The Bell Tower of Western, Middlesex College

Home to the Mathematics and Computer Science departments, Middlesex College building is a dominating figure on campus. Situated at the bottom of the hill to where University College stands, its distinctive collegiate gothic architecture with clock and bell tower is the campus landmark.

main door Middlesex College

The featured photograph conveys the imposing height of the building, but it does little to demonstrate its breadth. If you can imagine two wings, scaled to match the clock and inwardly reaching like long arms to embrace the campus, then you have a sense of Middlesex College.

Middlesex College opened in 1960 as a home for the Department of History. According to the building’s Wikipedia page, the tower houses five bells, each eight feet in diameter and weighing 400 lbs. However, the bells no longer ring, and were decommissioned in 2007 due to high refurbishment costs. They are “tuned to E, B, E, F and G#”.

September 17, 2021. Middlesex College. London, Ontario

November 28, 2021. University of Western Ontario. London, Canada.

The photograph above shows the trees that have sheltered between Middlesex and University College. There is a mix of planted specimens and a stand of natural growth that can be found on the lower right, across the road that intersects the pathway.

The front lawn of Middlesex houses a stand of black walnut trees. Previous to this space becoming a university, it was used as a farm, and these trees were planted here at that time. (The school’s founding date is March 7, 1878.) The story I learned was the row of walnut trees followed the road entering the farm and is all that remains of the farm itself, although there are trees on campus which predate farming in the region.

a row of black walnut trees, May 2022

When walnut seeds fall from the trees, they are covered in a coarse green skin encapsulating a fibrous flesh. Inside is the walnut in its shell. As the seeds lie on the ground through the autumn, the flesh blackens and rots away. In early winter only the nut remains, and this is when the squirrels take advantage. The husk is not a nice thing to handle, as it stains black everything it comes in contact with and can be irritating to the skin.

While dropping from the tree, each seed is a heavy little ballistic that falls from some very tall trees. It is a bit risky to sit, or even walk, under them when the breeze picks up.

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University College on the High Ground of Campus

After giving a proper introduction to the Physics and Astronomy building last post, I thought I should give you a good look at the old gal’s rivals, the University College Building and Middlesex College (next post).

Home to Western’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the UC building looks down hill toward the Thames River (yes, unfortunately the current names to things in this area of Canada are associated with places in England; obviously, no one was anticipating the havoc it would cause with Google). The original downtown of London in Canada, with its grand first homes, is across the river and further south. Coming up from town to the university, you would know you had arrived when you crossed the bridge and were greeted by University College. Built in the 1920’s, University College is a massive building embedded on the high ground and dominated by a castle-like lookout tower.

University College recently underwent a massive $34 million renovation, with details available here.

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Renovations from the inside out also included new gardens and outdoor seating, which replaced a car parking lot. Some trees around the building were also removed to increase the amount of interior light, especially on the left side of the tower.

Undisturbed by the work is an extensive collection of planted trees. It is possible to stroll the immense lawn to Middlesex College under a shady avenue of amazing maples, walnuts, oaks, chestnuts and others.

Looking back toward University College. Fall 2021.

In this area are some of the first trees planted on campus. I think the photo below might be of the famous self-seeded apple tree that is thought to have predated the campus. It appears to have had a long life, and despite its diminished appearance it is maintained and kept on site near University College.

Is this the oldest tree on campus?

The long view toward the main campus:

After the bridge, entering the main campus. September 2021.

From across the bridge, exiting the ‘residence row’. April 2018.

Anywhere a Garden

The Western University campus has an amazing collection of trees. I showed off two Magnolias in a recent post. The perennial collection, on the other hand, has fallen victim to digging squirrels and foraging geese, so often what comes up also disappears before much happens.

More successful gardening happens in raised beds, like the purple and white tulips at University College. Or, on the wall below.

Tulips in school colours at University College building. May 16, 2022.

University of Western Ontario. November 10, 2021.

And hidden away in the shelter of the Biological and Geological Sciences building, is Jane’s Garden. It is a secret spot that one finds only if happening past it. Sheltered amidst the building itself, it is a fully enclosed outdoor space.

Jane’s Garden, named for Dr. Jane Bowles, a former biologist and professor at UWO.

