A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Well, Readers, it may be lilac time somewhere, but here in East Finchley we’re at the end of the road for this year’s flowers – the photo above is from the beginning of April. There is still a hint of scent, even on this unseasonably cold day, and Kiera Chapman describes how the scent is when the plant is first cut.

“Hyacinths, lily of the valley, marzipan, with a note – this is strange – of the rubberised smell of a new car“.

Once indoors, though, she remarks that

“the weight of the scent seems to increase dramatically, becoming sweeter, dirtier, almost headache-inducing”

Of course, lots of flowers are a bit much in an enclosed space, but there is a variety of lilac (pictured below) where the composition of the perfume changes during the day. I would hazard a guess that this is to maybe attract different kinds of pollinators at different times, but who knows?

Lilac is not a native plant, but its origins have caused no end of confusion. Lilac comes originally from the Balkans, but arrived here via the gardens of the Ottomans, and so was thought  to be an exotic Persian plant rather than a European one. But as often happens, lilac has  been embraced both here in the UK and in North America, where the lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire. I’ve also embraced this poem by Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925) and think it deserves another airing today. As I said previously, it’s worth reading it slowly, preferably with a cup of tea (and a biscuit 🙂 )

Lilacs

by Amy Lowell

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: “Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting.”
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the “Song of Solomon” at night,
So many verses before bed-time,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the nighttime
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.
Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.
Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of gardens of little children,
You are State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing “Sun up!” on a tip-top ash tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South Wind.
May is full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac.
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.

 

Well Readers, here we are, home again in East Finchley, and as per usual everything has been growing wildly in our absence.

The green alkanet and the red campion have taken over the bench, plus the birds have clearly been sitting in the whitebeam and doing that thing that birds do…

The wildflower turf that we planted last year is full of interesting plants, including ribwort plantain and sorrel and more red campion…

The yellow flag and the bog bean are coming into flower…

…as is the garlic mustard/Jack-by-the-hedge…

Plus, we have a shed which mysteriously appeared while we were in Canada…

And also, the dahlias are finally coming up in the planters, with various degrees of enthusiasm…

But this is what has me most delighted (and slightly worried, truth be told) – the Great Tits who were inspecting the sparrow nesting box before we left have obviously reproduced, if you listen to the recording below. It’s very close to our back door, so we’re doing our best to be quiet and to leave them to it – the adult birds visit regularly, so fingers crossed for a happy outcome. Have a listen to the frantic chirruping!

Dear Readers, today is our last day in Toronto, and what a beautiful morning it was! We decided to go in search of the Toronto Cat Parkette that I mentioned earlier in the trip, which is  to the west of the city, close to The Well, which is a new shopping centre/condominium hub. Well we walked up and down Wellington St West, looking for the site, but I suspect it’s still being created. Nonetheless there were some great views of the CN Tower….

…and there’s a new ziggurat in the process of being created. I suspect the cat park will be popped in there somewhere, and will certainly check when we’re next in town.

There’s a fine view view of this unusual tower complex too – it’s a round tower and a square tower joined by a bridge. Known as the Concord- Adex Skybridge, it was something of a conundrum to build, but here it is. And in fact, people are living in the bridge itself – the larger of the multistorey apartments apparently sold for 4.5m Canadian dollars. Let’s just hope there’s not an earthquake.

But then we go for a walk along Draper Street in search of another potential cat sighting, and what a wonderful street it is…much nicer than a 4.5m dollar sky apartment in my opinion.

I do wonder how the inhabitants manage to grow tulips without the many, many squirrels digging them up. Chilli powder, maybe?

Every house has a wall plaque about the first inhabitant of the house. Building started in 1881, and the style is described as ‘Second Empire’. I love this little street.

But wait, what is this?

