Wesley Hill Reserve

After we left the Cummings Nature Center, we decided that we were ready for a little more hiking.  I was still smarting a little over a remark that the receptionist at Cummings had made about me not being able to handle difficult trails.  I'm fat.  But, I do exercise, and I walk or garden most days of the week.  I may not be the fastest walker, but, as long as I have my trusty trekking poles and stop and really look at what I'm walking past once in a while, I can usually get along quite well.  She may have been right, I just didn't like the way she put it.

Anyway, we went right up the road to the Wesley Hill Reserve, and headed down the trail.  What a beautiful woods this is.  I have never seen a place where the woods are so thick, yet enough sun gets through that the ground is covered with grass.

The trail lead down to a small pond.  This was a totally different kind of pond than the Beaver Pond at Cummings.  It was very shallow, and didn't have any of the lily pads that were so prevalent there.  You could see fish swimming in the shallows, and, though we didn't do it, I wondered how many people had dabbled their toes in the clear water.

It's surrounded by an open meadow.  I could just imagine a pioneer building a cabin in that meadow, near to water and open, level land to grow his crops.

There were different flowers here.
Flat-topped Aster

Common burdock blooms in a very lovely shade of pinkish-purple.

Some with bees.

And, this flower, that I'm hoping for help in identifying.  It looks like it's past its blooming prime, but the perfectly round shape of the head that holds lots of individual flowers is quite fascinating.

It was while we were at the pond, however, that I began to notice a very ominous buzzing around me.  Soon, I felt a sharp pain between my shoulder blades.  I turned around and asked my companion what was there.  She quickly brushed off one of those enormous horse flies.  Not the greenies, the ones that look like B-52 bombers.  Man, their bites hurt!  They focused on me, probably because the backpack that I had carried at Cummings, but left behind in the car at Wesley, had left my back wet with sweat.  Before we got out of there, I got bit two more times.  When I got home, I saw that I had three large welts on my back.  But, thankfully, by the next morning, they were gone, with none of the itching involved with the bites of some of the smaller bugs.  Still, their bite is not something that I want to experience again.

Still, it was a lovely walk.  I'm glad I went, and we plan to go back again, in the Fall, when the migrating birds fill the woods.