Fall in Ontario

This past thanksgiving we had the BF's (or I guess FiancΓ© now! FF for Fancy FiancΓ©?) sister down from Ottawa. More on the meal in a future post, but here I wanted to share the amazing walk we all went on in the Don Valley, ET Seton Park. 

I've lived in Toronto for over a year now and it has been the toughest year of my life. Struggling with making friends and finding work and personal health problems, last year I missed the entirety of Ontario's Amazingly Beautiful fall. Not this year! No way. 

Coming from Alberta, fall is Very brief, if not just a winter hick-up, rather than an entire season to itself. But here I am Blown Away by the colour and the warmth and the general Fall-iness of, well, the Fall. I've never seen so many red and yellow and green leaves mixed in together. And for so long! It's week three of gorgeous fall colours and weather! It's inspiring to see nature getting ready to go out, in style. 

Anyway, enough with my gush over leaf colours. I'll leave the pictures to do that for me. But I did want to have one final gush over a butterfly. I saw my first Monarch butterfly in almost 20 years on this walk. When I was a kid in the 90s we used to get Monarch caterpillars at school and let them chrysalis in a shoe box, out of harms way. That was the last time I saw a real live Monarch butterfly. So I know fall is supposed to be the end of the growing season but for me it's like the beginning of something new. <3

(Unintentional third gush about seasons. It happened.... =P)

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist