Beechwood Drive, Lower Don Parklands , Toronto

April 28th 2018. 6.00pm
Went for a walk to the Lower Don Parklands after parking at the end of Beechwood drive. There was definitely a cold nip in the air this evening and maybe that's why there weren't many cyclists and walkers. And for the first time today, I got the idea of walking backwards.  I walked backwards for more than a kilometer! 
I will not be able to repeat this, anytime soon, as the start of  warmer temperatures will bring more walkers and cyclists. 
I discovered that walking backwards feels different and not as automatic as walking forwards. I seemed to be using a different part of my legs and feet. I could not have done this without my husband who gave me heads up when  someone was approaching.   

Here are a few photos from the walk.

 Above is a new graffiti. New in the sense that I had not seen it when I walked last here.

Tar road in the park slowing getting destroyed by the weather.

As you enter the park from the end of Beechwood drive and look left, you may spot a pile of stones, looking like a destroyed house, which I am sure it is.  This stone and brick fireplace above, is all that is left of the house.  Maybe the rest of the house was built of wood and destroyed in a fire?  The 'remains-of-this-house' is steps away from the Don river, and surrounded by trees, grass, plants and  meadow-land. 
Imagine living in this house a hundred years ago...surrounded by nature and no traffic noises. Birds, rabbits, deer, fox and other wildlife at your doorstep.  Maybe the family living here fished in the Don river, hunted in the wildness outside their home and also picked berries from the surrounding land! 

Below are more photos of this fireplace part of the house.

 Below you can see plants and trees growing on this or in this house. The photos below are of the same fireplace but from the sides and back. The back and sides of the fireplace is a lot more destroyed than the front portion. I hope the government does something to stop this from disintegrating fully. 

But if you want to see a well-preserved house from ancient days in the same area, go to Todmorden Mills Heritage site, which is less than 2 miles from this spot. You can peep through the windows of the preserved house and see the furnished house of the family who lived there more than a hundred years ago. 

All in all, a nice walk. Though I did get into a fight with my husband who asked me to stop acting 'crazy' when I wanted to walk backwards. I did not let him deter me! Why do I have such a short temper ??? I could have ignored him and walked backwards instead of biting his ears off.
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April 29th 2018, evening walked in same place (Lower Don Parklands) but different trail..took the trail to the south toward pottery road. Here are a few photos.
Today was a lovely day with warmer weather. Ergo, LOTS of people...walkers, cyclists, dog-walkers. 
I didn't even try to walk backwards today...the paths which were all ours yesterday, had to be shared today with many many folks. 24hours only but what a difference!

Field of this lovely blue flower called Scilla Siberica...I found the name in 'Ontariowildflowers.com'. Are the white ones genetic anomalies...albino scilla sibericas?

Above is a plant with bright red stems...Googling it, I think it is Red Twig Dogwood. I find it difficult to photograph this and this is the best photo I could take. Photographing this plant was like photographing thin sticks spread apart. Without 'thickness' or body to this plant, meant that the things in the background will intrude into the picture..like plants behind it which are green, brown, and the tree trunks and blue sky.

In less than a month, this tree will be full of leaves and not like this.

I had complained in the past that the Don river is thin...like a thirsty man pissing, and was envious of the thick flow of the Humber river in the west. But today the Don river was flowing  thick and strong. Also,  the river was brown yesterday and today it's green! I wish I had photographed it yesterday too. 

 Bridge across the River Don

Above is the underside of the bridge over the Don river.

Why do I have this compulsive need to photograph Graffiti???

Rouge Valley Park

April 22, 2018...too lovely a day to spend indoors after the long winter. Went to Rouge Valley Park, despite warnings that the ground would be slushy or too slippery with ice to walk. Had a lovely time. The temperature was perfect... not warm enough for mosquitos to have arrived and not so cold that  we couldn't enjoy. 

 Had taken our new Kelly Kettle stove to try outdoor cooking. Boiled noodles on the stove with  firewood gathered from nearby. The smell of smoke from the fire reminded me of visits to my village in India where my granny cooked on firewood.

 I loved the atmosphere here...the smell of smoke from our cooking, the roar of the Rouge river flowing by, the blue blue blue sky, the perfect temperature despite the snow on the ground.

Torontonians are unbelievably lucky to be living here...a modern urban city...with plenty of nature WITHIN  this urban area... rivers, forests, hills and valleys, wildlife, a lake the size of an ocean, beaches, nature trails. 

Hope we have more such days this year. Maybe I will try out the Humber river banks next week.

Above...I saw three kayakers fly by on the river ....so fast!

I suppose people toboggan down this when there's snow.

My husband's latest hobby is wood-carving or wood-work since the last few months. He's been glued to U-Tube videos of men who single-handedly build log cabins, wood houses, make furniture, and so on. Some of his favorite UTube builders/ bushcraft men or whatever they call themselves are: Dick Proenneke, Shawn James, Mors Kochanski.  He even bought a couple of knives and a saw. Before cooking, he carved a piece of wood into the wood spoon you see in this vessel. It actually looked more like a stick with the bark shaved off than a spoon! 
I gathered the firewood...there's tons of it anywhere in the wild in Toronto. 
We had got the chopped vegetables, cooking oil, water and noodles from home. This Kelly Kettle stove stove is great. Lots of heat and in no time, our noodles were ready. The vessel  above  is part of the Kelly set. I think it  looks bigger than it is. The Kelly kettle stove comes with stainless steel stove, a big container to boil water, vessels for cooking and even mugs to drink. 
My husband loves this stove. I don't think I have what-it-takes to lug this around in a back-pack on hikes. It's too heavy for me. 

Above is a dead tree disintegrating. I love the texture or rectangular shapes of the wood, crumbling.
It looks way better in reality than this photo.

Pre cherry blossom in High Park, Toronto

April 21st 2018...lovely spring day, with sunshine and increasing temperatures. Went out for the first time this year to enjoy the lovely spring weather. Drove to High Park, hoping to see the Cherry Blossoms, which are there only for a week and then disappear. But we were too early and the tress were bald! Not a single pink cherry blossom! But we did enjoy a lovely walk in the Lovely High Park along with hundreds of others who had turned up here to enjoy the lovely day.  

 Thought this tree trunk above looks like abstract art

 Redwinged Blackbird in a tree in High Park

 A visitor to the park reading near Grenadier Pond. 

Mallards and swans at Grenadier pond.

We then went to the Junction and enjoyed window shopping at the cool shabby-chic shops around on Dundas West.  Dinner at High Park Spicy House and back home, driving through the busy and lively Bloor street. 
Overall,  a lovely afternoon after months of the depressing winter blues!

I love the junction area. A couple of nice used book stores, antique stores, lots of eateries and drinking spots. Sadly one of the book shops is shutting down...damn gentrification!
I love the ambience at The Junction. The shops are not 'richly' decorated but each shops seems to have a unique style of decor...not the tacky indifferent decor I have come to expect when I visit shops in the East end of Toronto where I live. 

Visitors to Toronto should spend a couple of hours or an hour in this area..they would love the ambience. The junction does not have  the touristy vibe of downtown Toronto...it's a slower, more mature ambience. One should get it before the damn gentrification kills this all.

Below are some wall art around the junction area. 

I liked these houses in the Junction...they must be worth a fortune despite the understated looks  

Spring flowers, pre and post ice-storm, Toronto April 2018

Above are photos from my garden on April 5th 2018. 
Below are photos from my garden April 16th 2018...post-ice-storm

Spring 2018

Today, April 6th . 2018, 6.11am: I heard the birds singing, outside before sunrise, first day I heard birds singing this year.  It FELT like  first day of spring for ME this year...
Growing up in Bangalore, I got a certain feeling on a single  morning (it would be in February, March or April)  every year...a certain spring smell in the air, the first time I smell it in a year and it feels like spring. It's a wonderful smell, a mix of flowers and earth from outside the house, from the garden. If I remember right, I think, to my imagination, I get that lovely spring aroma, only once each year....lasting for a few precious minutes. It's a Gestalt of experiencing so many things simultaneously. I can't describe the perfection of the moment but I can list the parts of the Gestalt: the smell of earth & flowers; the coolness of the breeze, the dawn's gold-red rays  coming through the windows, the sound of birds chirping outside in the guava tree, the relief-joy-peace of 'no-more-exams-it's-summer-holidays-now', the 'not-cold; not-hot, but just right' temperature under the bed-sheets as I lie in bed, the fantasies about how to spend the day as I lie there.
In spring-time Toronto, I  don't get that smell of earth and flowers as I don't think that smell 'happens'; even if it does, my  windows are shut for 6 months of the year here. But it was the sound of birds ..the first time I heard this year along with the calmness and 'no worries' blank mind as I woke this morning,  which made me think of today as the first day of spring. 
If only I could capture this feeling and feel it every morning... capture that spring aroma, wafting on the cool early morning breeze through the window, in my home in Bangalore to enjoy it at will!

PS: I think spring would have been earlier than April 6th...if I had slept in the bedroom facing the street, before April 6th. Let me explain. I sleep in different bedrooms for different reasons..when it feels hot I choose one, when  cold, another. The bedroom at the back, faces the garden and trees while the bedroom in the front faces the street and more to the point, there are electric lamp-posts and wires on which  chirping birds sit. I do not hear the birds almost till May when I sleep in the back bedroom but the birds  are audible in the front bedroom almost from late March. One would expect birds to prefer trees which are 'nature' than lampposts and electric wires which are 'artificial' but it seems otherwise. 

ONCE IN A LIFE-TIME EXPERIENCES

Listed below are experiences which I have had 'only once in my life'. They were brief moments of indescribable joy and it  happened but once.  I haven't experienced the same amount of joy when  the I experienced the same  again. Or the experiences never happened again. But I do enjoy the memories of those once in a lifetime moments  when they come to mind.


1)When I could balance on the cycle for the first time! The thrill was amazing! Going downhill, fast, not falling off...that thrill cannot be measured.

2) As a preteen, I went for a walk, one evening with my cousins, in the 70s, in Rajajinagar (west of chord road, Bangalore) when it was still agricultural fields and not houses. As we walked, in the distance,  I spotted what looked like 'woodrose' and ran towards that plant. It was not wood rose but the thrill of 'spotting woodrose' I felt was overwhelming. Later we did grow woodrose in our home and I loved those flowers. I have not seen woodrose plants or flowers in vases anywhere in the last 30 years. Is it extinct I wonder.

3)Spotting the beautiful weaverbirds' nests for the first time in my life as a pre-teen in my village. It was such a joy I have never forgotten my first sight of those nests, hanging from the branches of a thorny tree (Jali mara?)waving in the breeze as I walked with my uncle to a neighbouring village. I clearly remember the walk. We had left my village early in the morning and had to walk through fields and the valley of a hill. The village I was visiting was the other side of the hill. As we walked, I saw these beautiful nests, sort of golden brown in the morning sun, swinging gently in the breeze. I knew they were nests though I had never seen one before. In those pre-internet days, I had not seen the photo of a weaverbird's nest. You cannot imagine the joy of a child, at beholding such a perfect thing of beauty, for the first time! 

4)Seeing the ocean and the seashells for the first time. Actually finding the  seashells for the first time in my life (I was below ten years?) was more joyful than seeing the sea.

5) Finding comics which I dearly loved in secondhand book stores. This may not be once in a life-time experience but still, each time, the euphoria is unbeatable!

6) A  dear friend served us bubbly (champagne but not produced in France) about 12  years ago. I LOVED it. The taste was fantastic and like nothing I had ever tasted before. Later I asked him which company it was but he had thrown away the bottle and did not know. I tried a few different bubblies but nothing ever tasted like that wonderful glass I had that day! 
Similar to the above, I had fresh beer once in Bangalore on Residency road, about 20 years ago. It tasted so good! I know beer is not supposed to be sweetish but I recall this one was.  I have never ever tasted the same amazing taste ever again though I have had dozens of different beers since then. 

Analyzing the above, I see that:

 Cycling was the joy of achievement...being able to do something for the first time. 

The taste of bubbly was a delightful sensory experience...taste.

Finding the comics, was the joy of unexpected good luck.

Spotting the seashells, weaverbird nests and woodroses was the joy of finding perfect symmetrical beauty in nature.  Even now, I feel such a sense of wonder at 'perfect' symmetry, lovely colours  and beauty in nature. I can't believe that nature which has no  assistance from machines or 'measuring devices' can produce such amazing symmetry. Anything in nature which looks 'perfect' amazes me...even the round river rocks on beaches, butterfly wings, geodes...
Why do  sea shells cast such a spell on me? The symmetry for sure is what we all love I think. The shiny iridescent pearly colors inside some shells such as Abalone is another. The colors of some shells and the patterns on others for sure is another fascinating facet of sea shells. Come to think of it,  what is most  marvelous  about sea shells is that we cannot create a sea shell. We can only find it.  I think the fact  that man, with all his brilliance and  skills can never make a sea shell is what makes the sea shells most alluring to me. Sure, we can make realistic replications in plastic, clay, metal, wood, etc...but it's not the same. 


I am trying to analyze my memories and check  if the joy was equal or at different levels for these above experiences. I cannot say that one was more or less than the other. The "ah ha" was equally high for all of these experiences.

7) I will write more 'once in a life time experiences' as I recall them.