Nature around the world, yet close to home

There’s no question that I’m passionate about national parks. It was my childhood trips to national parks that provided me with my appreciation of nature. As an adult, national parks have provided no end of creative inspiration.

But for most people, most of the time — myself included — it’s community parks where they get most of their time with nature. And a recent trip to Brussels, Belgium, reminded me how wondrous those local parks can be.

The other side of water lilies

It's May in the Seattle arboretum. Woodpeckers and flickers are finishing their nests in brittle trees. Mallard ducks are taking their newly hatched ducklings for their first swims. And water lilies are beginning to turn the open water into a maze of lanes.