Life Underfoot

By the Brickworks on the Belt Line Trail: frog in green and gold

Since I retired and since the pandemic, I have spent as much time as before - maybe more - on my feet. 

I've certainly spent more time outdoors.

When you're out walking in the spring and summer, there's less need than in winter to watch your feet. There's no snow or ice to slip and fall on. But there are still good reasons to keep an eye on the ground.

On Thursday, I crossed the Don Valley on the footbridge by Riverdale park, headed into Riverdale proper and tacked along residential streets from one pool of tree shade to another until my Fitbit told me it was time to go home. 

On the way back, I cut across the big slope that in the winter is Toronto's best toboggan hill. The city hasn't sprayed pesticides on its fields since 2004 and can't possibly irrigate, so the vegetation underfoot was a mottled mix of flattened straw-coloured drought-stricken grass, deep green prostrate knot weed and short-stemmed clover. Wild bees hovered and darted just above the half-parched clover blossoms. In the four o'clock sunlight the bees glowed gold, their hard-working wings invisible. I took pains to step around them as I crossed the field. 

When I was a little kid and my family lived in Holberg, I stepped on a bee, which stung my foot, and went crying inside for solace on the same day that my mom had banished her children to the out of doors so she could wash the floors. Housework made mom crabby. My sobbing sudden entrance did not improve her mood.  

A Note on Kamala Harris

I'm not quite sure how we skipped all the steps between "never in a million years" and where we are now, but somehow the selection of the first African-American and Indian-American woman as the vice-presidential candidate for a major American political party has been described as "safe."

JFC you dopes. This is epic! It's AMAZING! Hooray Kamala!

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The other kind of covid toes:
foot tan from five months of daily walks
in the same pair of Ecco sandals.
Also, no pedicure.