The dandelion path

I just had to go out on a walk this morning to take a proper picture of the lovely dandelion path I found yesterday. If I was a little girl I'd most definitely imagine that walking down that dandelion path wouldn't take you to the houses beyond but to a secret fairy realm. That's what I told my kids. I prefer keeping the magic than talking about regular disturbance, closed grass swards, colonization opportunities and ruderal species ;) Being a biologist does sort of take the magic out of nature, but luckily I have this imagination to keep me tapped in to childhood wonder. I hope I never loose that.

Our morning walk was a bit longer than I'd planned. Little miss is too busy these days for her second nap in the afternoon, so I'm trying to keep her awake for longer periods in the morning so she won't be this angry, loud little thing when I'm trying to prepare dinner. There is nothing as stressful as an angry, crying and hungry child when you're making dinner. Add to that one that wants to be held and only having two hands - I almost can't stand it. So to pass the time we went for a stroll, camera in hand.

We walked alongside the river running through our little town. I have to say that through the years I have found this town lacking in many ways. It's situated between two major cities - Stockholm and Uppsala - so there really isn't much here. But it's small, quiet and a good place to raise kids in my opinion. But now things are happening here. The town is growing and what is more to my liking is that its getting prettified. I'm a sucker for pretty. The area around the river now has this beautiful statue of a girl crouching, I have to go take a better look sometime. And wildflowers were sown here last spring and are absolutely beautiful. We come here a lot with the kids now, they love throwing pebbles in the river and waiting for ducks to fly in. Once again reminded that it's the little things in life, isn't it?

Little miss has a thing for dandelions and I picked several for her on our way back home. She did her best to copy what she has seen her brother doing, but managed to eat more seeds than actually blow them into the air. I often get this pang of guilt when I think about how different these early years are for Esther than they were for Sebastián. He was the center of the universe and I had so much time to show him things and allow him to explore. Esther, on the other hand, has been tagging along with us from day one, at first quietly observing and now noisily observing and diving into the goings on of our daily lives. But her brother makes up for what I can't show her and do with her, she copies everything he does. I can already tell that he is her hero, despite the many murder attempts between those two....

Walking to the park I came across an apple tree in bloom, breathtaking! I was lucky that it has a little visitor that I could capture on camera. 

See those loaded pollen baskets? Hard at work, this one, and not caring one bit that I was following him around with my camera. Of course bumblebees can sting, but I've never ever been stung by a bumblebee. Despite that I like to pet them when they're sleeping on some big flower. Between their head and wings, they usually just sort of lift one leg and wave it in the air, but don't seem to mind at all. I have to show that to the kids too....

Hope you also get to stop and smell the flowers today!