I just couldn’t wait for tomorrow’s daybook to share these beautiful pictures. We took the kids to our local arboretum today. We’d never been before though we’d heard about it from others and it’s very close to our apartment so I decided it was time to check it out. We’re having a warm hot streak of weather so it seemed like a good day to go outside and enjoy some nature.

This is what we’d pictured when we left our apartment. Lots of beautiful shade and interesting trees. And while we did get some of that, we got an awful lot more of this:

Or as my husband called it, “wandering about on the scorched savannah…” It was pretty hot. And the shade? There wasn’t much of that where we were walking. Maybe we were just not in the right place for what we wanted. Maybe the shade was on the other trail or something. Regardless, it was hot. My husband was none too pleased. I was a little oblivious of that though because I was hiding behind my camera on the hunt for the perfect picture. Like this:

Unfortunately this pretty little butterfly flew off before I could get  a closer shot.

The bokeh, it was my friend today. I got lots of great bokeh. Bokeh galore.

And strange prickly things.

Basically I got lucky with the camera a lot. You can only get so many bad pictures with a Nikon D40 you know.

By this time my husband was more than ready to “leaf” you could say.

Isn’t this tree branch just gnarly dudes?

Yes I definitely managed to find some beautiful little pieces of nature to capture and we will go again – but probably on a much cooler day and maybe with a bit more research and looking at a map of the whole place next time.