Saturday in the Park

Saturday morning in the park...  A jumbo MD-11 jet flew by around 8:30ish.  In the old days it was one of the two largest passenger jets.  Despite the safety problems of its predecessor, DC-10, MD-11 is still a major model used by FedEx and UPS and dominates the sky, whereas its Boeing counterpart 747 has almost completely retired and disappeared in the sky.

The butterfly weed flowers in Rob's garden are turning from juvenile stage to young adult, just in time for a pageant walk in a beauty contest. 

It is always a pleasure to see a duck family with all the babies safe and happy from one day to the other.  This morning the mallard duck family was having fun going around on a self-guided tour.  It appears there are less predators in the park this year.  The wood duck families were not as lucky, despite being more  alert.  Last week I heard a screaming noise of a wood duck by the shrub not far away from the dam, after which the count of the original 11 dropped from 8 to 7.  I checked around and saw no signs of land animals.  It remains a mystery where there can be an attacker in the water.

More and more spiders are opening stores for business in the park.  The owners took full advantage of using morning sunlight to beautify their presentations.  If I were a judge, it would not be an easy job for me to give a score to determine which one wins an award.  I found that spiders are remarkable "web designers".  Some of the webs appeared to have no specific pattern and looked more like a meteor shower.  After I examined them carefully, behind the "random coils" I saw beautiful patterns hiding behind, which reminded me of "alpha-helices" or "beta-pleated sheets".  Forgive a retired biochemist for using the terms of describing protein secondary structures.

Speaking of using (or abusing) my scientific vocab, the spider web pictures sometimes made me think of the images recorded by James Webb and Hubble telescopes.  If you are an astrophysicist, I hope you will laugh at me rather than feeling insulted and getting mad. 😁

Everytime I took a walk around the large pond, I was prompted by the layer of trees in my sight to pause and take a few pictures.  Like my silly analogy of  comparing spider webs to stars and the universe, I sometimes said to myself, "Once you have discovered Brightwood Park, no need to covet going to famous national parks."  My wife and I feel so blessed to live in Westfield and being close to Brightwood Park, and of course, Mindowaskin Park, too.  Sometimes we joked to each other that the two parks can be treated as our front and backyards.  In case you think we have a strange sense of humor, here is another one for you to either frown your eyebrows or to laugh.  When we were first married, both of us were graduate students.  We lived in an apartment near Santa Monica Beach.  I told my wife that although we could not afford to have a single house and a spacious property, the Landlord actually generously provided us with a huge yard, Palisades Park, and a big swimming pool, the Pacific Ocean, with no extra charge to our rent.  There was no need for us to be jealous of those who lived in Beverly Hills. 😊