Dan Burgess introduces us to Boston's "urban wilds" - spots of land throughout the city that aim to preserve what's left of Boston from pre-European days:

... Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a day sprucing up an Urban Wild site. Puddingstone Garden is located on a small hill in Roxbury on the corner of Normandy Street and Sea Street, near the Franklin Park Zoo. This Urban Wild is named after the Roxbury Puddingstone rock formations prevalent in the park that literally look like pudding with stones sprinkled throughout. ...

Meanwhile, Fabulously Out There goes for a walk along the Chelsea River Urban Wildlife Area and finds something pretty wild, if not exactly a natural, pre-1620s vista.

On June 28th, DCR kicked off it's new Park Passport, a stamp book with stamp stations placed in 76 parks across the state (15 parks in the Boston area, including John Paul II, Castle Island, and the Southwest Corridor). Each park has a different stamp, so you have to go to all of the parks if you want to collect all of the stamps. When you complete any one of the 5 regions, you can use the completed passport at the regional office (starting August 15) to receive a t-shirt with the stamp pictures on it for that region.