19 May 2025 – There is a big difference, I realize — as I anchor my hat — between a calm 15C and a 15C with gusts that smack you in the face.
I’m just off the bus at the edge of Stanley Park, planning a walk through the park to celebrate this holiday long weekend. (Held the Monday before 24 May, and, both officially and unofficially, a single holiday with many names.)
My plan, before the hat-anchoring, was to walk across Lost Lagoon, out to Second Beach, and then whatever. Hat now anchored, I see the virtues of a trail walk among sheltering trees instead.
So I say good-bye to Lost Lagoon, despite the attraction of this mama duck and her babies (just off the point of those rocks)…
and this Pacific Great Blue Heron, posing right next to the path…
and, instead, I pivot my footsteps onto Tatlow Walk.
I don’t usually take any of the forest trails, and how silly is that? Here’s a whole 400 Ha of western rainforest, and I stick to the Seawall. Not today!
Tatlow offers me a whole different experience. See? (Ignore “You are here” — we are in fact in the upper-right curve of Lost Lagoon, about to slice diagonally through the forest on Tatlow Walk, and emerge at Third Beach.)
Why don’t I do this more often? Thank you, wind, for blowing me inland.
There is greenery — new growth climbing all over the old…
and woodpecker activity — scavenging insects from old trees…
and colour — the rich red of the cedar itself and the lichens on the bark…
and even sound effects — the angled tree squeaks as high-level wind rubs it against the trees that support it.
In the glade where Tatlow crosses Bridle Path (scroll back to that handy map, I’ll wait…), I meet a ghost.
One of seven ghosts, the stumps of the Seven Sisters, the soaring mix of Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar that once stood here and were so popular with 19th-c visitors that they had their own dedicated trail.
Alas, by 1953…
they had to be honoured in a different way.
But the glade, like the rest of the forest, still has plenty of soaring verticals.
Side trails beguile…
but I look at the mud, and the bike ruts, and choose to stick with Tatlow.
At Stanley Park Drive, I wait for waves of holiday traffic to pass, cars as usual, but also motorcycle clusters and cyclists…
and then cross over. Within moments, here I am, about to emerge at Third Beach.
Where wind has free access, and white caps prove it.
Rocks, freighters (waiting their turn to enter the Port of Vancouver), and white caps. That’s the signature of my walk back down the Seawall.
Plus the occasional float plane silhouetted high against the clouds, snarling its way to, or from, the Flight Centre at Coal Harbour…
and crows swooping low across the beach…
and cyclists dismounting to navigate intersections with high-traffic walkways.
I take advantage of low tide, and walk the last stretch below the Seawall, down on the beach itself.
Just past park boundaries, I climb back up to Beach Avenue, Morton Park and…
a pop-up street fair. But of course. It’s a holiday weekend, isn’t it?
Quick browse in the fair, satisfying lunch on Denman Street (Indian, this time around), and a walk north on Denman, where the soaring verticals are quite different from those to be found in the park…
16 May 2025 – It’s a chores + pleasure walk that will loop me west for a while and then back home. Practically just out my door, I’m standing transfixed by this — let’s face it — unexceptional street corner.
It’s exceptional only in that it is so very… city.
Street & sidewalk & sleek black new-build & fake Tudor old-build (to be incorporated into yet another new-build) & street murals & hydro wires & parked cars. Also trees bursting with spring blossoms & a blue sky over all.
All the entangled grey & green of a city. Grey, the hardscape of human construction; green, persistent nature; also “green,” human intervention meant to enhance nature, and co-exist rather than simply dominate.
Hardly an original thought, but it sticks in mind, and shapes how I see what I see, for the rest of my walk.
Oh, all right! It does not shape how I see what I see right here, chalked on a south-side rampart for the Cambie Bridge.
I throw this in, just because it is irresistible. Doubly cheeky, as well.
