The gift of an afternoon off

I'm not sure which came first - my love of the name "Black-eyed Susan" or my love of the flower itself.

On a recent afternoon, I took advantage of a network outage at work to just enjoy the summer heat with a walk around Manito Park. There's something about walking around a park - or anywhere - by myself that makes my senses all the more heightened and my mind all the more curious. For instance, in the butterfly garden, I spent a good long time trying to figure out what inspired this mathematical equation, etched in the park bench. Thoughts?

And then I can never end a visit without going to the dahlia section. Man, I love these things. The petals are sometimes so tubular, and long and floppy, mangy even, it's impossible for me to look at them without mentally morphing them into a lion's head, like in Alice In Wonderland. And then, there are dahlias like these, that baffle you as to how they could belong in the same family. Beautiful.