Leaves and Petals

I sort of wish I had used the video function for this. This is a huge puddle created by a blocked storm drain on a side street off Queen Street West. It doesn’t seem warm enough for bathing, but these pigeons didn’t seem to care.  The funniest was when they’d all flutter their wings and duck their heads in the water in unison. Unfortunately the water had a greasy mucky crust on the top, so nobody here was actually getting clean. But it sure looks like fun.

The coo of a mourning dove is very distinctive. Likewise the whistling noise their wings make as they fly. The two sounds alerted me to some mourning dove action in the pine trees outside our apartment window last week and I was delighted when it appeared a pair of them were building a nest.

At first they only worked half days, appearing in the morning, back and forth with twigs and branches. Eventually the hen settled in while the male did the work; she waited patiently for hours at a time for him to return.

Earlier this week she took up full nesting behaviour, and settled into her spot for the long haul. They had chosen a lowish branch about 15 feet outside the kitchen window that seemed to accommodate the nest, and also gave me a good view of the proceedings. I named them Irma and Irving and found myself checking on them regularly.

Irma sat there through Tuesday’s rain, Wednesday’s drizzle and was hanging on for dear life through Thursday’s wind storm. Her branch whipped back and forth like a rollercoaster.

I went out for lunch and when I returned, I noticed with some concern that she was gone. That soft cooing noise had stopped and more wind gave me a clear view of an empty nest. A really empty nest.

Directly below Irma’s branch were two tiny smashed eggs.

Mourning doves build more of a platform than the typical cupped nest and the wind must have been too much for her. It’s probably too late for her to lay more eggs this season.

It’s foolish to anthropomorphize them and assume they’re sad because of their loss, but as the self-appointed birdie godmother, I must say I’m pretty disappointed that I won’t get to watch those baby birds hatch and grow and learn to fly.

Torontonians are like hibernating groundhogs. All winter, we stay holed up in our burrows, occasionally sticking our noses out for a sniff. Then, on the first nice day, that one day where it’s possible to believe that yes, spring will indeed come, we emerge en masse to frolic.

Queen Street West was packed solid yesterday – like the business district at 5pm when the office workers emerge and flow to Union Station to get their trains back to the ‘burbs. We walked home from Queen and Bathurst, and on the sunny north side of the street, the sidewalk was at a crawl, so packed with people still bound by dirty snowbanks that passing the slowpokes was all but impossible.

Hipsters, dog walking, stroller pushing, cellphone talking,  adult coffee-sippy-cup drinking, trendy rubber boots and cute scarf-wearing… they were all represented. The frantic energy of a glorious day and the sight of the sun was palpable. I almost expected everyone to stop, face south and throw open their coats to warm their bellies like meercats.

As we trekked through the puddles, the dry rotting snowbanks turning into piles of dirt and cigarette butts, it felt good to share the collective brain; to get out and soak up some sun after a long arduous winter, to celebrate “that day” with a promenade along the sidewalk.

When we started TasteTO last year, I subscribed to a bunch of Canadian women’s magazines because I thought they might be useful references for stories. They haven’t been especially, as they’re not Toronto-specific enough, and they also run to seriously mainstream tastes and trends – generally enough that I find something about every issue that annoys and frustrates me.

The most recent issue of Canadian Living is billed on the cover as their “Go Green Issue” with a whole lot of lip-service paid to the recent trend of eco-activism without any real commitment required on the part of the reader/consumer *or* the magazine. There’s your typical spread of eco-friendly shopping bags, tips on eco-friendly laundering, and generally a whole lot of articles on how we can all be good little consumers yet still save the earth. (ie. Don’t stop buying *stuff* just buy environmentally-friendly stuff!) I saw no mention of important actions like hey – get out of your fucking car! Or – stop taking the annual family trip to Disneyworld! Just a lot of suggestions of how to renovate your house with beach stone tiles or stuff that *looks* like it’s from nature (ie, plastic photo frame that looks like logs).

The advertising, of course, in no way reflected this new exciting green commitment. There were the same old ads for drugstore brand cosmetics (mostly tested on animals), junk food in the hot new 100 calorie-sized packaging (more garbage generated from wrapping 10 potato chips than 100 in a big bag), dubious food items laden with health claims (all designed to prey on the reader’s low self-esteem), and the usual assortment of crap from the big multi-nationals.

The real kicker, however, was the fact that the one (watered-down) article on organic food was positioned in a page spread across from Canadian Living’s 2008 Best New Products feature. 35 products, as selected by CL readers, appeared next to an interview with Dr. Laura Telford of the Organic Growers Association about keeping excess chemicals out of our food.

The products?

Febreze – petroleum based, refuses to make a non-scented version of their products for the chemically-sensitive

Pilsbury Pie Crusts – mmmm… transfats

Becel Margarine – more trans-fats

Dove antiperspirant -  uses a marketing scheme supposedly designed to make women feel good about their bodies, but owned by a parent company that also owns SlimFast and a skin-bleaching product marketed in India

ZipLoc ZipnSteam – for people who want to eat their veggies but are too lazy to wash a pot, and don’t care that they’re tossing out plastic bags to do so

Kraft (Organic!!) salad dressing -  still owned by a cigarette company

Okay, so not all of these are food items that fall into the organic/conventional debate, but they’re all products that are either completely unnecessary, bad for the environment, bad for human health, or manipulate the consumer in some way. Which, yes, is what mainstream magazines are all about – they’re really a vehicle for advertisers where content is secondary. But the hypocrisy of pretending to be green just really burns my ass. Especially when the mainstream media of the genre obviously has so much influence on what people buy.

The real world disappoints me at every turn, and it’s really frustrating to hear the news media tell us that we’re destroying our earth and our selves, yet have media outlets like women’s magazines continue on in a corporately-funded oblivion, pushing products that are complete garbage.