Virginia was away this Saturday, and had phoned and asked me (Deborah) to lead the group on the same walk as we had taken this Tuesday with Laurette -- Hastings Park. This I was happy to do as I enjoy places as rich in sights and contrasts as this one. So at 10:30 Saturday morning Flora, Lorna, Judi, Linda, Marilyn, Helga and myself left the Senior' Centre at Britannia, straggled up Commercial Drive to Hastings, and caught the #10 bus to the stop across from the park sanctuary entrance. This is one stop east of the Hastings and Renfrew stop.
Laurette provides details of the route in her report of the most recent Tuesday walk, so here I will omit much of that information, other than to say that, again, we followed the City of Vancouver's Hastings Park Walk brochure, Step Out series. While at the Children's Piazza, featuring the braille wall with poem Rain and a statue of a recumbent cow, we noticed that the surrounding trees bore a small green fruit. None of us recognized tree or fruit. Photo attached here. This tree is found along the walk to the Italian Garden as well. The brochure tells us that Il Giardano Italiano features mimosa and pear trees, and since the trees in question definitely are not mimosa, I thought they might be a type of pear or near relative. But we found out it is a Handkerchief tree (Davidia involucrata) also called a dove tree.
Laurette provides details of the route in her report of the most recent Tuesday walk, so here I will omit much of that information, other than to say that, again, we followed the City of Vancouver's Hastings Park Walk brochure, Step Out series. While at the Children's Piazza, featuring the braille wall with poem Rain and a statue of a recumbent cow, we noticed that the surrounding trees bore a small green fruit. None of us recognized tree or fruit. Photo attached here. This tree is found along the walk to the Italian Garden as well. The brochure tells us that Il Giardano Italiano features mimosa and pear trees, and since the trees in question definitely are not mimosa, I thought they might be a type of pear or near relative. But we found out it is a Handkerchief tree (Davidia involucrata) also called a dove tree.
Here is a wikipedia link with more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidia
Finding a restroom proved more difficult on a Saturday than a week day, but we did find one. Here's how to find it: When you emerge from the sanctuary, which is pond, rushes, trees and paths, onto blacktop, you face, to the north, a line of red-painted brick buildings. Go right here and follow the blacktop to the Playland fence. The restrooms are a narrow blue building along the fence by a Ferris wheel.
We had fun posing for photos by the fountains, in the Opera Walk (Please don't eat the daisies, Flora.) and a tribute statue to Christopher Columbus, which Flora seemed particularly fond of.
Near the end of the walk, after visiting the Momiji (Japanese) Garden, we revisited the sanctuary pond, where our arrival caused all the ducks, which had been across pond, to make beelines for us, in the hope of being fed. Some did get bits of apple.
Our final stop in Hastings Park was a Gitksan totem pole among the trees near the entrance at Hastings and Renfrew.
The group broke up at this point, with Deborah, Judi and Linda catching the #10 bus west on Hastings, and Helga, Marilyn, Flora and Lorna walking the same route with a small street festival in the lot behind London Drugs on Hastings (at Slocan??) as their destination. Deborah decided to visit this festival, too, so got off the bus there. Linda and Judi continued on the bus and had a mini-adventure of their own when the bus was in collision with a car. No one was hurt, but the car lost a fender, and Judi reported later that the driver seemed calm, as he retrieved his fender, as if this sort of thing might be a regular occurrence.
Meanwhile, I popped in to read the menu in a Mexican restaurant, and ran into Laurette and her friend Bruce, who had just done the Hastings Park walk, too. So it can be said with confidence that this walk is a winner, if two out of three Tuesday Walkers chose to redo it four days later.
Contributor Deborah
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