0008: My Maltese

This is my pup, she will be two on Sunday and is a source of endless smiles and laughter for me. Aside from being beautiful :-), she has a great demeanor, is very, very curious and quite fit, she can easily walk 3 miles with no problem. Her walks are her time, she can smell all the fire hydrants, all the power poles, all the bushes, etc that she wants. She also loves anything that moves - from leaves caught up in the wind to other people and all dogs - big and small. She is sweet and hardly barks so she tends to get a lot of hellos and pats on the head. Being quite the little explorer, she notices things that I would probably never see. And when she realizes that I haven't seen what she has spotted, she stops, looks at me then at the subject matter until she senses a reaction, then she moves on. It makes me smile every time she feels she has to make me stop and enjoy the wonders of her (our) world...

Below are a few shots from this morning's walk - some were shots that she pointed out first - like the lizard... others were shots that I took as I waited for her to satisfy her investigative urges...

Bougainvillea, are all over S. Florida - The bright colors are always an attention grabber but I don't think I'd ever noticed these precious little white flowers... 

Did you know that Bougainvillea glabra is native to South America? The plant was classified by Europeans in Brazil, in 1768 - by Philibert Commerçon, a French botanist accompanying French Navy admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. The actual flower of the plant - which I'd never really noticed until today - is small and generally white, but each cluster of three flowers is surrounded by three or six 'bracts' with the bright colors associated with the plant, including pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white, or yellow. Bougainvillea is sometimes referred to as "paper flower" because the bracts are thin and papery. (Another tidbit from Wikipedia :-)

Bees enjoying the jasmine in my front yard...

It's rare that I get this close to a busy bee so I just had to share this cool picture from this morning.

A lizard of some sort? Is he on defense or just flirting?

Tree Trunk - Is it me or do you see a little cuddly animal smiling back at us?? Or are my eyes playing tricks? Oh well, I welcome this type of visual trickery...

So that was our walk today, as nice as any other day but special because I was actually noticing and embracing the beauty around me.