Walks in the Park with a Weirdo

There's a park near me that I've started going to this year quite regularly; I took my niece and nephew a few times when they were visiting, and sometimes I go by myself, but most of the time I go with my dear friend & housemate Nasu-pie (who does not like being in photos very often). Anyway, to get to the park I walk along a main road and there's another entrance that leads to a dual carriageway, but once inside it's such a peaceful and lovely place! 

 

There are occasionally people listening to music and hanging around, but for the most part it is generally just people walking their dogs or going for a run.

The "hangout" point

One really great thing about the park is that even though it has paths running through some areas of it, it's largely been left to grow as it is. That means that there are all sorts of wild flowers, mushrooms, and berries,  growing there some of which, like the blackberries, are edible.

There's also an abundance of wildlife in the area, with various birds, - magpies are always hopping their merry way along the path it seems! - insects, arachnids, mammals, and molluscs all co-existing happily within this green space.

An elegant grasshopper...

...decided to hitch a ride on my nephew.

On another day, Nasu spotted a beautiful little fox,.
It stood and stared at us for at least five minutes before it left!

As well as the wildlife, there are some unusual little areas, such as this "secret" entrance into the woods...

And the rusted chimney (?) that looks like a llama sculpture covered in ivy:

If anyone knows what this actually is, please let me know!

I usually don't stay long enough to see what the park is like after dark, but yesterday, Nasu and I stayed until it got dark, and it was just as beautiful!

Yo-hoo~
One Nasu hand trapped on camera!

The pose of the evening: "The Flamingo".
I like the way that it looks as though I've just thrown a match
and set the houses on fire because of the mist/smoke
& street lamps in the background, haha.

"The Delinquent Flamingo"
No. I have no idea why either.

Whilst walking around in the waning light, it was harder to avoid the broken glass from the bottles that people had discarded. To be honest even when it wasn't dark it must have been difficult to avoid for some animals, children, or just people who didn't see it there due to some of the glass being somewhat obscured by the grass and gravel. 

There is a rubbish bin in the park, and it's not that far from where all the broken glass was (or even from where the majority of the litter in the park was for that matter), so it was somewhat sad that people couldn't be bothered to walk a few metres to put something in the trash (then again, it's possible that they were too drunk at that point in the case of the glass bottles). 

Anyway! I'm not going to judge anyone here, because for all I know the people dropping the litter were having the worst day of their life and walking to the bin just was not one of their priorities or even in their thoughts. Therefore, rather than focusing on them, I decided to do something about it instead. So Nasu and I went back today with some thick gardening gloves and a couple of black bin liners and Nasu helped me look for bits of rubbish in the park and I picked it up. Then at the end I picked up the broken glass too.

Do I not look beautiful with my black sack? Haha :D

There was a massive black sack full at the end, and I'm sure more will appear even by tomorrow (indeed, more had appeared by the time we got back to where we started), but at least it's something!