First, it suggests that We absorb Them, not vice-versa. Second, it demotes Them to the less-autonomous status of territory, not province. (Provinces exercise constitutional power in their own right; the three territories — Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut — exercise delegated powers under the authority of the Parliament of Canada.)
Highly amused, I leave patriotic red & white behind me, and return to urban grey & green.
Lots of grey, as I start north across the bridge.
A bit of green, in those tall trees on the far right edge — and an impressive display of “green,” though it is literally coloured grey. Just left of the green trees, you’ll find what looks like the five fingers of an upraised hand, complete with fingernails. Those are the exhaust stacks of the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility down below. The NEU transfers waste heat from area sewers to insulated underground pipes, which in turn distribute the energy (via hot water) to the neighbourhood.
Panoramic views of grey & green as I near the north end of the bridge, with parkland and trails either side of False Creek, framed by city buildings beyond.
Some tucked-away green, a “green” initiative of the City, below the north-end ramparts…
where some local residents sponsor a garden, under the City’s Green Streets program.
I cross Cooperage Way, heading back toward the water, and skirt the side of a kiddy playground. It’s an important amenity, amid grey Creek-side condo towers — “green” in itself, and with the hidden “green” of recycled car tires underfoot instead of concrete.
Plus! all that fresh-mown very green grass. And the intoxicating smell of fresh-mown grass.
More fresh-mown grass, and indeed the mower mowing, as I come alongside Concord Community Park.
Grey & green & “green.” And a question mark. Three acres of park, with basketball and volleyball and table tennis and Muskoka chairs and landscaping, and it’s all swell. It is also, maybe, temporary. Concord = Concord Pacific, “landlord” (as the City itself puts it) of great swathes of this land, and busy building buildings, because that’s what they do. I can’t find any clear statement of whether, or how long, this park will remain green before transforming to the grey of another condo tower.
I do find this City of Vancouver page about Northeast False Creek park design, all about revitalization plans for various City parks in this area. Which is good. The partners, however, are the City, the Vancouver Park Board (which the current City council wants the Province to eliminate) and Concord Pacific (aka the “landlord”).
I’d say the future balance of grey & green is still unknown.
Another unknown, as I round the end of False Creek and pass a bike ramp in Creekside Park.
Not a mystery to rival “who is Banksy?”, but a mystery nonetheless. I’ve seen several other of these whimsical little creations in other parks, signed OXIDE. No clue as to their artist’s identity, not even online — except for various people fretfully asking “Who is OXIDE?” and getting no answer.
The bike path, this bit behind Science World, is always busy. Grey, green and “green.”
I’m particularly taken by the living fences, the way living shoots are bent to edge the landscaping, growing more lush as the season progresses.
Bike accommodation across Quebec Street, on the pavement surround for the Main Street / Science World SkyTrain station.
Lots of grey, and, with those bike racks, some “green.” Literal green in some of the mosaics as well, especially this one in the foreground, titled Environment.
I lean in, to read the sticker somebody has slapped at the centre of each mosaic.
Well now.
If “green” is about preserving the planet, about co-existence and sustainability… then I hereby declare this sticker to be Honorary Green.
9 May 2025 – The #19 bus, as always, vibrates with worlds other than my immediate own. The route heads north through Chinatown, East Vancouver & Yaletown, and then slices west across the downtown core before its terminal stop in Stanley Park.
It therefore serves residents of all those communities, plus everyone who is just passing through — office workers, sporty types equipped for Stanley Park trails, urban culture-vultures with the art gallery or public library in mind, and assorted tourists puzzling their maps.
I find a seat in the crowded front section, and discover I’ve landed in a discussion — a dissertation — about “lifers” in the prison system. More specifically, about the reality check surely now being administered to a newbie in that system. He is someone known to Rhinestone Girl on my side of the aisle (applying extra mascara as she listens) and to Bare Knee Guy on the other side (his jeans simply worn out, not designer-chic).
