Up into the hills

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.

Up into the hills

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.