Coming on Fall

It's coming on fall here in the Twin Cities.  We've been having cool and sometimes blustery mornings that give way to warm and sometimes breezy afternoons.  It's the time of year that finds us heading to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden on late weekend afternoons.  We went today.  Joe brought along his naturalist equipment--the binoculars Kendra gave him several birthdays ago, and the bug magnifying viewer Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles sent this summer.  What's great about the bug magnifying viewer is that two people can look in on something at the same time.  Joe was keen to catch a butterfly, but it's a bit late in the season for them.  The bambini looked at several of the nuts that were all over the place--beech?  a kind of acorn?--a wounded grasshopper, and some leaves.  Clara was hopping around announcing herself as "Superman Princess!" and Joe was calling her over to look at this and that and asking her is she wanted to race.  Superman Princess did not.  (She may be Superman Princess, but she's figured out that the deck is stacked against her and her three-year-old little legs in a race with her five-year-old brother.)  But she did want to look at nuts.  It was one of those ordinary, but still golden scraps of time that are sometimes few and far between when you've got wee ones aged three and five.