Apples in The Nature Preserve

Yesterday, the girls and I discovered a nature preserve near their school. We walked around it looking for interesting wildlife and plants. We saw a couple of little snakes in the tall grasses (garter snakes I think) ,but they were to quick to photograph. We witnessed a lot of fish swimming in the crystal clear pond. Some were blugill and we saw at least one large-mouthed bass.

The view was spectacular!

The most prominant feature of the preserve was the apple trees. There were at least thirty apple trees. Apples are in season right now and there were thousands of them. Most of the trees are very old and large. Some were at least fifty feet high. Most of the apples were buggy, but, we found a few of the delicious gems to nibble on.

Georgeous apples!

We saw many plants that you could forage from and some you really don't want your kids to eat, like salvia. Of course there were the everpresent prickly pear cactus. The fruits were not quite ripe, so, we will have to plan another trip to harvest some.

Having a pond full of fish to watch is entertaining and educational. It makes me happy to know there are places here that don't get fished at all. The fish here are unafraid of humans and swim right up to the shore hoping for a snack (I think someone feeds them.)

The only downside is that I brought the wrong phone. My actifit app is on my old Samsung and I walked about four miles around the preserve. Oh, well, I do it for my health and my kids, so, I just stopped this sentence to download the app on my new phone. Problem solved!

We are trying to enjoy the last days of summer before the cold sets in for the year. Not that we don't have great weather during the winter.

I am very satisfied to find another little piece of relatively undisturbed nature in the middle of this growing metropolitan area. I hope it can stay that way forever.

Thanks for reading! See you next time.