Bare Knee Guy is explaining these facts of life to Rhinestone Girl, based on his own time inside. Their voices are loud, the vignettes are grisly, and the F-word once again proves its astounding versatility.
And yet! Their sentences are also grammatical & articulate, and the conversational tone is calm & engaged. Didactic, even.
I begin to feel I’ve fallen into a surreal one-on-one tutorial, as BK Guy describes how the “25-to-life” system works, here in Canada, and R Girl asks intelligent follow-up questions, never losing focus even as she switches from mascara to lip gloss and starts work on her lower lip.
The session grows even more learned when Shuffle Man inches painfully onto the bus, is offered the seat next to Bare Knee Guy, hears the topic of conversation, and joins in. “They changed it,” he wheezes. “Changed life sentences.” BK Guy agrees: “F**k yah! After Hell’s Angels blew up that bus in Montreal, killed that kid. Used-t’a be, kill one guy, kill a bunch, don’t matter, same sentence, but now they’re not consecutive, they’re back to back.” Rhinestone Girl breathes, “Holy f**k.” She understands the implication.
The tutorial breaks up ’round the corner on Pender Street, when Rhinestone Girl puts away her makeup, gathers her shopping, and asks Bare Knee Guy to help her get her stuff off the bus. He jumps up, lifts her two hanging plants (cheerful petunias, staples of summer balconies nation-wide), deposits them on the sidewalk, and gets back on the bus.
It’s cheerful, it’s helpful, it’s kind. I’m becoming quite respectful of BK Guy. Even more so, a few stops on, when a young indigenous couple get on, and he calls out, “Hey man! Ya dropped some money!” And they had–a $20 bill. BK Guy could have scooped it for himself, but he didn’t. The couple thank him, he bobs his head in acknowledgment. Somewhere along the way, Shuffle Man has disappeared. Eventually BK Guy and I get off at the same stop. Behind me, I hear him say exactly what I’ve just said, to the driver: “Thanks!”
We go our separate ways, me walking up Hamilton Street, my destination being a dance/literary event at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. My route takes me past this dingy building.
It’s the Del Mar, which opened as the reasonably upscale Cadillac Hotel in 1912 but which, despite its heritage status as the one hold-out original building on this block…
and despite the rah-rah wording of this plaque, is now one of the City’s SROs, a single room occupancy hotel. After my bus ride with Rhinestone Girl et al., after that moment with their worlds, I look at the Del Mar with different eyes.
And then I’m past the Del Mar, I’m up at West Georgia, and I’m breathing in the ozone of this fountain that chatter-sparkles one corner of the 1950s Canada Post building, now restored and expanded into The Post, a full city block of offices and glossy shops.
Across the street, in Library Square, I enter my own next world. I slide into the VPL’s spiral embrace…
meaning to head straight for the elevator to the 8th floor and my destination event. But of course I get sidetracked, here in the soaring atrium, by the discards bin (between the bottom two pillars, on the left).
Which pulls me into Charles Darwin’s world.
Well, no. Into Darwin’s Orchestra, an almanac that promises readers “a daily dose of cultural history.”
I look up today, May 9, and discover it takes me to the world of Gulliver’s Travels, 1711. I notice that May 10, were I to jump ahead, would take me to Kenneth Grahame’s 1907 world of Wind in the Willows.
A full 365 days of natural- and cultural-history discoveries, for just $3!
I vow to come pick it up after my 8th-floor event.
The event, “Translating Rosario Castellanos,” celebrates the centennial of this Mexican author with Spanish & English commentary (about the author, translating her letters, the impact of her work) and then…
with a tribute dance up & down & around the staircase stage, created and performed by this trio of local Latino artists.
At the end we applaud them, they applaud us, and I’m back in my own world, with my own immediate focus.
Go buy that book!
Only to discover, after combing the bin very, very carefully, that somebody else has beat me to it.