This tiny parklette was plonked into the space where a house had burned down, and was designed by Claude Comier of Berczy Park fame. Here, finally, is the cat, at the entrance to The Well. And this is probably a good time to tell you that we’re about to get our next foster cat, when we get back from Canada. Her name is Abbie, she is 14 years old and very nervous – the poor girl’s owner has died, and the cat is bereft. I hope we can provide her with a quiet place to regain her confidence. Will send photos as soon as Abbie cooperates….

Dear Readers, the Distillery District in Toronto is, as you might have guessed, based on the site of the Gooderham and Worts whisky distillery, founded in 1832. These days it’s something of a destination, with coffee shops and restaurants (including the loudest French restaurant in the world, Cluny, not recommended if you actually want to hear your dining companions). A minor digression here: the Michelin guide suggests that the thing most often complained about is not surly waiters or high prices, but noise, and it’s not just old codgers like us either. Cynical me thinks that people drink and eat faster when they can’t hear one another because there’s nothing else to do, but restaurant managers suggest it creates an ‘ambience’. I’ve been known to turn round and leave a restaurant if the noise is too ‘energetic’. For me, eating is about conviviality and catching up with friends, a chance to enjoy sharing food and good company. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

Anyway! Back to the Distillery District. This is our last full day in Toronto, so it was good to sit and have a coffee in Balzac and catch up with one another – there’s always some stress involved when visiting, what with John’s Mum being so frail. Yesterday she was making sure that we’d all had a ‘chocolate walnut’ before going back to the classroom. No, John’s mum wasn’t a teacher, so we’re bemused as to where this is coming from,. but as she’d been asleep all day on her 98th birthday earlier this week, this was a great improvement.

I wanted to buy something for my god daughter’s little boy back in the UK, and we found a great Canadian baby clothes shop. Some of the outfits might or might not have featured moose and bears.

And on the way back, we stopped to take a picture of the’vertical city’ as it becomes still more vertical. Goodness knows how many more towers will have appeared by the time we get back next year….

Dear Readers, yesterday evening I was going for a drink with a friend at the Writers Room at the Park Plaza Hotel. As is my wont, I got there very early, and started off by taking some photos of the pillars in Museum subway station, showing Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, a Toltec warrior from Central America, and my favourite, an indigenous bear figure (I love the paws!)

The Royal Ontario Museum is a mash-up of a traditional building from 1912, and the Libeskind addition from 2007. The latter has always been controversial, with opinions differing from the Globe and Mail architecture critic, who described it as ‘angsty and hellish’ to the Toronto Star critic who described it as ‘a monument’. Alas, it has suffered from leaking and cracking ever since its first winter, and is currently hidden behind billboards. The exhibition spaces certainly seemed an awkward shape and size when we were there last. Nonetheless, it certainly makes a statement.

And I am very sad to be heading home just as this exhibition is starting – very bad timing on my part.

On I go to the Writers’ Room at the Park Plaza. They seem to have caged in their gas connection as if it were some kind of dangerous beast, which I suppose it is…

It has what looks suspiciously Henry Mooresque statuary outside…

…and inside everything is coming up roses (and other flowers)

I go up to the 17th floor and inquire about the table that my host has booked. Alas, his details are nowhere to be seen. In some indignation I pull up the email. Yikes. I’m supposed to be at the Library Bar in the Fairmont hotel. Apparently I’m the third person to have made that mistake today.

Back to Museum, south to Union, through the PATH to the hotel, and a brief stop to capture yet more floral abundance…

And then, finally (and only 13 minutes late) I get my Kir Royale. Cheers!

The subway trains of Toronto are a temporary home for the city’s homeless, addicted and mentally ill. In the past two weeks, I’ve seen a man in a wheelchair travelling up and down the carriages asking for cash, which no one seems to carry any more.  A beautiful young girl, probably not out of her teens, was drifting along, asking everyone for ‘a dollar, just a dollar’. One woman told her she was too pretty to be addicted to crack, and the girls shriek of frustration could be heard halfway down the train. A bowed over, grey-faced man hunched in a corner, playing his phone out loud. On the streets, people are sleeping on the subway grates for warmth. People leave them coffee and sandwiches. One man is barefoot and has left his surgical boot on the pavement next to him, along with an empty cat carrier.

