A few random notes on observations while walking:
- Glorious weather! Today and yesterday the temperature has been pushing 60, and the sky has been cloudless and brilliantly blue. Very pleasant despite a light breeze.
- Bloomers! Taiwan cherry and Japanese magnolia are blooming, and the City’s flower beds are bright with stunningly red (or coral) tulips and heart-pleasing hosts of golden daffodils, not to mention pansies in myriad hues and other colorful “filler.”
- Gardening. It’s perfect weather for yard work, and many residents are out tending their yards and gardens. In one yard I saw an old-fashioned watering can that looked as if it could have come straight from Mr. McGregor’s garden.
- Seesaw. Ah, at last we get to that—and not just seen but also heard. Along my route there is a small triangular “pocket park” that has been made into a children’s playground, with swings, slides, roundabouts, and seesaws. Today the playground was filled with children, but yesterday when I passed there were just one young mother (or nanny) with her small charge. The child was on one end of the seesaw, and the girl/woman (who would have been much too heavy to counterbalance the child) was pushing down on the other end. The seesaw squeaked audibly, and the thing that amazed me was that the sound it was making was “See, saw, see, saw” as it went up and down. Dictionaries tell me that the word “seesaw” is a reduplication of “saw,” alluding to the back-and-forth movement of sawing, but this one was definitely saying its own name.
WalkThoughts 
Hi Suzanne,
Glad the weather is improving in your part of the world. No such thing here though. Still cold and threats of snow or sleet. February has been the darkest month since observations began. We barely had 28 hours of sunshine in the whole month. First crocusses appearing, so it can’t be terribly long till spring begins.
Luc
Intriguing follow-up: My 20-month-old granddaughter says, “See-sah, see-sah,” when she’s rocking in a rocking chair. My daughter assures me she was doing this long before she saw or experienced a seesaw.