Sunday at the zoo and in the yard

Yesterday, we went to the zoo!  Madeline enjoyed the crazy crane that tried to peck her hand through the glass.

She also, as always, enjoyed the elephants and seals.

But maybe most of all she enjoyed this monkey ball we found (from the American sweetgum tree, apparently first attested to in the west by Hernán Cortés or one of his party noting its "liquid amber").

In Madeline's other hand she's clutching a pancake, leftover from breakfast, that had been bagged and brought as a snack.

At the end of the wetlands trail (whence came the monkey ball) is the new children's zoo.  This is a creative play space full of interesting things to figure out, like a giant xylophone, and these warm slate surfaces and waterlogged paintbrushes ...

... and these colored cloths held together by clothespins and draped across a frame holding up an overturned rowboat (on which Madeline would later bump her head).

What fun!  (Head-bumping aside...)

Later, Madeline and I grilled for dinner.  While we were in the yard, we played with a tennis ball, and we found the four biggest sticks in the yard, and we ate some snacks.  Then Madeline declared this space in our cedar hedge to be her house:

She demanded that I join her there.  We looked for bugs in the stone retaining wall and the damp leaves, but we didn't find any.  We did, however, see a cardinal high up in the maple tree.