Well… “Holy f**k,” as Rhinestone Girl might say.
I, however, being the WASP Old Lady that I am, instead laugh and draw the appropriate rueful lesson: Next time, don’t wait.
I’m still caught between amusement & chagrin as I leave the building. I promptly fall into a temporal/cultural/architectural whirlpool of worlds, sparked by the building opposite.
This building.
Those bouncy cubes comprise the Deloitte Summit, a 24-storey office tower that opened in fall 2022 and has always struck me with its visual contrast to the rounded, spiralling forms of the library it faces — the 1995 work of Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie, a building lauded by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the world’s “Beautiful Libraries.” (Up there with the Bodleian, in Oxford; the Library of Trinity College, in Dublin; the Stuttgart City Library, in Stuttgart; and the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne, in Paris.)
Vancouver’s Merrick Architecture, Executive Architect for the Deloitte Summit, calls the tower’s design “a playful aggregation of reflective yet transparent stacked boxes.” Westbank, the project development company, says the cubes were inspired by this lamp, the work of 20th-c. Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi.
The urban architecture website Skyrise Vancouver says the design gives the tower “a sense of rotating motion that references the Colosseum-like Vancouver Public Library across the street.”
Me? I drop back to my native-Montrealer, 1960s world, and I say: oh yes, it references Safdie — but unintentionally, and not his Library Square project.
When my physical eye looks at the Vancouver building, my mind’s eye sees Habitat ’67, the Montreal housing complex that launched Safdie’s career and gave added punch to the exciting new design aesthetic of Expo ’67 as a whole.
See what I mean?
And then, full of all those worlds, I walk back down to Pender Street and catch a #19 for home.
It delivers no tutorials. I am left to my own thoughts, my own world, for the entire ride.
6 May 2025 – Today our Prime Minister met with the President of that giant neighbour to the south, an event that gives us Canadians much material for reflection.
For example, we reflect upon the fact that our Prime Minister had to — yet again — explain that Canada is an independent and sovereign country.
Sigh.
Fortunately, this bright sunny day gives me other, happier, and less surreal, objects for reflection. In fact, the sunshine causes the reflection to be done for me. I don’t even have to think. All I have to do is look.
I am in an alley just west of Main Street, between 7th and 6th avenues, where the brightly painted west wall, a remnant of the 2017 Mural Festival…
with the help of adjacent buildings and some H-frame hydro poles, throws bright reflections into every glass surface opposite.
For example, wall plus next-door building…
wall plus neighbour plus an H-frame…
blocks of mini-reflections above a parkade entrance, with equally strong light reflections on the laneway below…
even the parkade door itself! and…
and even the corner of a decidedly uninspired building, having itself a dance with that bit of H-frame.
Cheered and amused, I walk on down to False Creek and a lunch date with friends.
Right here, in this one downtown alley in one city in one province in our independent, sovereign country.
27 April 2025 – A little time travel, my friends. Back to the first image in my previous (23 April) post, with its long view up the Quebec Street bioswale to Science World…
and my cryptic reference to the “mystery interview” I did there before setting off on the walk that became that post.
Here it is, the focus of my 23 April curiosity and topic for the interview: the tall, free-standing Tower of Bauble.
It encloses a whole world of action — a world that had been dismantled for a while; whose return I briefly celebrated with you in my 12 November 2024 post (Under the Threat of Rain), which moved me, in my 21 December 2024 post (The Tilt) to promise you I’d learn more, and report back.
Herewith my report.
The Tower is a 24-ft-tall audio-kinetic sculpture, designed by American painter, sculpture & origami master George Rhoads.
This tall!
A variety of balls (pool, bocce, snooker) are carried up in a variety of ways, for e.g. via this central column…
or for e.g. via this majestically slow-turning blue auger, over there in the back right.
Once up, the balls come tumbling down again in a variety of pathways, like these for e.g….
and land in a variety of receptacles, sometimes (cf. that blurred white ball, below) shooting off a path into a bare metal disc…
or maybe bouncing from one red disc to another.
