Discovering DeCoursey Park

After visiting Alison and Windmill Nursery, I decided to come home by way of the sweet town of Puyallup. Much more pleasant than the freeway at rush hour!  Puyallup, the old part of town in the valley, is home to some cool old homes including a victioran mansion that is open to the public.   Anyway, there are lots of neatly kept gardens like this one.

Enough  taking pictures from the moving car.  Time to get to this park that my pal Vicki told me about.   Although I'd been to the much larger Clark's Creek Park  nearby, Decoursey was a new experience for me.  Nice parking lot, lawns, picnic areas, sports courts, big toy, park  stuff.  Rhododendrons still look exotic and wonderful to me no matter how common and gaudy they may be here.

Spring brings out some of the brightest colors in the paint box!

And some more subtle ones as well. 

One of the nicest features of the park, in my opinion, is the trail around a little lake and traveling by part of a creek. 

How wonderful it would be to live across the creek from the park!

Hard choice, enclosure of your back garden for privacy or view of the creek and park beyond. 

Having a watch cow must be a compromise that works for these folks. 

Catching my nose before my eye was the scent of this Rosa rugosa. 

One of the few roses that would grow in my Alaska garden, we called them Sitka roses for some reason.  Perhaps they were brought to Sitka, the former capital of Russian America, by the Russian people and were propagated from those original bushes.  It's a fun theory.  (You'll recall that the U.S. bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867  for 7.2 million dollars.)

There were some duck doing fun duck things on the lake.  Something was jumping out of the water repeatedly and I didn't know if the fish were jumping or frogs were dancing around.

Part of the lake was covered with downy white fluff courtesy of the cottonwood trees and the maturing willow blossoms.  It makes it hard to see momma duck and all of her ducklings which were adorable.  This drake was very protective and chased off other ducks that came too close to the brood.

Spring is in full swing now and the unusual warmth (85 F) felt wonderful.  Glad I took some time to soak it in before the cold rains started again just a couple days later.

As the sun got lower in the sky, it was time to head home for the night.  

What a fun place for a family picnic or a solitary stroll around the lake.  Hope you enjoyed coming along!