I was thinking, while walking on this beautiful, sunny, albeit breezy and a tad brisk morning, that Spring might have finally settled in. While I meandered along on the first getaway weekend of the year, I was headed to my favorite mini getaway – Council Point Park. The maple seeds a/k/a “helicopters” were fluttering all around in the breeze and a few landed on my sleeves as I walked along. The birds were singing out when I passed them and as I entered the Park at the forked path, I couldn’t help but notice most of the bright-yellow dandelions had gone to seed. As I stood and surveyed the vast expanse of the Park and the tall and gangly dandelion stems with their fuzzy orbs, I thought they looked like alien lollipops. Some of those “lollipops” were nearly a foot high and listing to one side. As I walked along the perimeter path on my two-loop trip, there was dandelion dander floating all over the place. I thought if the cottonwood fibers were likewise floating around, the robins would be headed down here to grab some to pad their respective nests. Since my last trip, the grass had been mowed, and dead grass was clumped up everywhere lending an almost eerie look between the “lollipops” and brown, straw-like grass. In places where the riding mower failed to squeeze in and grab the longish grass, tall batches of blades that had already gone to seed looked like ornamental grass waving in the breeze. The flying fuzz got me thinking about what we used to call “Santa’s Whiskers” when I was a kid. They looked like Santa’s beard and we’d catch them in mid-air with cupped hands, make silly wishes and then quickly release them to send them on their way. Do you remember Santa’s Whiskers? They are pictured above if you don’t. Ahh, the good ol’ days … when nature’s delights, not electronics, captured our attention and fueled our imagination. Now, while some would say this was a “fluff piece”, I’d prefer to just think of it as still another trip down memory lane.