Today I started a new quest - to bike (and walk) around the city to see the
50 hidden gems around Toronto identified by NOW Magazine. Of course, as a 40 year resident I was aware of and/or have seen quite a few of them - I live near Alexander Muir Park and have biked the West Toronto Railpath and so on. A while back we had a thread by some musicians who made a music video on the railpath using all bicycle-borne equipment.
Still, I will try to hit them all over the next 2-3 weekends. Today I saw the Dawn Redwood. It's a Chinese sequoia planted in the Edwards Botanical Gardens in 1960 by the chief gardener, and he selected a spot he thought would always be sunny on his wife's birthday, June 20. I suppose if I were a romantic I would go there next June 20.
I saw a groundhog too but my cell phone was fogged up from being in the handlebar bag with a bottle with ice in it and didn't clear until the animal walked away, and it never occurred to me that I had my GoPro running and all I had to do was walk the bike towards it to get a good close-up, as it was semi-tame.
It was only an 18 km ride but it had a couple of 50 m elevation climbs and some smaller hills and it was really hot, and I had to walk the bike up and down the short ravine sides in Edwards Gardens a couple of times, as you can't ride in there, and I couldn't find the tree, so I got a bit of a workout. Eventually I asked a gardener to direct me and she laughed - apparently a lot of people read NOW Magazine.
Here's the magazine shot of the tree:
https://nowtoronto.com/downloads/782...336&w=1200&ar=
And then my cellphone shot. The magazine photo might be a bit too dramatic, but my cell photo didn't do the tree justice - it really looks somewhere in between