The Canadian cherry tree ...

... also known as the Schubert chokecherry, is planted sporadically along the boulevards that line my street. The trees have beautiful fragrant blossoms in the spring. If that isn't remarkable enough, in summer the leaves turn a deep shade of purple, which is a wonderful offset to the green hues of the leaves and grass that otherwise color our neighbourhood. Then, in mid/late-summer, the chokecherries appear. They ripen and fall to the ground, and are trodden underfoot by passersby. It turns the sidewalks purple!

You can make great wine and jam from these berries, but no one ever does. We city folk think trees are decorative and simply let the berries go to waste. I'd love to embrace a more organic way of life in my community. Not some artsy-fartsy, leftover left-wing hippy philosophy, but a truly creative, innovative symbiosis with my surroundings.

What could that look like in an urban setting?

My thanks to my friend, Camille, who helped me identify these wonderful trees. I took the photo above with my iPhone and emailed it to Camille as we sat on my front porch. When Camille returned home, she grabbed the photo from her inbox and forwarded it to a botanist acquaintance.