A River Runs Through This Sunday…

So, yesterday, I had what is affectionately known as MVFIRL…Meeting Virtual Friends In Real Life. OmegaMom and OmegaGranny and OmegaDad and OmegaDotter and SBird and R. and the dogs headed down about 2,500 feet to a river that always runs through the lower desert.

It was low. It was algaefied. It had interesting channels where deeper water decided to detour around the sand banks, frog eggs, guppies, Vermillion Flycatchers, a Black Phoebe, and a Chimney Swift. It was perfect for wading.

It was perfect for sharing your beachcombing finds with a very single-minded Jack Russell Terrier for whom the poet Marvell’s term “vegetable love” has certain dear associations:

Fiona-the-JRT may very well like to have a little girl around, if the little girl is curious about all manner of weeds, hair-like aquagrowth, sticks, or bottom-sand as the OmegaDotter is. I give all the credit for instilling this curiousity into said little girl to OmegaMom (and OmegaDad, of course), who is clearly raising a fearless, engaged, and thoughtful daughter. It was a pleasure to trudge through the water with her, to pat the walls of the sandcastle, to find the baby fish, to hold the yellow toadflax flowers for her.

And when we arrived back to the ranch after enjoying our 80-degree river weather, we realized that the most elusive season of the year had arrived…my test for Spring every year is whether the fruit trees have bloomed.

Yesterday, the peaches and the plums bloomed. It’s Sprung!

P.S. There are additional pics of the day at the other two bloggers’ homesites….