Flower Walks

Natalie's new obsession is FLOWERS. She can't get enough of them...literally. We take walks around our neighborhood almost every day and she needs to stop and pick every kind of flower she comes across. By the time we're on our way home she has a small, colorful bouquet in her stroller tray.

This sweet little Arizonan is perfectly content with the limited amount of desert flowers (all from shrubs)that she knows. If she only knew...the yard we lived in this time last year boasted 21 different azaleas, rhododendrons taller than her mother, 2 gorgeous lilac bushes and her very own magnolia tree. Excuse me while I pause to miss Asheville blooming!

Back to the walks. She's learned her colors...not because she's necessarily all that interested in learning colors (I've been quizzing her with paint chips for months and made little progress), but because it makes it much easier to make "picking requests" from the comfort of her stroller as we pass a blossom she must have. "I want an orwange one, Mommy", " I want a purhpul one, Daddy". "I want a wed one!". She points, we pick. That is until she gets out of her stroller and insists on picking herself. We have picking protocol...no picking flowers that people planted or that involve trespassing. We do have to change our routes every few days or else it's only a matter of time before we encounter a gardener who figures out why her flowering shrub isn't pushing the buds this year!

The Picktator from her throne.

She plays the petals right off these flowers.