Hodgepodge

Linking up with Joyce for the Hodgepodge

1. Thursday is National Walk to a Park Day. Do you live close enough to a park to walk to one on Thursday? Will you? The most famous park in the world is Central Park located in NYC. Have you ever been to Central Park? What did you think? If you haven't been is this a place you'd like to see?

Technically, I live close enough to walk to a park. I will not walk to it on Thursday! The park is two miles from our house so it would be a long walk there and back plus whatever walking I'd do at the park. But definitely doable for the person in good enough physical shape to walk fairly long distances. The biggest impediment, however, in walking from my house to the park is that a decent portion of the route consists of a not unbusy road with no sidewalks and an extremely narrow shoulder along the road. Walking to this park is simply not safe due to that so I would never plan to walk there. I have driven there numerous times. It is a small, simple and pretty little park and I am grateful that it's close by! 🌳🍁🍂🌿

The view along one of the paths- late October of last year

The park consists a path in a woods that leads down to a creek. Near the start of the path is an overlook.

Part of what the overlook, well, overlooks

Of course the best part of the park on this visit was my amiable, near constant companion for eighteen years in the last year of her life that she would live at home- oh I would have walked with her anywhere! That we were in a pretty park near our home on a beautiful fall day made the afternoon stroll all the better :). 

I have been to Central Park… Abby and my sister and I went to Central Park last June. Abby and I were staying in New Jersey for a month and my sister came down from Canada to visit us for a few days. We went into the city twice when my sister was visiting (and Abby and I went on our own as well a couple of times) and one of the times, we visited Central Park. We really enjoyed what we saw though we only saw a small portion of it. 

2. Something you've done recently that turned out to be a 'walk in the park'?

Keeping with the theme of moving... and something close to walking... I am going to say my return to running... I was cleared to run at the very end of September but my heel didn’t feel normal so I planned to wait. But a few days ago, I was walking on the treadmill and I decided to run very slowly- more like a jog. Nothing hurt so I kept going. Over the next few days, I began increasing the amount that I ran. Yesterday I ran 2 1/2 miles! Slow and steady does not win an actual race (well, I guess if everyone else is slower, it wins the race but you know what I mean) but it can make you feel good about yourself when you hadn’t done that activity in over six months. 

3. Can you parallel park? Do you have to do this often where you live?

I can in the sense that I have done it. I am not particularly adept at it and pretty much always avoid doing it…My walking ability is greater than my parallel parking skills so baring being in a huge hurry, I will chose to park way further away from my destination and walk more rather than park much closer to my destination if parking entails parallel parking. Thank heavens, no, I don't have to do this often where I live. Ample free parking lots/ areas abound in my town and the towns nearby that I frequent such that parallel parking is easy to avoid :). I don't drive in cities too much and will chose to park in a parking garage when possible.  

4. The colors of fall...red, brown, russet, golden bronze, yellow, purplish red, light tan, crimson, orange, red, and scarlet. Are these colors you like to wear? Is this your season in terms of color? What about your home? Would we see these tones in your home decorating?

My wardrobe veers to the neutral so one of the colors listed that I wear a lot of is light tan. I've quite the khaki collection :). I do wear red as a holiday color in December and all four colleges that are meaningful to me (my alma mater and my kids' colleges) have red as one of their colors so I have a lot of college spirit wear with red somewhere on the item so I do wear red when I wear those clothes. 

My home isn't decorated in abundance with those tones; in the fall, I do incorporate some seasonal items with those hues. 

5. What part of history do you find most interesting? Elaborate.

I find the expansion of settlers in the United States west the most interesting. So many obstacles with few of life’s basic conveniences/ aids- no electricity, motor vehicles, antibiotics, etc. and yet they did it. They went over mountains with no paths, through rivers deep enough to drown them, wild animals out to thwart them, bugs to annoy them all while needing to obtain fresh water and food each day.   

6. Insert your own random thought here.

-Thinking of and praying for those in the path of Hurricane Milton- hoping it loses power as it approaches land and damage is minimal. 

-Thankful for Joyce for writing a moving piece on Hurricane Helene and providing links to good sites to donate money to... I am also glad that our church is donating 10% of the offering from last week to Hurricane Helene relief efforts. The church is also requesting items for church members to donate and will send those items to North Carolina.