At the Art Gallery for Jean-Michel Basquiat

Last week our friend Meghan emailed to say that she was going to catch one more viewing of the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit, Now's the Time, before it left Toronto in a few days. She's has a membership at the gallery and can bring along guests, so she invited us along. We met her during her lunch break on Thursday.

It was a beautiful day out, so we walked over. We ended up taking a different route than we usually do, which brought us up from the south, giving a great view of the gallery from the back, and the park that is next to it.

This route gives you a look at an important historic house in the city, The Grange. This Georgian mansion was built in 1817, and at that time it stood alone on a large piece of land, considerably far to the north-west of what was the city of Toronto then. The park is basically what at one time was the front yard of this house, and the pathway is what would have been its driveway.

The Wild Side of High Park

In my previous post here, I showed the phenomenon that is hundreds of Cherry Blossom trees in bloom in Toronto's High Park. After I'd seen the spectacular trees, I parted from the crowds of people in favour of a visit with some of the critters that call the park home.A third of this large park remains in its natural state, so in these pictures you can see what would be growing all over this area had the city never been built here.

The Cherry Blossoms in High Park

On Wednesday I did something that I've been wanting to do for a long time: that is to make it over to High Park to see the Cherry Blossom Trees while they're in flower.

The oldest of these trees have been in the park for 56 years after 2000 saplings were given to Toronto as a gift from the citizens of Tokyo in 1959, in appreciation for our support of the Japanese-Canadian refugees after the second world war.

Cherry Blossom Trees, also known as Sakura Trees, are native to Japan, where they are the national flower. Their fruit is inedible by humans but birds and small mammals eat it. For people, their main appeal is the very brief period of flowering that lasts about a week.

This year I kept an eye on a website dedicated to these trees, here, where they track the status of the blooming. They said that Wednesday would be a peek day to go, so I took the half hour ride on the street-car and subway and got myself there.

Not only are these trees a gift that keeps on giving, they are also a gift within a gift, as the park they grow in was also a gift to the city.

High Park is the largest public park that is located completely within Toronto. It is about 400 acres, and opened in 1876 after having been given to the city by a man called John George Howard and his wife. The conditions of the gift were that the couple could continue to live in their home that was situated on the land, that no alcohol ever be served in the park, and that the land be used for the enjoyment of the people of Toronto forever.

Drugstore Beauty Department Finds

Hi! I've recently gotten some new makeup and skin care items at the drugstore. The store I go to is Shoppers Drug Mark and I used their excellent points program to get this stuff, so basically it was all free.

As I've mentioned before, we have a Shoppers close to home and go there regularly for everyday household and grocery items, and every time we go we receive points, oftentimes in multiples with special promotions. I like to save those points to use for fun things, many of which I have an urge to try out but that I might not pick up if I were paying cash.

Last time I did one of these posts (here) there wasn't a single colourful thing in the whole lot. I made up for that this time, getting some great makeup items in springy-summery hues, and some nail polishes.

Let's start with the make-up:

Although it wasn't my intention, I happened to pick up products that really make getting ready a quick process -- like, we're talking 3 to 5 minutes and I'm out the door. While I enjoy taking my time and putting on make-up with brushes and belnders when I'm going some place special, when I'm just dashing out for a short trip, I want to just put on a little something to look polished. I used to run out with no makeup on at all, but our neighbourhood has changed so much lately, and there are now good looking, well put together people all over the place. I often run into someone I know on the streets, and you know, call me vain, but I like to have a bit of makeup on when I do.

That's where these first three products come in handy.

Maybelline Master Glaze Blush Stick :

A Night of Great Comedy : Selene Luna and Margaret Cho

If, as they say, a picture paints a thousand words, and if more words are allotted the better the picture is, than granted, I won't be writing any novels today. But darn it, the evening out that these less-than-stellar shots illustrate was so good that I'm going to post them anyway.

In fact, for the past several out-on-the-town stories I've written, the accompanying shots have been rather dark and grainy. I guess my being a night-owl and a blogger who writes about the things I do around the city, don't really compliment one another. If it helps, this week I have two daytime outings planned, so hopefully will be giving you a break from looking at such dark images.

These pictures were taken on Sunday night, when my pal Meghan kindly treated me to a ticket to see a stand-up comedy show.

The show was held at a venue called The Danforth Music Hall. I wrote about this place, which opened almost a hundred years ago in 1919, after attending concerts there last summer (here and here). For those concerts the audience stood wherever they wanted to, in a huge open room, but for this show, they had installed row upon row of vintage theatre seats. I wonder where they were hiding them.

The opener was Selene Luna.