Happy Birthday, Sharon!

I had a fun day today. It went by very quickly. I had a busy morning of training a new employee, doing the daily paperwork, doing paperwork on the purchases that I made yesterday, sending and responding to e-mails, completing paperwork with the new employee, and interviewing a volunteer over the phone. Then the fun arrived! A family friend celebrated her birthday at the park. I got to see some family and several other great people. Aside from the handful of people that stopped in for very brief visits to the park, they were the only people I saw today. It was nice to have some liveliness in the park which would have been very quiet otherwise.
The day started out just as beautiful as always. I did my morning drive through the park and missed a photo of an owl above the road. It was still pretty dark though so a photo may not have turned out anyway. After I opened the gate, I spotted a shot that was even better than another dark photo of an owl anyway.

As I walked the park this morning with our new worker, we saw some Turkeys near the top of the walkway to the spring. I believe it is the same group that I have been seeing often. It is a group of a few mothers and their offspring. They stay together as a group until the young are old enough to fend for themselves. Its getting harder and harder to tell the adults from the juveniles. I think that this is also the group of Turkeys that were kind enough to welcome the birthday girl into the park.

On our walk down to the spring dock, I spotted this little Mantis. I have been seeing a lot of these guys lately.

Later in the morning, I took a new box to toilet paper rolls to the storage closet behind the restrooms. A butterfly caught my eye and I was considering putting the box down to take a picture of it when I saw this wasp charging at the butterfly. The butterfly repositioned itself a few times and eventually, the wasp won. It was protecting its hole. I'm sure that the butterfly was not at all interested in its hole, but there was no convincing the wasp of that. I didn't take my chances on getting too close to the wasp myself. Thank you zoom lens!

By the mid afternoon, I was done with everything that I needed to do for the park. Our new worker had completed the tasks that I asked him to do and I gave him some information about the park to read so that he will be better able to answer visitor questions. I was bouncing back and forth between my office and the group in the park, checking the phone messages and responding to e-mails that were coming in as well as enjoying a very tasty, park-grilled lunch. When my evening relief came in and the birthday group was headed down to the spring for a swim, I changed into my swimsuit also and brought my scrub brush down to the spring. Now that the water is getting lower, I can reach all of the steps that go from the dock to the water. I scrubbed a lot of the algae off of the steps to decrease their slipperiness. The algae is a tough competitor though, and I couldn't get it all. While I had my face underwater, scrubbing, a light rain started. We were all getting concerned about cameras and cell phones, so people started packing up. I took one more quick swim around because I liked seeing the raindrops from underwater. It was so pretty and peaceful just watching the rain fall from under there.

On one trip up the walkway after the drizzle had begun, I saw this little Coontie collecting water droplets.

The rest of the afternoon was nice. I told the birthday girl that I would post her photo if she jumped into the spring wearing her bright pink birthday tutu. She was all for it, but unfortunately it just didn't happen. Maybe next year, Sharon.