The water's fine for swimming.

[hannah]

I went back to the Garden for the first time in almost two months today; I'd purposefully baked brownies last night to give me a secondary motivation to bear the commute, locking myself into the act. On the whole, it went pretty well. Most people I know weren't there, but the brownies were delicious.

It's warming up ever so slightly, enough that I don't need three layers to be comfortable, just two, but the garden is still a winder delight. The recent snowfalls combined with few guests, few heat-retaining surfaces, and many areas being off-limits meant everything was still lush and gorgeous. Precise animal tracks over the snow, some indicating curiosity and hesitancy, others fear and escape. Someone gave me a few peanuts, and a chickadee landed on my fingers, took a piece, and flew off a total of three times; on its third, it looked at me. Not with a human attitude of "I know you" but with an animal feeling of "you are familiar."

I arrived later than I would have liked, and got back to Manhattan with much the same feeling. But now that I've returned, I can keep going back. I have a tendency to end things by just stopping, without good-byes or anything like that, which makes beginning again tricky at best. That said, something about this situation feels comfortable enough I'm not going to worry, and see about getting up a little earlier next week.

Comments

[karalee]

<3 I'm glad! The chickadee especially. :)

[nightdog_barks]

There were hand-tame chickadees at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, British Columbia. You could hold black-oil sunflower seeds in the palm of your hand, and they would land on your fingers and carefully pick out the sunflower seed they wanted.

They weighed next to nothing -- a tiny ball of fluff, but oh so alive. It was like a moment stolen from a fable.