Spring, at last: a walk in the park

Yes, I know, the equinox isn't exactly late for this area, but we had several years of early springs, to the point where, say, the forsythia not being in bloom a few days ago seemed odd as well as disappointing.

After lunch today, cattitude and I went for a walk through Inwood Hill Park. It's a gorgeous sunny day, low 70s (21 or 22 for those of you using the modern measuring system), almost no wind. Yesterday was almost as nice, but I spent most of it indoors, working.

We went up into the hills, looking for the first bits of greenery, and enjoying some of the evergreen shrubs as well. We saw, finally, a bit of forsythia (Cattitude had seen some in bloom downtown, but I wasn't with him), and more daffodils (another local park has had them in bloom for a few days) and periwinkle, but much less of all three than we had expected/hoped. Lots of buds, though.

We also saw a garter snake, I think the first I've seen in the wild. (Cattitude remembers seeing one other in the park, but I don't think I was with him.) Just for a moment, because I found it by startling it as I walked along the path, but quite clear. We waited for a minute or two, but it didn't come out again, so we went on uphill

The less fun part was many dead trees, fallen over in last weekend's storm: the parks department crew was in the park today, taking away trunks and branches from the low-lying areas. In the hilly area, they cut through trunks that had fallen over paved paths, and cut some other bits for safety, so they wouldn't fall and hit someone in the next high wind. We lose a few trees every winter, of course, but this was worse than usual. Yes, there are plenty of saplings that have been waiting for the sunlight and room to grow, but that takes time.