Cherry blossoms are da bomb! [too soon?]

May 12, 2013

What’s the most innocent activity to get you caught up in a controlled detonation by the bomb squad? 

Checking out cherry blossoms would have to be up there.

I was a latecomer to the cherry blossom party, i.e. I didn’t know they were big outside of Asia. Judging by the dreamy instagram pics on BlogTO, I was the only one in Toronto who didn’t spend last weekend picnicking under the trees. So out we went, mistakenly thinking the grey, drizzly weather ten degrees cooler than last week would keep High Park relatively empty.

The cherry blossoms were pretty nice. The people dressed as samurais were a little strange. I took the mandatory wanky manual focus photos.

No, I don’t have a smartphone and therefore no fashionable app to over-saturate my photos to what photographers spent years trying improve on. 

And anyway, all you smug instragrammers don’t know the thrill of lugging a SLR around all day, getting it from the case that’s inside the backpack, untangling the strap, remembering to take off the lens cap, missing a photo op because you can’t be bothered getting it out. But I digress.

There were a couple of news vans in the park. Were they just time-filling with a cherry-blossom-fever story, or did they have something to do with that police car blocking the road? 

Public curiosity is contagious. 

We went to investigate. The solo police officer was making a vague attempt to stop people

Hot town, Summer in the City!

May 8, 2013

Well, not quite summer but after a long winter, the 20°+ has felt just like that. And we’ve had a ten day stretch of it! It’s a welcome break after winter dragged its heels to the last week of April. In fact, in four months the temperature barely changed, except for the odd day here and there.

On a gorgeous 8° day (?!) I unzipped, yes, unzipped my coat and pumped my old man’s ‘Summer of Love’ album on my ipod.

From winter flowers to...

“You came at a good time,” everyone joked on our January arrival. I still think we did. I’d much rather arrive in winter and see the progression into summer than witness the reverse. I loved winter– the snow, the slush, the ice. (Strangely enough I was colder living in Manchester. Even an Australian winter without heating is more intolerable.)

Winter left me wondering,