Oh so many Oemleria

Saturday morning, Rachel had a basketball game. Nicole drove her there and watched from the car. I watched from the kitchen. Rachel made one basket, but only after a foul was called away from the ball, so it was waved off. She had at least one assist, and a couple other good passes.

After they returned and we had all lunched, we headed to Discovery Park. I had thought we might see osoberry blooming in wetlands, but didn't find good guidance on the internet, and my books said it was most abundant in second growth forests under bigleaf maple, which Discovery Park is full of. As we were driving to the parking lot, I could already see it was abundant. Since the rest of the undergrowth hasn't filled in yet, the upright new leaves on the osoberry are noticeable at a distance.

We walked from the north parking lot down to the North Beach, then along the beach trail to the lighthouse and back along the Hidden Valley Trail. We spent a couple hours there in all. The elderberry and salmonberry are also leafing out, and we even saw one salmonberry that was blooming. Also several willows and some Oregon grape. We saw three bald eagles in the tree tops, a great blue heron and two turtles in a pond, and several ducks. Lydia saw crows chasing an osprey, but I only saw the crows, because of the sun.

Next we stopped to get some gelato. Nicole thought the boys wanted to play at the playground, but they wanted the one with the zipline. We drove over to Ballard to see the sea lions that have been hanging around there. We had heard them barking from Discover Park. There were six on the little breakwater, plus a seal on a nearby float. We saw one other sea lion stick its head out of the water. They seemed to be enjoying the sun.

Next stop was bubble tea in Fremont. The girls had foregone gelato in favor of that. Then Nicole dropped me and the boys off at a park in Maple Leaf that has a zipline before going on to pick up Ethiopian for dinner. We were only at the park twenty minutes or so, but it seemed to satisfy Eric's requirement. By then it was time for dinner at Paola's. We stayed there until just after nine, and then watched one episode of Demon Slayer before bed.

My left eye was bothering me during the show, and now I've found a stye under the lower eyelid. It's swollen as well. I'll keep an eye on it, as they say.

Tonight's brief French reading gave me the word rocambolesque, said of amazing adventures, after a character called Rocambole in the Nineteenth Century novels of the vicomte Ponson du Terrail. Our adventures probably don't qualify as such, but it was a fun day.