Walking is the Cure

I've been walking dawns for about a year now. It's hard sometimes to get up and meet my neighbor at 6:15 every (week) day, but watching the city wake up is worth it.Here's a glimpse of Atlanta from the bridge on Highland Ave. in Old Fourth Ward.

And here's the first peony! Spring is long and turbulent this year, but that's exactly how I like it. I'm glad I snapped this on Tuesday because after last night's severe storms the blossom was as over as an unloved heart.

I happen to like graffitti. This poem was stenciled onto the Freedom Path near Little Five Points (or, as some of us insist on saying, Petit Cinq Pointe)

Spring Matures Fast Around Here

I miss my garden. I even miss my little balcony garden. Back in early 2001, when I fell in love with the view from the 9th floor and bought, without a second thought, a condo in a downtown highrise, it was with the idea that I would sell in three years...or even less. After all, hadn't the previous condo (a flat in a unique post WWII building) appreciated 25% in less than two years? Alas, we know that I will likely be in Buttermilk Bottom for the rest of my life, or until the neighborhood has improved so much I won't want to move, or until, like the Irish Knuckle, I don't have the strength to live without an elevator.

While the wide sky view I enjoy is lovely, it's no compensation for a garden. So now I walk. I walk every morning from 6-7:30, literally greeting the dawn. And, thanks to a drunken promise made two months ago, I walk for the cure. My training for this fall's Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure includes long walks (hours and miles) and during this time I have been priviledged to watch one of this city's prettiest Springs unfold beneath my feet and under my nose.