I was contacted on behalf of 1926 Wood Flooring with a link to a downloadable kids game called ‘Park Adventures’. It’s two sheets of a4 that contain a map of outdoor tasks that you can take outside to your nearest space and collect and learn together in the great fresh air. However, with the unpredictable cold wet and freezing weather that we have been having, I have only just got brave enough to complete this game. It’s not a game that needs to be rushed, and a sunny day like today was the perfect time to get out and dawdle with my son, admiring and examining the nature all around us. The game says it’s for 4-8 but my three year old loved that we were on a mission to find things. It asks you to look for objects such as a leaf (got destroyed on the way home), a feather (he found a manky one so we left it) and a seed (Could we find a seed? Nope. But I did explain seeds were inside berries but we’d better not touch them because they could harm us).
It was a glorious spring day and the sky was blue and we set out first to visit a friend of my father who had some magnificent snowdrops. It was her that told me of a nearby place with many more snowdrops and so our trip to the park turned into a mini adventure. We walked through unfamiliar woods dappled with sunlight from the sky above and surrounded by thousands of beautiful white flowers, all dangling their sleepy heads to remind us that spring will soon be here. My adventurer led me through the trees and prickly bramble and we were searching on the floor for a seed or a feather when I noticed something that looked like a discarded pillar. Very out of place.
Upon closer inspection I noticed it had something inscribed on it, and next to it was a slab of marble, also with an inscription. It was covered over with leaves and twigs and when I cleared them away I found this:
When I looked in more detail at the column it also seemed to be in memory of a dog, though the main inscription was very hard to read. I took a picture hoping to be able to manipulate it with gimp so that I could read it, but that has not gone very well so far. I will have to go back and take a rubbing of it – I started, but i would not have had enough paper to cover all of the words.
The sun kept shining and we measured some trees the ancient american-indian way:
Cub decided that he would like to take some pictures too! Here are his: 
So our lovely park game and a visit to a friend of my dad’s led to a wonderful afternoon of discovery and a bit of mystery too, because I’d love to go back to the pet cemetery and read the rest of the strange almost-lonely 137 year old column in the woods. Here are the rest of our pictures:
