urbpan | Pictures from the weekend (Reply)

On Sunday we went to Elm Bank Reservation, in Wellesley Mass (Just outside of the rt. 95 loop that more or less defines the perimeter of Metro Boston). It's a collection of formerly privately held land that has been set aside to be used as open space. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society has buildings and greenhouses there, there are soccer fields and canoe landings, but a lot of it just looks like forest. Here Alexis stands among some impressive white pines.

Some areas were flooded into wonderful swamps.

The Charles River has a different character out here, glassy and black. Note the house on the opposite bank with steps leading to the water.

Monsters prowl the woods. (Actually what happened was, after being there a while I made the mistake of saying, "hey, there are no off-leash dogs here!" and almost instantly this guy showed up. Alexis and I took our dogs in opposite directions to avoid him, and he rolled slowly by, eventually followed by his distracted owners.)

One section of the park is dominated by truly huge sugar maples, all tapped for syrup-making by the Natick Community Organic Farm. These trees had to have been planted 200 years ago, maybe more. We've gotta come back and see the fireworks in October.

We even found places where there was still snow.

In order to access the park, you have to cross this little wooden one lane bridge.

Which had these cool iron streetlights on it.

All that's left is the tick check. On deer tick on each dog, and one tick nymph found on me the next morning when I woke up.

Here's the NCOF turns all that sap into syrup (and later--COTTON CANDY!).

They raise a surprisingly large amount of livestock for a small farm. Here's a mess of "bunnies," as distinguished from "rabbits" which are huge, all white, and edible, being raised two to a hutch nearby.