Fixing Sad

 Hubby is getting better, and that made me feel better. 

But a part of my day has been missing, people are missing, a daily Internet get-together is missing. A year ago in April the creator of a Facebook group I joined in 2016 passed away. He was so loved by everyone. He was there every day, to say good morning, to welcome new members, to encourage us as growers, to comment on our pictures with his vast knowledge of plants, to make sure we were kind, to keep out politics, to gently enforce group rules. We would comment on each other's posts, support each other, and make friends. He was always there, until he wasn't.

The group has not been the same. People stopped posting, well, some people are posting, but many who have shared their lives and succulents for the past 12 years (the group was created before I joined) have not been posting. The group was not the same. We were like a community. So Thursday, the last day of April, I wrote, in honor of the group's creator, here are some pictures of my succulents. Let's see your plants! I miss him and I miss all of you!

People are responding! Some people are still missing, maybe they will respond later. People are thankful for my post and more are posting each day. It is a joy to see the group become more active. Sometimes recovery takes effort, and instead of just thinking about it, you need to do it.

We had some cold weather and now it has warmed up again. We still have some cold nights forecast. Today was beautiful, sunny, windy and warm.

We found an interesting place to walk. It's a wetland management area, with a network of levies to walk on. It is a large area and we will be checking the maps for more places to go. For this visit we were near Rush Lake, only a few miles north of Ripon.

As a reference, here is the Fish & Wildlife Service website: https://www.fws.gov/wetland/leopold 

The orange area on the map is where they have counties with management areas in the state of Wisconsin.

We set off for a walk. Hubby was still coughing so we made it short.

I imagine these fields will dry up after the floods recede

A broken Robin's egg?

Way down at the end of this waterway is a large tree with an eagle's nest. I also don't know what that gray dot is in the sky, slightly to the right. Dust on my lens I guess. It's only in this picture.

Zoomed in to see the nest

Cropped to see an eagle sitting on a branch!

Cool looking wooded bridge

This building must house a pump because quite a bit of water was rushing through that big, brown pipe

That big, lone tree would look neat in the morning mist or something

We headed home after this.