The last couple days have been warm. I’ve had the windows in the studio open as I work. It’s been really nice.

But knowing that the good weather won’t last, we headed down to the dock for an outing to feed the ducks. The most amazing part of this adventure was that I didn’t leave the bread crumbs at home on the counter, in the bathroom, in the stairwell, with the dog poop bags, or next to the door on the way out. I actually brought them! This meant that some poor soul didn’t end up having to share crumbs with Alden (who would have been standing there like a pathetic street orphan watching them feed the ducks).

Astonishing.

So we arrived at the dock with bag of crumbs in hand, ready to feed some ducks. Alas, the ducks evidently hadn’t been informed of our visit.

But the geese…

The geese had. And let me tell you: geese are scary. Especially when they’re coming at you all honking and hissing and elbowing each other out of the way. I guess I’ve never had this problem before because I always forget to bring the bread, but I nearly ran off in the other direction, leaving my children to sort things out with the geese on their own.

Luckily, Alden was unphased.

These geese were pretty much as big as she was, but she totally knew she had the upper hand. She must have known that geese don’t know how to operate ziplocs. Which isn’t to say they didn’t throw around the hairy eyeball when we weren’t getting them fed fast enough.

Kato was on the fence about the whole thing, but did think it unfair that the geese were getting all the food. Unfortunately, all he had to offer me was a piece of dead river grass he had found on the ground.

But I appreciated the gesture, anyway.

Once the geese had been sated, (actually, geese are never sated. We just ran out of crumbs) we headed over to the teensy tinsy stretch of beach next to the pavilion at the park. Though the photos make it look expansive, pretty much anyone in Chestertown would laugh to hear me call it a beach. It’s more like a sandbox without any sides. But there’s enough sand there to scrape up into little piles that you then insist your mother call “houses.” (Evidently when I’m not around, she’s been studying up on earth berms as an appealing alternative to barn-dwelling).

We finished off the trip with an impromptu photo shoot from inside the wagon. Alden’s very first photographs are below.

She has obviously been spending way too much time on Wikipedia studying berms and not enough time learning how to take a picture. That being said, she’s a whiz at pretending to take pictures on her fake cell phone. I guess our little point-and-shoot camera is already too antiquated for her to bother with.

Hope you enjoyed the good weather too. Sounds like it’s not going to last (does it ever?).