Blooming trees

A more typical April day today. I think the temperature topped out at 12 or 13. It was sunny in the morning and felt warmer than the reported temperature, cloudy in the afternoon with a brisk wind so much cooler than it was supposed to. 

Rain is coming, we're told, although it's now 7 o'clock and it hasn't come yet. This is more the kind of weather we expect at this time of year.

I got out for a run in the morning, in the sun. I went a new route that would bring me out near the Latino grocery where I was going to get some corn tortillas for Karen's taco dinner. The route took me up South Street through the old hospital lands. Some of the nice old Victorian buildings are still standing, all boarded up. Others have been torn down. 

Karen read recently about another plan for developing the area. It will apparently include a couple of high-rise apartment blocks, a business centre and a community centre. 

It's bound to change the down-at-heels character of the neighbourhood. On my run, I passed the old Bucket of Blood pub - can't remember its real name back in the day. It was a place with such a terrible reputation for violent altercations that we never dared go there. It's a taco restaurant now.

I'll have to go over and take some pictures of the abandoned buildings.

I was accompanied, as usual, by Fred Douglass, but I heard nothing new today. As I was motoring along, five or ten minutes into the run, the audio started jumping all over. It does this sometimes when I've left the screen turned on when I put the phone in my pocket and it's bouncing around in there. I pulled it out and turned the screen off  and the audio settled down - but had jumped all the way back to the beginning of a chapter I'd already mostly heard. 

Oh, well. It was review.

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In the afternoon, I went out for a brief walk around Blackfriars in search of blossoming trees and found some - although two were ones I'd photographed already this year. They're further along now. This one is at the base of Ridout where it crosses Blackfriars bridge.

These two love birds were sitting on the ledge at the base of the concrete embankment just north of Blackfriars bridge. I had spotted them from the bridge. They were in a passionate clinch when I first peaked over the railing, but they straightened themselves out before I could snap a picture.

The next three are of a fabulous magnolia tree in front of a little brick cottage on Empress Ave. near the river. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger one, or one with more blossoms.

This is a new one I discovered while out exercising the other day - on Wilson St., main drag through the Blackfriars neighbourhood.

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I've come to the end of my winter 2016 pictures.  I'll probably start looking through my 2012 winter pics next, but that will have to wait for another day.