As can be seen in the photo above, the walls suggest the space was not fully enclosed when the building was first erected, and that a later addition caused the garden’s separation from the exterior of the campus. This is not entirely uncommon at UWO, where one mode of expansion has been to annex outdoor spaces that formerly separated buildings and join them together. Here, the space was not made part of the indoors, but became a garden protected by multi-storied walls.

Anyone familiar to gardening has probably observed that a particularly well-sheltered spot can serve to cultivate plants that normally do not thrive in the given climate zone. I suspect this is the case here as well, given that spring-flowering snow drops appeared around March 18, and then in the rest of London a few weeks later. So perhaps it should not have been so surprising to see that redwood trees have been growing here.

According to Wikipedia, the Dawn Redwood is known by fossil record to have grown in the northern hemisphere, and was thought to be extinct. When only a few specimens were discovered in China in the 1940s, seeds were collected and distributed to botanical gardens throughout China and world-wide. Today it is an endangered species in the wild, but has been preserved through cultivation.

These photos were taken on March 18 and April 30. I will try to share some updates over the summer.

Magnolia

I had never seen one in real life, so it is a guess that I am making that this is a magnolia tree. I think the images on Wikipedia match well enough to say this is probably correct.

This was not a tree I noticed in the previous seasons, but when I saw it blooming on the afternoon of my last exam in April, it became the thing I remember clearest of this term’s finals. After a particularly exhausting last test, I left the exam room like one leaves a shopping mall or movie theatre. I had been in a windowless room, entering it from a cool and rainy spring morning, and emerging into falling snow. The spring weather was similar to the typical London autumn snow, with snowflake clusters so large they slide from the sky rather than twirl and spin on the thermal currents. Out of sync with it, I felt I had emerged into a different season.

Then, walking to the bus stop, I saw what I thought were suspended snow clusters refusing to fall: snow balls hanging mid-air. It took a bit to process, but there it was, these marvelously large white flowers emerging in a landscape of bare branches and late spring snow falls. I had my introduction to magnolias.

And a later-flowering pink variety, the buds are perhaps 1.5 inches tall.

According to Wikipedia, Magnolia is an ancient genus, with plants of this family existing in fossil records as old as 95 million years. They have existed longer than bees, and it is hypothesized that their flowers evolved to be pollinated by beetles.

Spring

This year, I am staying in Eastern Canada for the summer. Exciting! I am a garden enthusiast, and moving into a new biome means there is a lot to explore in both the cultivated and natural world. According to the map below, my current area is temperate broadleaf forest, compared to other photos on the blog that come from an area called temperate steppe.

Warm weather, flowers and greenery has come to London much sooner than my home city in the Canadian prairies, which experienced snow flurries yesterday. However, my husband did send recent photos of the tulips blooming, so things are waking up back home as well.

World vegetation map by Ville Koistinen on Wikipedia

First thing to notice is that with the milder London winters, spring-flowering bulbs and corms are more diverse here. Try as I did in my early gardening years, there is no way I could get daffodils (in the featured image) or the saffron-bearing crocus to grow in my prairie garden. These are all common in southern Ontario, where London is located.

Some of the early spring delights, from about five weeks ago on April 12, 2022.

Tulip.

Crocus.

Chionodoxa. (behind a fence – chain link accounts for the strange blurry lines in the foreground)

A week later, a minor set back to warm weather:

Outside Weldon Library (UWO): tulips in snow. April 19, 2022.

Structure

Be it the influence of home renovation, or the challenges of writing, I have been thinking a lot about structure this summer. Whether it is an abode or a narrative, what we create is largely determined by how we put it together.

Stages of a Flower, of Learning

I had my first encounter with literary poetry when I was a teenager in high school.  I have only two strong lasting impressions of this:  I did not like poetry; I did not like the poems that compare women to flowers, fading beauty, or traps for honey bees.

Joy

To capture a beautiful, sunny morning, I am sharing tulips and music. (Please click on any photo for a better view.)

Smells of Spring

Last autumn I was giddy with enthusiasm for trees. Their falling leaves do indeed clog the gutters and eaves troughs, but the work required to address this is such a small thing next to the beauty and benefits of trees.

As soon as the leaves had begun to fall in the streets in our area of the city, I was out with my camera. But as work would have it, I did not have time to post the images during their rightful season. The geese left for warmer climates, snow fell and winter took over. Now, as the geese begin to reappear from their winter spent south and the snow begins to melt, I’ve noticed ladybugs and the faint, sweet smell of composting vegetation. Spring!