This flowering cherry tree was planted just yesterday.  The cottonwood stump looming in the background was cut down on 12 February.  Wouldn’t it be a little intimidating to stand next to that reminder of greatness?  Doesn’t it seem like a harbinger of doom?  Fortunately, they plan to remove the stump soon.

I continue to mourn the loss of that big tree and feel sad for the displaced birds and squirrels.  How long will it take for the leaves of that flowering cherry to rustle in the breeze and sing me back to sleep when I awaken in the night?

Still, it’s a welcome addition to the ‘hood…now GROW!

I walked twice today…twice!  Getting back into the swing of things after a long winter’s gap.  It’s not that I never walked during the colder months, but it was much more difficult to motivate myself.   Now, though, the weather is perfect.

Along my usual route this morning, I came upon a grocery cart.  It was sitting  along the sidewalk on a back street.  As soon as I spied it, I remembered having first seen it months ago.  In all that time, no one had returned it to where it belonged.

Why would that be?  Someone must have pushed from the store that owned it.  Perhaps it was someone who needed it to get home but couldn’t make the return trip?  Or maybe it was hooligans that rattled that thing a mile and then just left it lie?  Or maybe someone just didn’t feel like taking it back?  I don’t know.

As a witness now to that cart sitting in the wrong place for such a long time, I feel partly responsible for it.  I mean it says the name of the store it came from right on the handle, so I could return it either by walking it back or by putting in the trunk of the car.  Why should I just leave it on the street?  Would it be that much of a hassle and take that much of my time?

What else is community responsibility but acting on something that needs to be done when you see it?  I often think I should carry a garbage bag when I walk to pick up the considerable litter that lines the street, especially after one of our windstorms.  Sometimes I find an article of clothing or some accessory lying in the grass and think I should try to find the owner.  I do at times pull the errant weed but I didn’t plant flowers in the sidewalk gaps yawning in anticipation last year.

I don’t seem to take action very often.  The diffusion of responsibility is great in a neighborhood.  It seems that we would more likely to take action when something is for intents and purposes “in our own backyard,” doesn’t it?

What thoughts do you have about doing what you see needs to be done?  Why do we or don’t we act?

I’m all ears…

When I was young and the snow would hang around, folks would it say it was “waiting for more.”  And it might be true, I suppose.  Perhaps some climatological circumstances that keep the snow from melting on the ground (could it be cold ground temperatures?), might, in fact, be indicators that more snow is possible.  It might be.

And so as I walked around yesterday, the fourth day of wonderful weather of balmy temperatures following the wet snow dump of last weekend, I had to wonder about the small dirty snow mounds that I saw.  Are they waiting for more, as if there are reinforcements on the way?  Or are they just trying to avoid the inevitable but not wanting to change?  Or are they sad that they are still solid wishing that they, like all of their snowflake friends before them, would transform into something new and different, water?

Would it be possible to listen to the snow?  Or is that just going too far?  What do you think?

This afternoon it was all about shades of green out in the world.  Wow!

This is the first of two birds in a twenty-four hour period to crash into our deck.  What’s going on all of a sudden?  Both eventually flew off of the their own accord…thankfully.

When I left the house today to walk, I was in a huff.  Throughout the day, I made several careless errors on documents that I sent out to others and when I considered them as a group, I was feeling pretty bad about myself.  How could I have made those mistakes?  (One of them I still sort of feel like was a technical glitch, but in reality I can’t imagine how the computer could err without a contribution from me.)  Anyway, negative emotions were rampant.

And you know what?  My walk was much less satisfying than usual.  I passed half a lap of my route before I could see anything to look at all and then a quarter of a lap before I could see anything other than the grunge…trash in the gutters, brown grass, weeds, bird poop on the sidewalk.  It wasn’t until I was almost home that I even noticed the buds on the trees, the daffodils in yards, and the clear skies over the Foothills.

By that time I was asking myself if it was doing me or anyone else any good carrying those negative feelings around…of course, I answered no, but replied how difficult it is to drop them.  But, I tried, and by the time I returned home I was feeling better.

