Training wheels and blossoms

My neighbours are out for their walk again. Every day, since they moved in 5 years ago, I’ve watched Dad or Mom or Grandma take the baby and the dog for a walk. First it was a stroller with one of those sturdy hooded baby seats fastened on, then it was front facing, then the walk slowed down to a halting creep as the adult hovered over a toddler who wanted to walk by herself. The other day I saw the five-year-old on a wobbly pink bike with training wheels. 

Nothing like watching a little one grow up to remind you that time is marching forward.

What never changes on these walks, however, is the stately black dog and … the cat. It’s remarkable! And it’s also quite obvious that, while the child and the dog are being taken for a walk, the mottled cat has decided to go along. It doesn’t walk with its family; it trots along behind, making side dashes here and there to check out a smell or a movement in the grass. It can, of course, because unlike the dog or even the child, it is not leashed. Not tethered in any way to anyone else in the family except, maybe, by love?

I’m tempted to think it’s just curiosity.

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The snowy apple blossoms have bloomed and faded for another year, but oh how they flourished! Even on the day our city was cloaked in smoke from the forest fires up north, the blossoms shimmered with a magical glow.

Now the lilacs are in full bloom. I love to bring a few inside for a couple of days. They fill the whole house with their joyful scent of Spring. I do so at risk, though, since The Cowboy can’t stand the smell of them. Sure enough, as soon as he walked through the door today he looked at me, alarmed. “What stinks?”

Interesting how our noses interpret things so differently from one another. What smells heavenly to one person turns another off completely. To me, there is nothing remotely sweet to the smell of sweet peas, delicately pretty though they be.

Maybe that’s why God made such a variety of blossoms, so that each of us would have at least one fragrant beauty to get the joy bubbles bobbing in our soul.

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The coolest thing I saw this week was this live stream of earth from the International Space Station. You can listen to pretty music as you circle the earth from space, in live time. Very cool. Thanks to Steven Skoczen of inkandfeet.com for passing on that info.