All of which causes lots and lots of sound.
Balls go thunkkk, or smaaaack; they hit hanging tubes and other obstacles so that clangers claaanng, chimers chime and clappers clap.
Like this yellow clapper (on the left) about to strike that red hanging tube.
That’s all there is to it.
Balls go up, balls come down, noise ensues.
And we can’t get enough of it.
Which nicely demonstrates the importance of having the right object in the right place for the right reason. Because, back in its early life, this sculpture met so much resistance it had to be mothballed.
In 1985, a US shopping mall magnate bought 30 of Rhoads’ sculptures and placed them in 30 of his malls — including this sculpture, in the food court of his Kamloops BC property. Where the incessant sound effects threatened the sanity of food court staff. (Fine for passing patrons, but in your ear all day every day?) The Tower was put away.
In 1995, Vancouverite Derek Lee and his partner acquired the property, discovered the sculpture among its effects and soon afterwards donated it to Science World. (Lee’s parents were long-time patrons of Science World, and he grew up with that tradition.) Whether in its initial position by the main entrance, or its current position next to bike paths, it has always been outdoors — where the audience would be present by choice.
I sit for a while, prior to my interview appointment. I watch how repeatedly people choose to be part of that audience. I want to know more. Why makes the Tower right for Science World, and why it is so appealing?
I ask the right person: Brian Anderson. On staff since 1991, he brought with him a background in computer science, math/physics and theatre, and he is now the organization’s Director of Performance and Fun Times.
Most of those fun times are indoor events and activities, but Brian loves the Tower as well.
“It ignites wonder,” he says, “and that’s an important part of our core mission. My favourite thing is watching people look at it for a while, and see them start figuring out how they could build something like that for themselves, back at home.”
Creator George Rhoads said the sculpture illustrated “the art of music and rhythm.” Brian points out the serious scientific principles behind all that music and rhythm: gravity, Newtonian physics (“balance, momentum, kinetic and potential energy”), probability and combinatorics (“calculating how many paths and how often balls take each path”).
Still and all, the Tower is a playful demonstration of serious science, and its various components have suitably playful names. “This,” says Brian, pointing to a red ledge overhead…
is the Clumper-Upper.” Of course it is. It clumps up six balls with perfect balance — and then a seventh comes along to send things flying, the six balls one way and itself another. Key to their travels are two Flip-Floppers, which direct balls down assorted further pathways.
Theatre buff (and parttime actor) Brian loves the cheeky titles and sheer busy fun of the sculpture; math/science Brian later sends me his chart, illustrating what goes where. (My abbreviations: L & R = left & right; FF = Flipper-Flopper; Sp. Path = Spinner Path)
Path
% of Balls
Sp. path 1
12.50%
Sp. path 2
12.50%
Sp. path 3
12.50%
Sp. path 4
12.50%
R at 1st FF
L at 2nd FF
6-ball clumper
Sp. path 1
5.36%
Sp. path 2
5.36%
Sp. path 3
5.36%
Sp. path 4
5.36%
1-ball clumper
Trampoline
3.57%
R at 2nd FF
Sp. path 1
6.25%
Sp. path 2
6.25%
Sp. path 3
6.25%
Sp. path 4
6.25%
Total
100.00%
You see? It is all beautifully calculated.
Ahhh, but there are also what Brian calls “moments of chaos.”
Partly because this sculpture was designed to be indoors, not outside where heat/cold would cause metal to expand/contract and play merry hell with the calculations. Partly because time passes and things wear down. Both these facts led to the 2023 renovations, supported by the Rob Macdonald and Lee Families and led by Vancouver kinetic artist David Dumbrell, which included further fine-tuning of formulae and calculations.
“But, acknowledges Brian, “it’s on-going.” As in, Stuff Happens.
