Last Fri­day was a bit of a gloomy day. The sky was grey and threat­en­ing to rain. The air was damp and cold. I was walk­ing through a park in the east end of the city, and then I saw this shrub! It’s bloom­ing so eager­ly despite the cold weath­er and it’s PINK! (Have I men­tioned that pink is one of my most favourite colours?) I believe it’s the same shrub that I took I pic­ture of in last week’s Point & Shoot Wednes­day. But this one is more pink.

It just brought me so much joy when I saw it. Look at all the pink flower buds!

And before the pink petals emerge the flower buds are fuzzy, so I once thought the shrub is a pussy wil­low. Then I looked up pussy wil­lows and real­ized that they look dif­fer­ent. Can any­one tell me what kind of shrub this is?

They real­ly made me feel more enthu­si­as­tic after­ward, not that I was in a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad mood or any­thing. But fun­ny how plants can have that effect on me.

And look! I found a red and white cord on this shrub! It’s the same one that we saw in a tree in our neigh­bour­hood park, also post­ed in last week’s Point & Shoot! I won­der if its pur­pose is sim­i­lar to that of the Japan­ese weath­er wish­ing dolls.

I love bloom­ing shrubs and trees in the spring. There are a lot more of those on the street where my par­ents live. And when I used to live at home I would look out my win­dow on the sec­ond floor and see pink trees on the side of the streets, like cot­ton can­dy. And the wind would sweep by and the petals would gen­tly fall…

Trees are bloom­ing in my neigh­bour­hood park as well! I think this is a kind of maple…

Speak­ing of trees, I saw an arti­cle in the free sub­way news­pa­per yes­ter­day about this com­pa­ny called Urban Tree Sal­vage. They make fur­ni­ture out of sal­vaged wood, from trees that have suf­fered insect infes­ta­tion, storm dam­age, or urban devel­op­ment (and of course they treat the wood to stop the infes­ta­tions first before mak­ing them into fur­ni­ture — the din­ing tables don’t come with din­ner guests of bee­tles and worms, sor­ry). I’m also proud to say that they’re based in Scar­bor­ough! :D Vis­it them if you want to bring some trees into your home :)

I would real­ly like to have one of these tables in my house one day. We’d be eat­ing soup or drink­ing tea around it like hob­bits!! :D

So! It’s a beau­ti­ful day in the neigh­bour­hood — hug a tree today! Hap­py Wednes­day everyone!