Usually I take a bottle of water along to Beechwood but sometimes, if the weather's not hot, I get more civilized and have a coffee break:

I was going to say I had another visitor today, but that struck me as arrogant. I expect this raccoon is the resident and I am the visitor:

I've seen several of these over the last few days:

But only one of these:

After a serious garlic mustard session I went over to look at the pond for a while. It's covered with these catkins from the mumble tree:

(Editing to add: I'm going to say those are cottonwood catkins. Apparently people do really interesting things with them.)

Suddenly I noticed something moving through the water:

I stared and stared. Muskrat? No. Beaver? No. Drifting log? No. What in the name of -- oh!

It was a turtle! Yay! While I waited, hoping it would move closer or do something photogenic, I enjoyed the antics of this downy woodpecker:

The turtle didn't do anything but poke its nose above the surface once in a while and eye me suspiciously, so I gave up, but I'll be on the lookout for it over the summer.