The fourth cardinal, green tomatoes and Hemingway

Earlier this week...

Though the photograph makes it rather unclear, this is, despite appearances, my fourth cardinal. It was again, a very small one, and it was enough to make me stop and try to catch it from below. I was coming down Dufferin behind a much better jogger (the long lean male kind...sinew, canvas shorts...you know) and to my surprise he blew right past it. I can't prove that it's not just only a matter of his regularly spotting cardinals on his run, but I do suspect that he never saw it. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, because this guy probably has different goals for his running regime, but I've got to say, it did make me feel pretty friendly towards my own goals. I like seeing things I used to miss: it's like the world is deeper when I move through it. I've found myself spending more time looking at things than I used to, and in different ways. Though I'm still kind of new at this whole thing, I do feel the effects of observation in my non-running life as well.

On a later run the same week, I came up Chapleau to warm up. It's an area of some cute, but aging bungalows, and some semi-derelict-looking apartment blocks, among nice new condos and classic brick buildings. Anything derelict I tend to avoid, having learned my lesson on Prud'homme about gazing into broken windows and scrappy screed doors. Of course I'm totally wrong about this, like so many other things, because as I come around the corner of one of these places, keeping to myself, I notice that the whole side of the building is lined with big pots of healthy giant tomato plants, all sporting big green tomato globes, happily basking in the sun. Maybe it's not fair to judge a place by its tomatoes, but my parents have tried growing them - sorry, do grow, tiny ones, with some success, until there were chipmunks - and what I know from them is that tomatoes are a labour of love if they're going to be unprotected like that, and these were some well-loved tomatoes from the looks of it. Who cares if you don't repair your building, if you can raise healthy tomatoes? Hopefully, not me anymore.

So I'm reading a lot of Hemingway lately (work-related because I have the best job ever) and as I crested Chapleau, meeting Acacia and heading north, something made me think of one of his shorts that I haven't had the guts to try on my 101s yet. Hemingway's shortest story, and some say, his finest work is as follows:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Garbage day in Rockliffe is always interesting, for the myriad things rich people see fit to throw away. But on Acacia that morning, the things at the end of the driveway were more like what Hemingway imagined. My favorite: a mid-sized aquarium, complete with rainbow stones and a little castle, with a big jagged hole punched into one side. I looked at their beautifully maintained building and wondered if the kind of people that can put a hole in the side of an aquarium could grow their own vegetables lovingly.