Some trash and some animals

The other day we went to High Park, home of a bunch of cherry trees and other things. The first thing we came upon was this polar bear made of trash. 

The ocean is made of bottles, a bike helmet, barrel lids, all sorts of intriguing things. 

A shoe, a fan, every little thing. 

A sewing machine case! Computer parts, big things, little things. 

Even a tray or something from the Toronto zoo, who I think sponsored this installation. 

It certainly attracted attention and will make people think about their garbage and recycling. I don't know how we can make people buy less, fix more, waste less, but this is part of the process, I am sure. 

Another part of the park we love is the little zoo. There are llamas and capybaras and this lovely family of Highland cows. Very cute. 

The peacocks were in fine form, but it is hard to take a picture through the fences! 

I have a couple of pictures of the back end of some with their fans up, but they were awkward and not very good. 

There were a couple of females who were wiggling their tails around, and the menfolk showed off for quite a while. As far as I could tell nothing came of it, but they gave us a great show. 

And we finally made it to the cherry blossoms. I could go on about the difference between the city streets in Vancouver lined with trees, and this one small clutch of trees here, but perhaps I won't. 

Roads in the park were closed to manage the crowds. There were classes of kindergarten kids, whole families with grandmas and babies -- and everyone had a telephoto lens and all that. Quite the spectacle. 

You can tell the seasons are changing, not only because of the cherry blossoms, but because the sunset is now sorta visible from our front porch. This one was pretty colourful! Once again I will restrain myself from making comparisons between this and your average sunset over English Bay....

We are making some progress in our plan for getting to Vancouver permanently, but it is slow. We have kicked one baby out of the nest and are gearing up to get rid of the second; then it will just be our problem! 

Off to a good start, I think

I was a little bit worried about my May photo theme, Environmental Trash. However, first thing this morning I was on my way to volunteer for the film festival and saw these shiny, bright, bouncy helium-filled mylar balloons. 

They were discarded by the side of the road, abandoned and alone. They were blowing around in the breeze, making it hard to get a photo. 

It had clearly been someone's 80th birthday, a milestone for sure! Their friends gave them something pretty, something shiny, something actually completely useless. 

These balloons never biodegrade and aren't recyclable. They are terrible for wildlife and can mess up power lines if they escape and fly away. Totally fitting for my theme of the month. 

As if that weren't enough, on my way home from my volunteering shift, I walked up a lane and came across this: 

a small, toy drone. Someone undoubtedly crashed it and gave it up. Or, who knows, maybe they were just running around the neighbourhood trying to find where it had landed! It probably has a battery in it, unless someone had come along and taken it out. 

Unfortunately, there seems to be lots of trash around. 

I also saw a few masks discarded here and there. I have heard of someone in Vancouver who started picking them up and counting them, and had found over 30,000 in the pandemic. That's a lot of trash. I hope I don't resort to showing you pictures of discarded masks over this month. But I am a bit more hopeful that this could be pretty interesting.