Sumac

[mrissa]

So. Hi. Stuff. Um.

As I said before leaving, I wasn't going to Toronto as much as through Toronto; I didn't get to see several of my favorite people in Toronto, and I certainly didn't get to explore the city much at all. The taste I got was good, though, worth a return. One of the small details I enjoyed: the little corner shops, like the depanneurs in Montreal, seem to have good fruit selection/availability. So it was extremely easy to find fruit for yesterday's breakfast and lunch while we were out for Wednesday's dinner.

Also, I like the kind of traveling where the sentence, "I'll take a croissant and some fruit on the train," makes sense. That is my kind of travel. Watching the half-turned sumac out the window while munching a really good pain au chocolat: bliss.

We could see the difference in sumac over the course of the week between our train rides, and also on the trip down from Montreal to Toronto. Fall is further along up near Montreal. Some of the birches have gone golden up there. Further down near Toronto, none of them. I look out the window here and see just the first few birch leaves.

I love fall. I made sure the windows in the library were locked down because it was chilly enough this morning that I'm not going to want them open when I sit in there with the dog to read a bit. I have said before that summer is an aberration in my brain, that outside is supposed to be where we keep the cold. When I went to bring the paper off the front step this morning, it was chilly outside, and I breathed it in: home. And autumn. Yes.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Toronto and Montreal are both amazing places, and it's also fun, once you've really had a chance to see both, to contrast them. I can't think of a more blatant example of "why a British Protestant ancestry is not the same as a French Catholic one."

Some of my Canadian friends (who LIVE IN Toronto) like to bash Toronto. I think this must be familiarity breeding contempt.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's just what passes for entertainment in the small towns, and TO people adopt it out of an overarching sense of their own hipness.

And I speak as someone who lived in the city from the age of 9 to about 17, and then briefly again at 21. I love the city, me. But it's easily the most-bashed place to live in Canada.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Familiarity breeds contempt? My sister-in-law and SO live in Toronto, she raised in Cleveland and he in Australia, and they love the place. Wouldn't live anywhere else, and they have the choice.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

>And autumn. Yes.

I think autumn is New England's best face. Likewise for northern Michigan, which should be very similar to yours.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

October is my favorite time to be in Minnesota, and Minnesota is my favorite place to be in October.

But September will do. September will definitely do.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

is Minnesota your favorite place to be every month? ;)

(i could say that about The City, so no shame!)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Except maybe August. I could go north in August and not cry.

But I like other places from time to time. I just always hate to miss any of Minnesota's October. I don't expect to get more than 90 more of them, you see, maybe a few hundred if I'm lucky. I don't really want to waste them on being not-here.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

I have said before that summer is an aberration in my brain, that outside is supposed to be where we keep the cold.

Yes! Exactly! That's a description I've long known, but never articulated.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

We don't do autumn well here in Australia but last November I was in Japan, and one of my strongest memories is comparing the colour of trees between Sendai and Tokyo - the ginkoes and maples, and persimmon trees - in Sendai, the persimmon trees were completely bare apart from the fruit, in Tokyo you couldn't really see the fruit clearly for leaves.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We were on the hill above the Chinese, Japanese, and First Nations Gardens at the Jardin Botanique, and there were just four red maple leaves fallen among all the green. Perfect.

Staghorn or Smooth?

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= Ooh. I'm headed to Pennsylvania in a week to see the sumacs. Oh yeah, and my family.

Re: Staghorn or Smooth?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Priorities!