Funny how a walk outside can clear the mind…and the emotions.  I’m going to try to hold onto this peace I found.  It feels a lot better than what I was feeling before.

My, oh my, spring is coming!

It felt good to get out in the fresh air late yesterday afternoon as I had spent most of the day at my writing desk.  The sun had already sunk below the Foothills so the temperatures had fallen quite a bit from the moderate high of the day.  A slight breeze blew making me increasingly grateful for my ear muffs.  Snow still lay on the ground with the sidewalks mostly clear.  I gazed over the hill to the homogeneously white cow pasture and the thought crossed my mind again about whether cows are surprised when the grass disappears and reappears miraculously.

I walked at a brisk pace until I realized that quite a few icy patches remained, hardened and glassy ready to resist the grabbing rubber soles of my shoes and leave me supine gazing up into the darkening sky.  So I slowed a bit and picked my way more carefully, looking down instead of up…not the way I prefer to travel.  Was it a message, a metaphor for life?

And then I turned the last corner toward home to see an almost full moon in a clear mauve sky with a stripe of turquoise at the horizon.  My feet stood on dry ground and I felt joyful.

A great gaggle of geese is hanging around our neighborhood.  They graze on the grass of the school fields, around the park, and even in the median strip.  It’s amazing to watch them stroll across the streets with cars jammed up waiting for the long line to pass.

The geese perceive no barriers at the curb; to them, the terrain may change but the concrete and asphalt are just surfaces to be passed over to reach the next grassy knoll.  Not so for the drivers that toot and honk hoping to speed them up; they want those beasts to honor their byways.  “Hurry up!” they blare while impatiently creeping up on the flock.  The geese never even turn to look. They don’t seem to see or to hear the pressure cookers idling in the streets.

I love it that something slows down the traffic.  Drivers won’t yield to the students, but they have to give ground to the geese. Maybe it’s the feathers…

Windswept.  After fierce winds screeched through the Foothills last night, the detritus of countless porches, patios and driveways lay strewn across the lawns.  Chairs were upside down.  Grill lids lay yards from their rests.  Plants had been pulled from their pots.  Building materials sat far from all projects.  Mayhem.

But even with all of that, the most remarkable thing was that most of the world looked unaffected.  The houses still stood with their roofs and windows intact.  Cars sat without tree limbs poking from the windshields.  Small animals and children were safe indoors.

So, the wind came and shook things up, but once again, the world has righted itself.

On my walk today I came upon two things that surprised me. One was a pair of shoes, perfectly good just lying in the grass beside the sidewalk; the other was a full glass of water sitting atop an electrical box next to the sidewalk.

What could have led to these things being left as they were? Was someone suddenly struck by the urge to go barefoot such that he shed his shoes and ran on? The shoes didn’t appear to have been fouled in any way, say by having stepping in dog doo. There were no socks. We can only speculate…

And the glass of water, well, I don’t know either. It looked like a clean glass taken straight from someone’s kitchen, though none were close by. Cool, refreshing and inviting, I can imagine it looking like a treasure to some hot and thirsty soul on a different day. Again, we can only speculate…

Isn’t it fun to wonder just why things might be out of place?

Two words from my walk: contrails and cows.

I looked up at the sky towards the Foothills and saw six white feathery lines marking where jets had passed. Falsely they appeared to come right out of the mountain like steam from a volcano. I wondered what the sky would look like if each plane that flew left a line in the sky. Immediately, those maps that mark the trajectories of airlines in the onboard flight magazines came to mind. How lucky we are that the sky isn’t littered with permanent marks from each airplane.

As I looked skyward, my nose picked up a familiar scent: cow. I scanned the field below me and found the cows have returned to the ranch just over the hill from my walking trail. All summer they were off on some distant acreage feasting on grasses of unknown delights. Now they have come home for the winter where the rancher can more easily subsidize their diet when the snows come and the ground is covered.

Then, as my mind wandered, my two thoughts merged and I wondered what the field would look like if the trajectory of each cow moving around the pasture remained as a residual line in the air.

I’m glad that history doesn’t leave a visible trace of either cows or contrails.