We like Branch Brook Park because it’s big and close, easy and quick to get to when there isn’t much daylight left, and we were curious to see how long the line was for drive-up COVID testing at the roller rink in the park. (We counted 28 cars, but it was the end of the day, and they were gone in less than half an hour.)

What I wasn’t expecting was how colorful the park was on a hazy day in the middle of December.

Maybe for a master gardener or a landscape architect, it would be an obvious thing, but having never had my own patch of green to take responsibility for, I guess I never really thought about it. One of the first things that struck me as we began walking at the bottom of the lake was that the same plantings that had been one kind of colorful in the summer were now a different kind of colorful with their leaves and blooms off.

And all that color made a nice frame for the mallards and Canada geese sharing the lake.

Bottoms up!