Guess who’s baaaaaack! On a long and gorgeous walk on Sunday, I found a few dandelions poking their friendly little yellow faces out of some brown grass and a few cracks in the cement sidewalks. It’s no secret that I love dandelions, and it was very cheering to see this lovely and—for bees, very important first flower of spring.

In 2015, I wrote about dandelions in one of my favourite children’s picture books of all time, Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson, with illustrations by Sydney Smith. Read the review here.

On my two-hour walk a butterfly passed amiably by, as did some sort of buzzing insect. A bee? Hope so. My 12,000+ step walk took me into the river valley, Rossdale, over the beautiful Walt Jr Bridge, and then back again. I may have picked up a bit of a wind or sun burn. By the end of it, I felt like me. I felt like this is exactly what I should be doing on a sunny Sunday. Having said that, it was tiring, and so I took a short nap under a sun beam on my couch after I got home. All in all, a fantastic afternoon.

I can’t stress enough how wonderful this walk was, simply because this time last April, there was still a lot of snow and being new to the neighbourhood, I had yet to discover some the of paths I took today. This year, the river is far more open, and yesterday, the trails were packed with people biking, walking, and even skateboarding. We deserve this after the winter we had, especially February.

1:15-3:00 pm/15C.