There are plenty of homeless people in London, but it is very visible here in Toronto, and I wonder who, if anybody, is looking out for these people? There are shelters and hostels for sure, but people seem so fragile and vulnerable out here on the streets. I am reminded that when I worked in a night shelter, the average life expectancy for a person who was homeless was 43. years old.

No answers, but here’s a poem….

Homeless

By Juliet Kono

My son lives on the streets.
We don’t see each other much.
Like a mother who puts white lilies
on the headstone of a dead child,
I put money into his bank account,
clothes into E-Z Access storage
and pretend he’s far away—
at a boarding school, or in a foreign country.
Nights, I dream fairy tales about him.
I dream he becomes a prince,
scholar or warrior who rescues me
from sorrow, the way he rescued me
when he was a child and said,
“Mommy, don’t cry,” and brought tea
into the room of his father’s acrimony—
brave, standing tall in the forest
fire of his father’s scorn. I wake
to the empty sound of wind in the trees.
He says he wants to live with me.
I say I can’t live with him—
boy whose words crash like branches in a rain storm.
Nothing can hold him in,
the walls of a house too thin.
Back home, I had seen
the “study-hard-so-you-don’t-become-like-them”
street bums on Mamo Street,
and he’s like them.
These days, in order to catch a glimpse of him,
I circle the city. One day,
I see him on his bike.
People give him wide berth,
the same way birds avoid power lines,
oncoming cars or trees.
I park on a side street.
Wild-eyed, he flies the block
as if in a holding pattern.
Not of my body, not of my hopes,
he homes in on what can’t be given or taken away.

Dear Readers, it wasn’t a very clement day today, but we decided to head east to The Beaches, as we always do when we’re in Toronto – there’s something about a walk along the boardwalk that clears the head. Yesterday we spent four hours at John’s mother’s care home to ‘celebrate’ her 98th birthday. Sadly, she was asleep the whole time, in spite of various attempts to wake her. Every time she stirred we sprang forward in the hope that she would surface, but no such luck. Still, we’ll pop up to see her again tomorrow, and maybe she’ll be a bit more conscious. And maybe she sensed that we were there, and that we cared for her, wherever she was.

Back at the Beaches, the handsome houses that are supposedly being ‘re-developed’ are still behind a hoarding, gradually rotting away. There were a lot of poster protests about it last year.

In good news, though, the sparrows and the house martins are both nesting around the swimming pool, as they’ve done in previous years…

Although the weather was a bit overcast, it was still a lovely walk along the boardwalk…

…and it’s only really the lack of the smell of rotting seaweed that reminds me that this is a lake, not the sea.

And, as usual it’s interesting to look at ‘weeds’. Following on from the Marsh Violas a few days ago, I spotted this plant…not a great photo, but! I do believe this is White Corydalis (Corydalis ochroleuca), actually a European plant which appears to have taken off in Eastern Canada.

And then it’s time to head home, on the 501 streetcar. We just heard that our hotel is going to be renovated later this year (after the World Cup, when it will be packed to the proverbial gunnels) which is exciting, as until recently it was scheduled for redevelopment or sale. It sounds as if there’s been a change of heart, which is good news as the Cambridge Suites feels like home. Fingers crossed the prices don’t go up toooooooo much.

Common Swifts by Bruno Liljefors

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Well Readers, actually not first swifts at all – I saw my first swifts on Friday 24th April, just before I left the UK for Toronto. What a joy they are, screaming between the houses against an azure sky. I’ve written about them before, and  am still waiting to see if anyone will show any interest at all in my swift nesting box. Quite possibly I should have put up half a dozen, as these birds are communal nesters, but the scaffold came down before I got my act together.

