Little nature explorer

Today Ima and a family friend took HG out to a local nature reserve and archaeological site. She hasn't been there for many months, and she seemed to be exploring it as though for the first time, pointing out interesting looking flowers and plants she didn't recognise, picking up stones and leaves and running along wide-eyed in the open areas, enjoying the feeling of being in the open countryside.

While HG is a pretty fast runner and walker in her own right, she does usually realise that she needs to hold someone's hand while she is out, and if she can hold two adults' hands, then she is even more pleased. It is just as well because when she goes on strike and tries to run too much ahead she sometimes comes a cropper, on this walk she fortunately just avoided running straight into a muddy patch on the path, though overall she was very good, keeping to the trail close to Ima and staying out of mischief.

One of her new words in recent weeks is cactus, and she got excited with each Sabra cactus she saw, savouring the word and seeing the real thing that looked just like the pictures in one of her books.

Another favourite of hers was the jujube tree (biblical sheizaf, sceintific: zizphus spina christi), whose little edible fruits, known locally as dom, look just like miniature apples. The trees were covered with fruit
attracted her attention right away, and she picked up a few from the ground and gave them to Ima saying "apple?", but fortunately remembering that she is not allowed to eat food from the floor or from strange plants... There is a lovely spot with a bunch under one of the larger trees and HG spent quite some time playing on the bench, inspecing the fallen fruit and the texture of the wooden seat and just studying the impressive gold and green canopy of the tree.