Balls come flying off their tracks, land thunkkk on the floor. Brian twice interrupts our conversation to rescue a ball, the second time…
folding himself into the depths of moving parts, a momentary human addition to all those wonders.
For they are wonders, we agree, and they both illustrate and provoke wonder.
Not in spite of the imperfections, but — at least in part — because of them. I tell Brian the title of the documentary about the life and work of renowned Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama: Magical Imperfection. Brian nods.
One last look at all that magic in action, an entire school class forsaking their phones to, instead, cluster around the Tower…
one last look at the Tower itself, over my shoulder and across Science World’s outdoor garden…
and away I go.
To have my feet ignore my mind and send me on quite a different walk than I had planned.
23 April 2025 – My mind has created a very clear plan for the morning.
Follow the Quebec Street bioswale — not a ditch! a rainwater gathering/purifying system! — to Science World, down there at False Creek…
do the interview; walk my usual “Cambie Loop” to and over the bridge; and then zigzag eastward back home.
I do the interview. (The Mystery Interview. Be patient, a post will follow.) I start walking west along the False Creek Seawall.
All according to plan.
Suddenly, where Carrall St. butts into the Seawall, my feet execute a sharp right-turn. They don’t even inform my mind, let alone ask permission. They just take mind (and the rest of me) hostage, and execute their own plan.
Away we go. I find myself walking north on Carrall.
I decide not to argue: this could be interesting! The route offers a tidy cross-town slice past Andy Livingstone Park, through Chinatown, on into the Downtown East Side (DTES) and Gastown, all the way to Water Street with Burrard Inlet just beyond.
Poignant, powerful street art at West Pender, by the impressive street artist and DTES resident/advocate, Smokey D.
“It’s by Smokey D,” I hear two street kids say to each other, their voices full of respect. The City agrees. In tribute to his concern for others and use of his skills to inform and empower others, in 2023 Vancouver proclaimed March 11 — his birthday — to be Smokey D Day.
Another downtown symbol at Water and Cambie streets, this one much happier in mood: Raymond Saunders’ 1977 Steam Clock, still puffing steam and, in another 10 minutes, due to mark 12-noon with the opening bars of O Canada.
By now my mind fully supports what my feet set in motion: this is a promising route! I even manage to rediscover the Silvestre café and reacquaint myself with its Peruvian menu — another mug of Chicha Morada (purple corn drink) but this time, a Chicharron sandwich (pork belly) rather than an Alfajor dessert.
At Richards Street, my feet graciously allow my mind some say in what happens next. Continue west another block or two? Or turn south right here? Right here, says my mind, and my feet pivot accordingly.
Yet more patriotic fervour in the Macleod’s window at Richards & West Pender…
and appropriately vintage in style, as befits this rare, used and antiquarian bookstore.
I cross Dunsmuir, where signage informs me that this next stretch of Richards is part of the City’s “blue-green rainwater system.”
The last panel of the sign is an illustration of the pavers involved in the system. The caption asks, “Do they remind you of water flowing towards the tree?”
I step out into the street, check the pavers.
Yes, they do.
Another happy rediscovery, a place I can never find on purpose. I just have to, literally, walk into it…
the joyous, multi-level Rainbow Park at Richards & Smithe.
Getting closer to False Creek with every step!
On past Emery Barnes Park at Davie, and then across Pacific Blvd., right to the tumbling fountains of George Wainborn Park, which slopes down to the Creek.
Eastward along the False Creek Seawall, past a swimming dog (and ball-tossing owner)…
and then I’m beneath the towering girders at the David Lam ferry dock. Each girder base is incised with a different story of time & place.
This one commemorates the Great Fire of 1886…
when, on June 17, an authorized clearing fire on CPR property blazed out of control and destroyed the infant city, whose wooden structures were no match for the wind and flames. In the words of one survivor: “The city did not burn, it simply melted before the fiery blast.”
