the trail.  I was disappointed that we didn’t see a rabbit or two but we were walking at a steady pace with occasional rest stops for  the old lady (me) .That may have been why we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife. We were just tramping along as well as chatting so quiet we were not. 🙂

Back at the visitor center we explored the Art Exhibit and I spotted some birds on the feeders.

We were so close to Wards Berry Farm that we decided to stop back over there for a soft ice cream.

Here were found the spring flowers in full bloom and tons of little sparrows.

It was hard to believe that it was 4:30 already and time to get back to the real world.