photo series

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

End, photo series

in-person advanced calculus. early March 2019.

March. Multivariable calculus. One day the professor gives his lecture and then adds that vector fields help us model the spread of disease, something we might be interested in given what is happening in China.

My Asian classmates have been wearing face masks for a couple of weeks now, but some of the local students poke their heads up and blink. “What’s happening in China?” one of them asks.

Last in-person classes of the semester are in March. Within a few days of the university closing we are on a flight home. The flight plan has changed a few times as the airlines try to adapt; we are travelling the day classes resume on-line.

I do a calculus assignment in Toronto’s Pearson airport. Most of the services have closed and the only food option is potato chips from a vending machine.

The next day we login to the university website, and carry on. My husband has moved his office into the house. He goes to work in sweat pants. My oldest daughter tells us stories about what it has been like working in a grocery store since the shut-down. “And by the way,” she says to her sister, “they want to know if you can start work now that you’re back.”

This is the new normal. Lockdown haircuts, baking and projects. Study groups via Facebook.

February, photo series

The daylight is increasing, but the evening commuters are still passing through the downtown when the sky is dark. People in the buildings across the street are getting home, too. More lights go on. I can step onto the balcony now. I can even go to the railing, which I sometimes do, and lean over to see up and down the street. One fear gone.

It is becoming clear now that something unusual, not just a bad flu, is happening. The first case arrived in Canada and we are eager for news. Some people may say patient 1 brought the disease, but it really is that patient 1 brought information. We know now that the Chinese government has not been releasing all necessary information, and that a doctor in China risking his life by speaking out to the world about what is happening has himself died of the infection.

I learn that my husband has begun a slow stocking of canned goods as well. He’s bought dried beans and lentils, which he will never eat. Not ever.

My daughter is asked to present a paper from her China studies class at an undergraduate conference. She’s excited. She’s also feeling the pain of discovering that there are courses at university that you can’t like, no matter what.

More snow. This city looks freshly cleaned, even if it’s just new snow covering the old.

Blue, photo series

Every afternoon, the blue comes. I’ve read about the math behind the blue hour. Despite all that is happening, and beginning to happen in 2020, this mathematical thing about light gives me calm. I feel connection when I better understand the world outside. I feel like a child again, daydreaming about numbers, turning them into games that were puzzles.

These games belonged to a quite space I had inside my own mind, a way to pass the long hours on the school bus, a place to escape when bored or worried. It felt like a made-up thing, not real anywhere else, and so it seemed a secret the universe was whispering to me, unspooling like an invisible thread that connected me. I felt I belonged. I felt I was embedded in the pattern itself.

The blue is a consistent comfort as the coronavirus spreads and the calm begins to break.

Snow, photo series

We settle in for winter. The snow stays. New classes start and I have dropped the one pure math class that I had intended to take. I have only applied courses, and I am finally beginning to enjoy math again.

We’re told that we choose the path we take in mathematics, but I don’t know if that’s true. I feel the path was determined by a lot of other things outside of my own choices. I hear from the students that some of the degree courses in applied math have not been offered for several semesters. Some students are switching programs, and I’m not sure where I am going from here.

We continue to watch for more news from Wuhan, China. The words continue to say it isn’t serious, but the actions are showing that it is. I wonder what it is like for the students and faculty who have family in China, how they are managing their worry.

December Break, photo series

We are home for Christmas. Sleep, food, family time.

We are beginning to hear on the news about an illness, maybe a bad flu this year. We watch the news and wonder if this is worse than what the governments in China, the US, Canada and around the world are telling us.

For a while we discuss if we should go back to London, and decide that not enough information is available to know for sure. We will stick with the plan and revise as necessary.

Exams, photo series

December is snow, rain, melting, sleet, snow…. We hardly notice. My daughter is entering her first semester final exam period. I have exams as well.

I always had a heavy reading list as an English major, but math assigns more. One book this term is nearly 800 pages, and we’ve done most of it plus additional material. My daughter shakes her head and I can hear her wondering what her upper years courses are going to be like.

“Tell me,” she says, “Why are we doing this?”