365: Red; Leftovers

This is one of five or six crap apple trees growing "wild" in the big park by our house - 60 acres of park we're so fortunate to have nearby. The park is very well used by the area residents and their dogs, and has been forever. People bring all sorts of food in there and seeds are dropped everywhere. Some take root but whatever might try to grow is usually trampled by people or dog feet before they get a good hold. But these, because they're on the hillside, where people are less inclined to walk, did grow; three of them, side by side, with really nice crab apples for anyone who might want one.

Last year, my friend, Rory (Aurora, actually) and I went down there and stripped as many apples as we could reach from the ground and by climbing. This year, I think both of us still have loads of the jelly we made, so we didn't pick and neither did anyone else. Even the birds didn't partake this year.

365: Red; Territorialism

Like, how do they know??

How do they know whether the trash in there has been deposited by a paying transit customer, or by some random passer-by?

365: Red; The Twenty-Year Tear Down

We moved into this neighbourhood in 1987. Here were the homes into which soldiers and their families usually moved on leaving the army. They are only a few blocks from where the MQs - the married quarters - used to be.

In 1998, Canadian Forces Base Calgary was closed, and pretty much everyone moved to Edmonton, leaving the MQs a virtual ghost town. Then people started renting those old houses on those tree-lines streets with sidewalks through the middle of the trees... and then Canada Lands took over. That's when everything started to change.

Our community used to be the other side of the tracks; people were middle class - barely. When we told people the community we lived in, they'd reply "Oh," with that "poor you," look. Once things in the MQs started to change, the whole area started to gentrify. House prices went from the $87,000 range to $1.5 million around here. Not even 20 years. Now, when we tell people where we live, we get that "Oh," except now it's with the "Oh, you rich people" face... except we live in exactly the same house still.

This house was at the end of the block just one north of us. We see something like this pretty much every day around here. Sometimes, I don't recognize my own street any more; we're the only stretch in this community with all original houses on it. For now.