Rain, glorious rain.

It rained today, and I was glad.  For the past week or more I have been watering new seedings in the vegetable garden, and areas were the seedlings are still tiny.  It was a relief today that Mother Nature took care of it, and gave everything a good soaking. 

The sun even came out this afternoon for a little while.  I like weeding when it is like that.  The ground is soft and moist and warm feeling, and the weeds seem to come out easier.  I wandered out there and pulled out a few.

Time was moving on though, and since we were heading that way for other reasons, we stopped at Douglas Taylor Park and took the dogs for a walk.

Unfortunately one of the first things I noticed was a large patch of the wild chervil in a field next to the trail. We saw more of it along the sides of the trail as we walked.

Damn stuff, it is getting to be everywhere.

The trail heads east

and then down a hill

until it turns north and enters First Nation lands.

There is a funny story connected to this section of trail.  Last Summer we were walking along here.  Suddenly Luna dove into the bushes on the right, and out flew a chicken.  It ended up in the big field on the other side of the trail.  Luna herded it around, and finally she and I managed to trap it against the fence.  I scooped it up and carried it in the crook of my elbow as we continued on our walk.  It was the same kind of hen we had at home, and seemed to be okay other than missing most of it's tail feathers.  I can only assume it was grabbed by a coyote (I have a friend with chickens that lives not far from there) and then managed to make an escape, and had been living on the lam ever since. 

The funny part was how on the way back we met two other people, each of which we spoke to, and neither of them seemed to even look at and certainly didn't coment on the hen.

We joked afterwards about them telling family members about this crazy woman that was taking her chicken for a walk.

The hen did fine with our bunch, although insisted on roosting on a fence rail every night instead of going in the coop.  We would put her in the door at night before we shut it.  Finally one night when it was pouring rain, she went in on her own.  Eventually her tail feathers grew back, and then we couldn't recognize her from the rest.

There was some really ancient looking machinery parked under the trees in that field.  The blackberries were doing their best to disguise them.  The cattle in the field are doing a number on the tree roots, and we saw some trees that looked like they had been stripped of bark all the way around.

The trail is also shared with horses, and Luna spooked this one, which was our fault.  I apologized and the woman was good about it.  She could have told us to get those flippin' dogs on the leash.

We timed it well and got back to the car before the rain started again.