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On my way around the big pond in my neighborhood park. I’ve posted lots of shots from this vantage point. This is the first one this year though. It has simply been too brutally cold and snowy to tempt me out here. The treadmill at the gym has been a sporadic substitute. Sometimes even getting there was too risky. However, the days are getting a tiny bit longer and yesterday there were even a few hours of sunshine. It was hard to walk through the snow on my usual path but on the wider sections, to my surprise here was a snow-blower!

A few old friends were happy to see me with my bag of seeds. The chickadees were chased off for a few moments by this little warrior, à woodpecker who would not allow sharing ftom my palm.

When I go to the gym I listen to a podcast about the Camino de Santiago “ the Wise Pilgrim” It’s about the old days, the Middle Ages, and how the pilgrims travelled, what they ate ( no energy bars then!) and the dangers ftom robbers and unscrupulous innkeepers.

I should have been one of those “ innkeepers” by now as I was to be hospitalera in Porto for the last two weeks of February. Ah, but a surgery looms. Nothing very serious but after all , one can’t let mysterious “ masses” hang around in one’s abdomen! À surgeon is lined up and I will beg, cajole, plead for an early surgery date. In the meantime more walks as my beloved ducks now have tiny rivals. They have better manners than the ducks too, one of whom was pecking at my pants leg when all the day’s seeds had been thrown down . “C’mon spill!” He seemed to say. My chickadees come and land on my hand and take ftom my palm.

Today is Ash Wednesday and unusually, the start of Ramadan too. Many people walking towards the light.