Day #548 Pen Women Nature Garden at Stone Mountain

Yesterday I spent several relaxing hours at the Pen Women Nature Garden, which is nestled up against the base of the monolithic Stone Mountain, a few miles outside of Atlanta.

Monolith comes from two words that mean one (mono) and stone (lith). And one big stone it certainly is.

A year or so ago, I blogged about a hike I took around the base of Stone Mountain (just 2 weeks before I picked up my bees). This visit was much more relaxing. If you look at that blog post, you’ll see how few leaves there were on the trees at the time. Now, 53 weeks later, you can see what an early spring we’ve had this year--so much so, that you can’t see much of the mountain in these photos.

 The April meeting of the National League of American Pen Women/Atlanta Branch is always held at our nature garden.  There, stepping stones (each with the name of a Pen Women member) attest to the highly-motivated writers, artists, and musicians who have belonged to our branch over the years. The garden was established in 1961 - and we had our 50-year celebration last year.

This year I took dozens of photos, but will share only a few. Here’s the start of the winding trail down to the garden from the parking area.

A bend in the trail:

I took a picture of a luscious patch of a native plant that grows alongside the trail and provides fruit for the birds, but decided not to put that photo on here. 


After all, it's toxicodendron radicans (Other wise known as poison ivy. Don’t go walking off the path!)

First part of the garden, just across a little bridge

A bend in the path

My stone

A nearby tree

BEEattitude for Day #548:

       Blessed are those who plan beautiful places for the future, for they shall be praised by their descendants.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart