Toronto is showing off lately. The Blue Jays (baseball team) *almost* got to the World Series. Our new prime minister beams from the front pages of the paper. The weather has not been awful. And best of all the leaves are strutting their stuff, changing to their annually marvelous colours. At least, I think they are marvelous; a colleague at work disagrees. "I grew up in the north," she told me. "Surrounded by sugar maples. Now those leaves are really brilliant. Down here you don't get anything like such intensity. Once," she reminisced, "we had an early snow followed by a sunny day. The red of the leaves against the white drifts..." She gazed down the fluorescent-lit corridor of our uninspired building, seeing beauty.
Autumn in southern California, where I grew up, is a poor show in comparison; any leaves that are not evergreen turn a soft shade of yellow and drop uncertainly and sparsely. Someday perhaps I'll head north -- further north-- to see the sugar maples in their autumnal glory. For now, I am happy to enjoy the entertainment offered by the trees of Toronto, our (self-proclaimed) 'city within a park'.
 |
| Sunny day in Sunnybrook Park, with daughter and dog |
No comments:
Post a Comment