Continuing from last week, Laurie and I spent four days and nights travelling on 'The Canadian', the train from Vancouver to Toronto. For the first part of the journey after the Canadian Rockies the scenery was of agricultural, wheat-growing country, in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
These interesting, gable roofed silos beside the track are quite small and domestic looking compared to the the concrete cylinders typically seen in Australia.
A day later we woke to see the sun lifting the mist off the many lakes in the western region of Ontario. This area was very beautiful, with the dense and huge area of Boreal or 'snow forest' that covers a great swathe across northern Canada. This forest is comprised principally of conifers.
The forest type changed to broad leafed species of trees as we came into Ontario. Beside the railroad tracks were lots of late summer wildflowers and I finally understood why someone in the past had described Goldenrod, solidago, as a weed. However, that doesn't stop if from being beautiful.
I was really pleased to see some planted in a central business district ornamental garden, when we finally arrived in Toronto.
After three days in Toronto we headed to Ottawa where we are now staying with my ikebana friend Leonora and her husband Richard. We were greeted by a number of freestyle ikebana arrangements including this one using purple statice, linomium sinatum, and globe thistle, echinops bannatictus.
This ikebana arrangement is an example of the curriculum exercise, 'an arrangement complementing an art work', which is the subject of one of the workshops I am conducting today for the Sogetsu Branch in Ottawa. I will report on the workshops next week.
Click here for more photos from our train journey Vancouver to Toronto.
Greetings from Christopher
25th August 2018
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