Flowers from the Bird Lady
January 30th 2012 - Posted in books, flora and fauna, Life, The World at Large, toronto
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BIRDLADY from FORTNIGHT LINGERIE on Vimeo.
Parkdale, my neighbourhood since 1993, is known for its many characters. People who make the place unique and colourful, people who definitely dance to their own drummer. For 90 some-odd years, one of those characters was Annie Ross. Born in the building that stands on the south-west corner of Queen and Dunn in 1913, she lived there her entire life until her death in 2004. Miss Ross never married, instead running her family’s flower shop at the front of the building, and spending her retirement years in a small apartment at the back where she was known for feeding the local pigeons; thus her nickname, The Bird Lady.
Miss Ross could tell you stories of how Parkdale had changed and grown. She could remember when the lot directly across the street from her on Dunn was a field for horses. She could tell about how the buildings went up along Queen, or how the mansions along Jameson came down to make way for apartment buildings. And she could tell you about books. In a 4-minute short documentary filmed before her death, she talks about how she began keeping track of all the books she read in her lifetime, some 8,600 different titles.
Out of Old Ontario Kitchens
I appear to have created a recurring series of food and recipe book reviews based on books I’ve found in my building’s laundry room. The Fabulous Chinese Cookbook by Harry K. Long dates back to 1965 and this particular copy has been much-used based on the dog-eared pages and splatters and spills, particularly for the “Broccoli with Beef” recipe. The previous owner appears to have been a smoker, so The Fabulous Chinese Cookbook won’t be staying in my collection as even flipping through it causes wafts of stale cigarette smell that give me a headache and make me nauseous. But I’ll endure for long enough to talk about it for a bit.
