Last weekend, Peanut had a Brownie meeting at Green Spring Gardens – a beautiful park not far from our old haunts in Alexandria. We’d been there once before – for a children’s beekeeping event organized by the park – and always meant to go back. Funny we should find ourselves driving down there after moving away from Alexandria, but it turned out it wasn’t that far away. I brought my new mirrorless camera, fully tricked out with a lens that isn’t even released to traditional retail yet (I got it direct from Nikon) and planned to drop Peanut off with her troop and then take a photography walk around the gardens.

That wasn’t to be. Peanut was having a mommymommymommy kind of day and I couldn’t leave. But it turned out the other moms were pretty much all sticking around too; we stood together in a clump discussing the kids’ COVID-19 vaccines, upcoming holiday plans, sports schedules and the like.

While Peanut worked on her letterboxing “log book,” I did sneak off to photograph the Children’s Garden, at least. We had wind in the forecast and I suspected – and was confirmed by the park employee who was leading the Brownie event – that this was probably the last weekend of fall colors before all of the leaves would be on the ground for the duration.

As the temperature started dropping, I rushed off to the car to pick up Peanut’s heavy coat. On the way back, without breaking a stride, I managed to get a few more snaps of the gardens in their fall glory.

When I got back to the Brownies, they were nearly done with their projects, and almost ready to go on a walk to search for the Green Spring Gardens’ letterbox and stamp their new logbooks. All the moms (and one dad) came too.

The girls found the Green Spring letterbox by a beautiful pond, and lined up to stamp their logbooks. What a fun event! I think we’ll definitely be seeking out other letterboxes in our area so Peanut can get more stamps in her “passport.”

As for me – I got my fall color pictures after all! Still getting to know my new camera, but I think they came out well, and I can’t wait to experiment more on other photography walks.

How is the foliage where you live? Still going strong, or is the season pretty much over?