The grass is greener

As we prepared to leave our beloved Brooklyn for our new home in Toronto, E and I often talked about how great it was going to be to have lots of open space for Cassius and Indio to run and play.

In Brooklyn, we spent many hours in Fort Greene Park, just steps from our apartment. We used to walk Cassius in the park a few times a day, I would meet up with my mommy group, and E still runs his Boot Camp classes there. It was a great place to meet friends for a picnic or a walk. I even went running there...once.

Our only complaint was that it was crowded. Being the only large-ish green space in our 'hood, we weren't the only ones who wanted to take advantage of it, especially when the weather was nice.

Now that we are in Toronto, we live close to a large park where we take Cassius for his daily walks. It's not technically an off-leash park, so we are very mindful of the other patrons in the park, though compared to Brooklyn, there are only a handful of people out at any given time. This weekend while at my parents house in the 'burbs, I took Cassius out to play in the school park nearby. It was kind of eery because I was the only person out in this vast open space in the middle of a beautiful August day. No one else was around! All I could think of was, "These people don't know what a jewel they have in their neighbourhood: a clean, safe, well-maintained park with 2 playgrounds, a soccer field, 2 baseball diamonds and enough blacktop to enjoy a game of 3-on-3, handball, or hopscotch."

Wonder what they would think if they lived in NYC where we used to clamour over everyone else for a patch of grass.