Scarborough Bluff Silver Maple (oil on canvas 4 x 6 in.)

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The late afternoon of 24 March finds me standing in a cold puddle of soggy lawn by the parking lot at the foot of Brimley Road where it comes down into Bluffers Park.  A large Maple tree screens the bluff that flanks the road.  Its reaching branches, purpled by the shadow of the bluff behind me except for its sunlit, bud-swelling branch tips embrace the cerulean sky.  The park is busy today, a sunny 15C, though cooling toward the evening.  Four-wheelers buzz about, children scamper along the paths, and cars creep down the astonishingly sloped entrance road and position themselves here and there among the ample parking lots.  Fred checked that the stands of Phragmites reed are spreading nicely, advancing in their self appointed task of stabilizing the sandy clay bluffs, and after I lost my painting light, we drove to the parkinglot at the east end of the park to sample the beach drift.

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