Up into the hills

[redbird]

This afternoon, cattitude and I went up into Inwood Hill Park for the first time this year. (We've been in the park--it's on our way to work--but only the nearby and relatively flat bits.)

It's still very early spring, but things are budding, and a few are flowering. Lots of periwinkles. One daffodil. (I'd seen daffodils in a planter downtown, but they were put there already in bloom, they didn't grow there.) A few forsythia flowers, on branches with lots of still-closed yellow buds. Bits of flower color, and some early green, including the dark green leaves of the periwinkles, under an intense blue sky. The trees are mostly still bare, or just beginning to bud: the red maples are hinting at flowers.

It was a gorgeous day for a walk, and good exercise: lots of up and down. I stopped a few times to catch my breath--my usual cardio is on a stationary bicycle in a warm gym, not actual hills with the temperature not much above freezing (though the sunshine helped). I kept lowering my hood for peripheral vision, then raising it again for warmth.

The pines that I remember the parks department planting in an empty clearing (can it have been a decade ago? easily) are reaching for the sky, several times my height by now. We saw a few holly bushes planted since we last noticed, so probably last fall.

At the end of the walk, we detoured to look for Dutchman's breeches, even though Cattitude mentioned them by noting that it was weeks too early (it was, they haven't even sprouted) and then crocuses. One gorgeous clump of bright purple flowers next to a path, and several places where the squirrels had decided, as they usually do, that the first crocuses of spring were a meal.

By the end my right foot was hurting a little, but it was fine after a bit of rest. (I think part of what was going on is that not only were we going up and down, these paths are uneven, and often sloped noticeably away from the center. (I assume this is either an artifact of the machinery, or habit on the part of the road-builders--with a 10 or 15 degree slope, you don't need to do that to avoid puddles.)

Robins are here, and grackles. Cattitude thinks he heard one red-wing blackbird, but we haven't seen any. The nuthatches and chickadees haven't gone north yet.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Isn't realy spring an encouraging time of year? Yesterday when johnpalmer and I drove over to the Oregon coast, I remarked as we drove up the low mountains of the Coast Range that it was like watching spring run backwards - every few hundred feet of elevation was like going back in time a week to an earlier stage of the season. And then coming back down, the season just rushed back at us.

[redbird]

We have a few hundred feet of elevation in that park--it's enough that the periwinkles near the bottom of the hill are significantly ahead of those at the top.

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

I'm taking Amtrak north later this morning and will probably be walking in Inwood Hill Park soon (though the weather forecast doesn't look great for my visit with Libby). The park is a lovely place.

[redbird]

Is there any chance of getting together while you're in town?

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

I'd like that. I'll get to Libby's around 3 this afternoon. I don't think we have any plans for Monday evening. Would you (and of course cattitude too) like to come over for a bit? I'll email you after I get there and see how L is feeling.

My cell phone number is 202-492-2324.

[redbird]

That sounds plausible, if I don't go to the gym after work.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Most of the time my foot's not bothering me any more - it even survived indoor climbing without so much as a twinge one evening last week - but I find uneven terrain really makes a difference. I can feel it still when I walk today, after a kilometer or two on a dirt path yesterday, and it was a fairly smooth path.

[ashbet]

Sounds really lovely!!

-- A :)