flora and fawn-a

ah, memorial day weekend. three days of no work. david and i drove to michigan to see his sister and her family, who just welcomed a new baby two weeks ago. we arrived friday night after the two older kids were asleep, and stayed until monday evening.

i haven’t yet asked if david’s sister and her family mind if their pictures are posted on the web, so right now i’ll just post a few that don’t include them.

first, david has a new camera. it is terrific. digital with a super-zoom lens and rapid-fire shooting ability. i’m sure there are technical terms for those things (and the myriad other features it contains), but we all know i don’t know those types of things. he had a lot of fun experimenting with it throughout the weekend, taking photos of anything and anyone that crossed his path.

second, here are a couple pictures of a fawn that took shelter under a teeny pine tree in the yard between the house and the church:

the fawn had been discovered on thursday when david’s brother-in-law, marc, was headed out to the shed to put away a few things. at that point she had not yet found the pine tree, and he almost stepped on her. good thing, too, as one of his parishioners was planning to use the riding mower to cut the grass that day. needless to say, he held off. the doe was then seen in the evening on thursday, feeding the fawn, and then left her to sleep for the night. she was still there when we arrived on friday, but was gone saturday morning. craig mowed the lawn that morning and into the early afternoon.

sure enough, the fawn was back in place saturday afternoon, though none of us saw her return. we watched her throughout the day, wondering when her mama would come back and if this was “normal” behavior for deer. david was brave enough to head outside with his camera and its fantastic zoom lens to get a closer look.

it wasn’t until sunday night that we finally saw the doe again. after cleaning up the kitchen and turning off the lights, sarah realized that the fawn wasn’t under the pine tree anymore, but that it was behind the church in the dark shade of the tall trees, being nursed by the doe. voices were lowered to whispers, binoculars were brought out, and emily, who should have been asleep two hours prior, was allowed to come out once more to see this beautiful sight. it was stunning.

the doe and her fawn disappeared into the dark after about fifteen minutes and were not seen again.

after spending time at the beach on monday and achieving a lovely sunburn, david and i headed back to marc and sarah’s to pack up and head back to chicago. we left at six, partly because we wanted to spend as much time with the family as we could, and partly to see if we could miss traffic. we did. it was great! a trip that took us six or so hours on friday took us a mere four and a half on monday. very nice.

perhaps more photos will find their way to the amoblog, but for now, this is it.

happy short work-week to all!