Making time every day to get out and play is essential to my physical and mental well-being. And while I’m all for hitting epic trails as often as possible, a dose of nearby nature does the trick most days.

1. Gardening

In Calgary, gardening season starts around mid-May. Thanks to abundant rain and sunshine, everything was lush, green and growing fast in June. For six days straight, I spent half the day weeding our flower beds and vegetable garden. Why so much time? We have thousands (yes, thousands!) of elm and lilac seeds sprouting in our yard this year and they needed to be pulled before the roots were fully-established.  Two things transformed what could be chore time into play time: 1) audiobooks; and 2) enjoying the early blossoms, like this lovely white Columbine flower.

2. Walking

Walking is a great way to get outside every day. With or without poles, for active transportation, exercise or enjoyment, it’s worth the effort to establish a daily walking habit. In terms of scenery and accessibility, the Three Sisters Pathway in Canmore falls about mid-way along the continuum between urban walks to the grocery store and the Lake O’Hara Alpine Circuit.

3. Geocaching

We don’t do a lot of geocaching these days, but I did find a few traditional caches early in June. The Great Trail Treasure Hunt is back, too. We missed it last year, so I’m making an effort to find at least a few of the 200 plastic “ammo cans” hidden along The Great Trail, the world’s longest recreational trail stretching from coast-to-coast.

4. Photography

We regularly get outside to practice photography – landscape, wildlife, birds, flowers, nearby nature, people enjoying the great outdoors, etc. This particular afternoon in Canmore, Mr. GeoK was practicing bird photography, using his longest lens with a new 2x teleconverter attached for even longer reach.

5. Cycling

In addition to riding the Rocky Mountain Legacy Trail three times this month, we rode up Highwood Pass. Here’s Mr GeoK near the start of the final push to the summit. It was a glorious day and we saw 5 Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep (all rams) while riding. An equally impressive wildlife highlight occurred as we were unloading our bikes at the winter gate – we saw a grizzly sow and three cubs. This bonus pic shows mom (eating dandelions) and cubs (at play).

That’s it from me this month. Head on over to PJ’s blog to view his photos for the month. At the bottom of his post you’ll find the link up to all the other participants this month.

While you’re there, please consider joining us! I treat the PBC like a low-pressure photography assignment. The theme will be posted on A ‘lil HooHaa at the beginning of July, so there’s lots of time to get five photos. The amount of accompanying text is up to you. What do you say? Are you in?