And then I walk some more, on past the Cambie Bridge, on along to Coopers Mews, with its symbolic barrels on high. At this point, mind, feet and the rest of me all agree on our course of action.
We follow the Mews to Pacific Blvd., and catch a bus for home.
21 April 2025 – Otherwise occupied Friday-Saturday-Sunday, so today is my last chance to vote in the four days of advance polls for our up-coming (28 April) Federal Election.
I walk the two blocks to my designated advance polling station, a local shopping mall.
I’m a good 15 minutes ahead of the 9 am opening, but I expect a line-up even so.
Friday set a new record for advance-poll turnout (2 million), and though numbers are not yet released for subsequent days, I’d heard enough anecdotal evidence to suggest participation has remained strong.
I enter the mall. Oh yes, there is a line-up.
This is just one bit of it, snaking its way past shops and café also in the process of opening up.
Later, as I walk away, my eyes suddenly sting with tears of gratitude for what I have just seen, felt, and done. This is the ritual of democracy. So precious, so fragile — and so easily taken for granted.
But not this time.
There we all were. Despite the wait; despite the fact that — with five parties running candidates in my riding — we had among us an invisible range of political views along with our visible range of demographics; despite all that, the mood was relaxed, friendly and excited.
That’s the word! Excited. There was a kind of happy excitement humming in the air. People were bright-eyed. I’m doing something that matters!
I remember the heavily tatttoo’ed young man (with an impressively patient toddler by the hand) who explained his attitude to the guy next to him: “Yeah, well, y’know? You got to vote. You don’t vote, you got no right to bitch.”
Later, as the day warms and brightens, I walk along the False Creek Seawall.
Where, once again, all those human demographics are present. And, once again, the mood is friendly.
14 April 2025 – It’s spring time, full-tilt — but even so, twists of last fall and winter are still woven into the offering.
We’re once again at the VanDusen Botanical Garden. We’re eager for spring and, at first, that’s all we see.
Western skunk cabbages are once again a-glow in the boggy creek that feeds into Livingstone Lake…
and trilliums, Ontario’s provincial flower, are in their seasonal glory on a slope in the VanDusen’s Eastern North America garden.
Then we begin to notice the overlaps, the twists in time.
Glossy two-tone Southern Magnolia leaves are always with us…
but all around the R. Roy Forster Cypress Pond, those same two tones tell a more complex story. Here the green of new ferns begins to rise above the year-round ochre of cypress “knees.”
Just off the north end of the pond, the shadow fork of a still-bare deciduous tree frames the spring blossoms of this burst of Snake’s Head…
while over at the north end of Heron Lake, this Japanese Maple doesn’t yet obscure the long view down the lake. (But just wait another few weeks! Those leaves are about to unfurl.)
Face to face with the spring blossoms of this Sargent’s Magnolia, we’re also face to face with fall and winter. Petals already litter the ground — where they lie atop the desiccated leaves that fell last year. Visible also, there in the lower left quadrant of the photo, another reminder of last year: rusty skeletons of Mophead Hydrangea.
In the Fern Dell, the Tasmanian Tree Fern is — I think — putting out new spring fronds. (A hemispheric twist in time: from the Down-Under cycle of seasons, to our own, here in the Up-Over.)
There are things that don’t change, such as the deep-textured bark of a mighty Douglas Fir..
and things that do, such as the intricate spring coils of the Hedge Fern.
An old Emperor Oak leaf is caught in the glossy leaves of an Autumn Camellia (which saves its blooms, thank you very much, for fall)…
and this season’s cherry blossoms are already flying through the air like confetti…
as if they know that the Sakura Days Japanese Fair has now ended.
No, I take that back.
Yes, the Fair has ended, and yes, petals are flying — but these Daybreak Cherry trees are still laden with blossoms.
How fitting that the marble sculpture they shelter, titled Woman, is by Japanese artist Kiyoshi Takahashi.
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 