There is something about the return of the swift that is reassuring, even  though the birds are Red Listed in the UK, and their numbers have declined by 66% since the 1950s. Is it lack of insects, lack of nesting places, or even the way that the weather patterns in El Niño and La Niña years affect the places in Africa where the swifts over winter. It isn’t clear, but it is yet another thing to worry about. Still, in 2026 they’re here, and not only here, but early. And here is a poem by Anne Stevenson. See what you think.

Swifts

By Anne Stevenson

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, ‘The swifts are back!’

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It’s the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.
These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.
But a shift of wing, and they’re earth-skimmers, daggers
Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for
Earth is forbidden to them, water’s forbidden to them,
All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,
They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —
When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,
The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things
Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.
And they stayed there. ‘Well,’ said the Raven, after years of this,
‘I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky
On condition that you give up rest.’

‘Yes, yes,’ screamed the swifts, ‘We abhor rest.
We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,
Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.
Let us be free, be air!’

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.
He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.
He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.
Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so
We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but
Bolts in the world’s need: swift
Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing.
The grace to say they live in another firmament.
A way to say the miracle will not occur,
And watch the miracle.

Dear Readers, the last few days have involved skipping all around Toronto and catching up with lots of old friends, both human and architectural, including my favourite fountain in the whole world, the Berczy Park dog fountain. I’ve written about this before, but it never fails to charm me, although it is looking a little more decrepit every year. This dog is the only one with a name – he’s called ‘Smiley’ after a blind therapy dog who worked with the St John’s Ambulance brigade in Toronto.

Now you might remember that there is a single cat perched on the fountain, looking at the birds on a nearby lamp post…

Well, I have just learned (and I am very excited about this) that there’s a second cat perched on a utility box. But what is he looking at?

Well, the designer of the dog fountain, Claude Cormier, recently passed away at the age of only 63. But he was planning a cat park to the west, on Wellington and Spadina, so at some point this week I shall take a wander to see what, if anything, has come to fruition yet. Watch this space!

Something else has made me chuckle every time I’ve passed on the northbound subway for the past week.

Toronto’s hidden fight club doesn’t seem to be all that hidden, unless several million annual commuters don’t count 🙂

And finally, while we were taking a break in Ramsden Park in Rosedale, I noticed some flowers under a tree, which turned out to be violets…Marsh Violets (Viola palustris) in fact. What delicate pale beauties they are! This plant grows right across Europe and North America, and loves damp conditions, as its name would suggest, so it was interesting to see them growing in profusion on a bank in a city park.

Dear Readers, cherry blossom time (or Sakura) has become quite the thing in Toronto over the past few decades. This Friday was expected to be peak cherry blossom time, and so many people were heading to High Park that cars were banned, and people were being asked not to shake the trees or pull down branches for photographs. Hah! I decided to head for the smaller but less frenetic cherry blossom site outside the Robarts Library in the University of Toronto.

It felt really joyful here – lots of people were photographing the blossoms, and one another, but all were respectful of the trees, and were clearly enjoying themselves. After a long wet April, it was lovely to see some sun, even though there’s a frost warning for tonight.

The library itself was opened in 1973 and is a fine example of brutalist architecture, though not everybody was impressed – it’s been nicknamed ‘the turkey’ and ‘the peacock’ for its extravagant shape, and is apparently not the easiest building to use (though it contains 4.5 million books so it can’t be all bad). Also, it could apparently be the model for the secret library in Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ – Eco spent much of his time at the University of Toronto writing the book, and apparently there is a strong resemblance between the stairwell of the Robarts library and the library in the book.

What made me especially excited about this little expedition was that it was a) spontaneous and b) I did it all on my own while John was off visiting a friend. I was actually planning on finding a spot to read my Jan Morris biography when I found myself irresistibly drawn onto Line One of the subway. I often feel that I only really start to know a place when I explore it myself, without relying on someone else to know which way to go. And so it was a lot of fun to find the cherry blossom, and to then walk through the very varied university buildings and to find my way home. I felt like a proper flanêuse, for sure.