March gladness.

This morning I rolled past the local Dairy Queen while taking the car for a spin. I noticed the DQ’s marquis proclaimed “’Tis the season!” ... well maybe. That sign might have drawn a crowd for free cone day on the first day of Spring, but I’m sure the folks aren’t lining up in this downright cold weather.

I HAD planned on a jaunt to scenic Elizabeth Park in Trenton, just a 15-mile round trip from home. But, picturing that boardwalk along the Detroit River at 23 degrees, with a 13-degree wind chill and blustery 15 mph NE winds, made me quickly rethink that idea, so I headed to my favorite stomping grounds, Council Point Park, instead.

The sun was in abundance, not that it helped to warm things up, but it looked good and I gave it a 10 on my good shadow day meter. A sunny Sunday, albeit cold, but dry, so who could ask for more?

It was mighty blustery going around each bend and I went through plenty of them, as I walked three complete laps around the entire Park. Each bend in the path caused my coat hood to flip up as the wind tugged at my clothes and infiltrated my warm woolens. But, I wanted to get in some extra steps, so I walked six miles today.

There was ice in some portions of the Creek and very few ducks and geese once again. The squirrels were up and at ‘em as soon as I hit the trail. However, my hunch that the brilliant red cardinal would be ready to receive some peanuts from me proved to be wrong, though a female cardinal was in the exact same spot. Hmm - did my bright-red friend send a proxy and sleep in this morning? I tried to coax Mrs. Cardinal down to ground level with three strategically placed peanuts where I was sure she would see them. It’s just as well she remained aloof, or shy, because a fellow blogger has told me that peanuts are not good for birds as it may cause Aspergillus. I remember that term from my days as a “med-mal” secretary, so I’ll get some sunflower seeds instead to try to entice these beautiful birds for a photo op.

I didn’t take a picture of the female cardinal because her grayish-brown plumage was hardly distinguishable from the weathered tree she was sitting in. In early Spring, Mother Nature’s palette at the Park is rather blah and non-descript as you see in today’s photo above.

With the exception of a man walking his dog on the last leg of my journey, I was the only person on the perimeter path the entire time. Perhaps everyone was at services for Palm Sunday. I walked to the car and headed home. I had timed my walk to coincide with the City’s Annual Easter Egg Hunt, so I wandered over to Memorial Park where kids and their parents were milling around waiting to collect eggs. Last year Easter was in mid-April, so people were in shirtsleeves and shorts, but not today. Kids were zipped up in Winter coats, their mittened hands clutching bags or baskets to collect the colorful plastic eggs. The Easter Bunny was doing a meet-and-greet with the kids and obligingly posed for photos, probably which will now adorn many Facebook and/or Instagram accounts.

I didn’t stay for the Easter Egg hunt, as I’d been out in the cold for almost three hours and was happy to head home and to wrap my frozen fingers around a mug of coffee to warm me up. I was pretty happy about my mileage too ... as of today I have walked 151 miles in 2018. That leaves me just 900 miles left to best last year’s record of 1,050 miles walked.

I’m up for the task, as long as Mother Nature cooperates, so onward and upward!

You can catch up on my blog posts before I started blogging at Patch in August 2013 by going here: http://lindaschaubblog.net/