Spring.

Spring has officially bounced full-force into Edinburgh. You can't find a park without flowers or trees blooming, there's a warm breeze in the air and the winter jacket is packed away for good... or at least until next winter.
Today when I was walking home from work, I took a detour from my usual route and walked through Holyrood park, next to Arthur's Seat. The sun was hiding behind a few clouds in the bluish-grey sky before getting ready to call it a day. It was chilly, but not unbearably so.
Some teenagers a bit behind me were kicking around a soccer ball. One of the boys kicked it over the Queen's palace walls as his friend yelled at him angrily. The kid climbed up the stone wall into the Queen's gardens, disappeared for a few moments and quickly followed a flying soccer ball back over the wall. A few people were looking in curiosity at the scene and he raised up his arms and yelled out in a thick Scottish accent,"It's okay, I used to work for the Queen!".
The air smelled like spring. If I had shut my eyes, I could have very well been in Quarry Park; back when I was 7 years old with my new blue Rawlings baseball glove that I had gotten for my birthday, daydreaming out in left field. Coincidentally, there was a group of people playing baseball in the park which is something I haven't seen much of since coming to the UK. Lots of football, yes. A lot of rugby happening. Cricket. But seeing a group of friends playing a game of baseball made my heart twinge a bit for springtime in Stonewall as a child, when I would spend Tuesday nights at baseball practice and Dad would take me for ice cream at The Kiln afterwards when Sangsters still owned it and it was good. Crunching of gravel, smell of grass and lilacs, and bright teal uniforms.
It's nice to have green spaces nearby that remind me of home.