As I go on my walks, several discrete things catch my attention, and if I have the MLC with me, so much the better!

One of the things,in American comics, that I grew up reading, was the much-beloved Ice-Cream Truck: However, my American son-in-law says, this is a fake ice-cream truck! "What?" I wondered. "Is the truck selling fake ice-cream?" No....he says his childhood is bound up with the kind of milk floats that have one side opening up into a window...NOT these kind of converted mini-vans at all! So what, to me, is a typical piece of Americana, is not so to an American! Last weekend D went to look at a car (he's a Saab fanatic, and a Saab was being sold) and the people who own it live in this beautiful-looking old house: The house dates from 1891, and I must say, the owners are carrying out repairs and additions (making a concrete front path into a crazy-paving path set with stones found on their back lot, and putting in a picket fence around the property instead of a chain-link one) that are in keeping with the house. More power to them! On the bird walk, I was very intrigued to see two jet planes with identical flight paths, one almost behind the other (and even the altitudes of the planes didn't seem different enough for safety): As the wind moved the contrails about, I got this lovely pic: Also on the bird walk, I liked seeing these seed-pods: Chris Ferree told me it was a kind of Milkweed, which bursts and brings forth the seeds on their cotton fluff, to be dispersed by the wind. (much like the jet contrails above!) From De Baliviere, this tourist bus, got up to look like the historic St.Louis trolley was making its rounds: It was a beautiful piece of (fake) American history :)

Now you know how my eye, and my observation, wanders without let and hindrance, as I walk!…and when I return home, sometimes I find surprises in packages….

She makes a nice Jill-in-the-Box, doesn’t she!