Springtime Smiles

I love living in Minnesota...heck I just love living in the northern part of the U.S.  I think I could get 'planted' about anywhere in the northern part of this country and be happy even if I might have a tendency to complain and whine a bit when the temps get below 0 and the wind chills bump it even colder into the -25 to -35 degrees below 0 range. 

But there's just something about the diversity of the seasons that I like.  Not just because that's all I know as I lived in Virginia & Tennessee for a couple of years and  there just didn't seem enough of a contrast...plus the fact that I seemed forever sick in the wintertime there.

Springtime is a wondrous part of the year to me.  It's a rebirth after such a cold, long winter and one finds themselves smiling when a sight of spring happens upon them.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the MN Arboretum going around the three mile drive there and I was looking for some of those sights...and I wasn't disappointed.  About halfway around the loop I spied a family of Canada geese out for a stroll and it was a perfect photo op time.

The family seemed to not have a care in the world and kept coming down the path towards me with their brood of six goslings.  The goslings were so cute and you could actually see different personalities in each of them...the 'mommy hugger' which wouldn't let its mom out of sight to 'junior' who had to be shooshed back into line as he wandered away too busy exploring his world to remember to keep up and in line with the rest of the family.

Neither parent gave me more than a second look as they strutted by with their brood though I know that if I had gotten in between them and their brood it wouldn't have been pretty and I would have been running away.  All it took was a warning hiss from one of them to know that you were indeed encroaching on their brood.  After been chased down by an uncle's gander as a kid I did not want a reenactment of that horrifying experience...once was definitely enough!!

I don't know how one could not smile seeing a parade of babies passing them by on a lovely spring day.  Heck...we take our babies seriously here in Minnesota...after all where else can a family of geese bring rush hour to a dead standstill when they decide to take their brood across a road.  Yup... gotta love springtime, babies and traffic jams!!

Now...wherever you are...have a great day!!