Keeled Rat Snake

Happiness is walking slowly and breathing in the fresh cool morning air filtered under the thick canopy trees.

Our human stopped when a soft rustling was heard and immediately looked at the direction where the sound came from...

...and saw beside the path was this beautiful Keeled Rat Snake.

It was not the first time our human saw the snake and guessed that it has made its home nearby.

The next day late morning, the sun was up and hot; our human trudged home and saw many branches on the path felled by the previous evening long heavy thunder storm.

On approaching nearer, one branch suddenly raised up and disappeared to the thick undergrowth beside.

In fact, it gave our human a fright. It fled real fast and vanished before our human could even unzip the waist pouch for the cellphone.

This snake was the Black Rat Snake and lives around the area as our human has seen it farther up before.

Now our human will be extra carefull during walks.

Dealing with Wood Knot

Our human's brother replaced the wooden fence himself some time ago.
One of the wood pieces had a glaring 'unsightly' wood knot that seem a tad out of place.
Retired with a lot of time in hand, he browsed around the shops, came across this sign, immediately bought it and promptly got down to work. 
This is the result!

Do you like it?
Our human feels that instead of a dog, a wombat would be more appropriate as the wood knot looks 'squarish'. Wombats pass out 'cube poop'! 
Whatever it is, our human loves this tongue-in-cheek sign!

Perfect Circle

During the morning walk one day last week, a little voice said, "Look right!".

Our human immediately stopped, looked to the right of the path and saw this vine of perfect circle.

After having walked this path daily on weekdays for more than 10 years, our human never really notice it.

Now, the big question is, whose voice is this?

Lumbering Walk!

Facing El Niño for weeks plus the haze, a long heavy downpour one day last week was a welcome sight! Though improved slightly, the haze stayed.

Taking this opportunity, our human decided to go for the morning walk...

...and got caught in this ridiculously laughable situation.

The path changed after the downpour. Could not turn back with mud getting stuck to the shoes, our human lumbered uphill ungracefully.

And collected even more mud going downhill.

The shoes felt like it weighed a ton.

When showed these photos to our human's brother, he teasingly commented that if our human train like this daily, soon our human could walk on water like those in Chinese Kungfu movies.

When it rained a few days later though not heavy, our human chose to walk a different route.

PS: Our human will not wear those shoes to walk as the soles have started to detach.

Stray Escort

There are many stray dogs on the roadside near the path entrance to the hill top.
Neutered, most of them are fearful of humans but some are friendly to regular hikers.
Lately some strays followed and acted as escorts to our human like this one.
He, a neutered male, escorted our human from the roadside up three-quarter way to a resting point.
When our human went down, he followed closely behind.
Our human purposely walked slow so that the stray could trot in front.

At this fork lower down, our 4-legged friend decided to wait for our slow human to catch up while enjoying the view. (We are experiencing a slight haze from open burning from a neighbouring country.)
On seeing the stray totally engrossed in his thoughts, our human quietly turned and quickly went uphill again.
Soon our human heard quiet shuffling behind, turned and saw our little escort behind.
Well, what can our human do except reward it with some kibbles that were kept in an air-tight sealed bag in the haversack.
This stray never left our human's side and followed all the way down to the road.