Wendesday Walk is a cool contest by 
Today I'm going to introduce you to my closest neighborhood park, O'Leary Park.
One of the things that I love about living in Minnesota is that "my closest neighborhood park" is meaningful. This is the one that's three blocks in one direction, rather than the one that's seven blocks in the other direction, or any of the twelve or so that I walk to fairly regularly.
I walk a lot; I can generally get a couple of hours of work done after I wake up, but after that if I don't get up and move my body around I find myself sitting around playing video games the rest of the day. Most days I walk between two and six miles, but I've been keeping it shorter this week after falling down some stairs on Sunday, to give my body some time to recover. Also, it's pretty hot here.
On the side closest to me O'Leary Park is nicely landscaped with a playground on the top of the hill. It's usually full of kids in the summer, and I was surprised to find it empty today. Farther in there's a bridge that crosses a narrow spot in O'Leary Lake and a wooded area.
This time of year the lake is full up with duckweed. Our neighborhood's name is Duckwood, but sometimes we call it Duckweed in the summer. No ducks today, but I regularly see mallards and mergansers here, as well as the occasional coot. I've also seen painted and snapping turtles, great blue herons, and a red-tailed hawk in the park. (And Canada geese. So many Canada geese.)
On the other side of the bridge is this art bench, which the city put up last year. Due to a lot of community effort by some of my friends, the city finally got itself a public art plan a few years ago, and this bench is one of the first results of that. I'm not sure that I'm terribly fond of the canoe-and-chainlink-fence combination but it works ok and it's distinctive.
After the bench there's a little wooded path that diverges to the left, and runs along the edge of the lake. This is a peaceful little spot where I like to go when I just need some quiet and some trees. Even though it's in this middle of a developed suburb, it's pretty calm. The lake on that side is pretty full of weeds, too, as you can see below.
It's just a short little walk but I like it; it's nice to be able to just get out for half an hour or so on days like today when that's about all I can manage. As the summer goes on I'll show you some of the places farther afield.
