Morning in Prospect Park & the Children's Garden

New York City was graced with southern visitors this weekend, so we did our best to show them southern hospitality in subtropical Brooklyn. Yes, it was a warm day, but that didn't stop us running around Prospect Park. The living playgrounds (i.e., trees) were quite popular.

It's important to be familiar with your family tree:

(I think Simon's facial expression may reflect an instruction such as "Keep your hands off your brother.")

We saw two turtles today. I raced this one. I was gaining on him when he suddenly made a break for the water's edge and flung himself in. So unfair -- he was already wearing his swimsuit, while I didn't even bring one.

In this scene, I liked the blue on the butterfly's wings. Steph liked the cool spiral whorls on the flowers (you have to know to look for them):

I tried several times to capture Simon and Steph on the carousel, but I kept getting shots of some random blurry child in bright pink. Sigh. Meanwhile, Stephen acquainted himself with one of the city's interactive art exhibits. Rumor has it there are 24 of them - so far, I've tracked down 4 (two in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, one in Staten Island):

This year's fashionable tree-climbers are wearing polka dots. Hooray for skorts!

This struck me as a hobbit-like pose and expression -- or maybe I'm thinking really of the tree elves:

After some boating and netting, we stopped into the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (of course!). I only had time for the children's garden, but that was a lot of fun. Half a dozen kids were really taken with a manually operated waterfall made of a series of unconnected moveable troughs. They were all running around experimenting with the system. Soon one young girl took command of the situation, busying herself with the important business of filling the bucket at the end of the waterfall and directing her new-found minions variously to carry the bucket up to the top and replenish the waterfall, or bring her a second bucket for ease of filling, or to redirect the troughs so the water would pour properly from one to the next. There's nothing quite like having a common purpose - Stephen quickly got dragooned into the effort.

In keeping with the LotR theme, I was going to shout "Attercop, attercop, can't catch me!" on seeing this critter, but didn't want to rile him up since he was looking in a different direction to begin with:

It was a wonderful visit, and a nice jolt of Vitamin Z (zaniness). Try as I might to be silly and carefree, I have to admit that Vitamin Z is available in undiluted form solely in the presence of small children. (That is, it works kind of like Vitamin D, I guess, which requires the presence of sunlight.) I think I'm going to adopt Stephen and Simon as my honorary nephews.