Conversation starters
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There is a delicate tree which grows right by a concrete high rise building. Its purple/pink flowers bloom for a brief few days, before we are left to wait for it the following year.
This tree (which looks more like a shrub) is equally eye-catching in the woods of the city's High Park, precisely because it looks so delicate and fragile amidst the long and sturdy trunks.
I made a photocollage of this tree in High Park a few years ago, but never knew its name. Whilst I was photographing it the other day in front of the high rise building, I decided to ask a couple approaching me, who looked like they might know something about it, what it was called. Sure enough, the woman said she was a gardener, and spent a little time describing the tree to me.
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It is a Redbud tree, and is indigenous to North America. It has a short life, true to its delicate look. It has no edible qualities to it, and is more ornamental than anything else. Here is more information.
These days, I am making a concerted effort to talk to people, a little randomly. Of course, I have to choose carefully whom I talk to; a city is always a city. But, often, I ask people in the supermarket how to use an ingredient (watercress was the latest I asked about), and now, it is especially interesting to ask about flowers and trees. I am surprised at how much people actually know, and are willing to impart.
The problem with Toronto is that it is becoming a strangely silent city. People don't talk in lines, transactions at cashier's are quiet transfers of money, bank tellers don't make small talk. I don't think that people are unfriendly, but that there are too many foreign (literally) elements which act as obstacles to conversation. I asked a Chinese sushi-maker recently what her sushi ingredients were, and she said, in very broken accented English something like "tona." "Tuna?" I asked. She said yes. When I tried it later, it turned out to be tofu.
So, I think people are afraid to talk to each other. Canadians, who are not the chattiest of people, still have a quiet sense of humor, and enjoy a banter whiling away their time in tedious lines. The other day, an elderly gentleman at the bank was trying so hard to make conversation, to the extent that he was teasingly telling the bank teller how to do her transactions. He wasn't getting very far with his jokes.
This silence has to be broken. Our multicultural city doesn't encourage it. But just because the Chinese sushi-maker and the Indian bank teller can't handle a normal conversation doesn't mean the rest of us have to be struck dumb.
