Forests & Fairies

Sunday, May 17, 2015

The tree hugging father with a redwood tree, the largest tree
specie on earth.

Yesterday my family and our family friends spent the afternoon in Redwood Park, a local park in Surrey. Unlike the bajillion parks I've seen and visited in the Vancouver area, I found this park pretty neat.

In the late 1800s, twin brothers David and Peter Brown received the property by their father for their 21st birthday (what a present). The Brown twins traveled the world collecting seeds and saplings of exotic tree species, which they planted throughout the property. The park is full of around 50 different tree species from as far away as Russia, Austria, Japan, France, Italy and California; 24 of the main species are marked by a sign with a cool description of the tree. Seeing these different tree species was a beautiful change to the usual stuff that BC is naturally gifted with, and I found myself wanting to read about these random trees that I passed by (because I'm a nerd like that).

Another cool thing in the forest (that I must mention since I took way too many photos of it) was a fairy kingdom filled with fairy houses and it was the cutest thing ever. I did some research and apparently there used to be, like, ten small 'fairy doors' at the foot of random trees, and it was said that fairies lived in them. Couldn't quite find out anything other than that, but unfortunately these doors were vandalized and removed. Since then the community had carried on the spirit by making their own houses and doors, and I actually couldn't get enough of the fairy kingdom. I'm a child.

Thought I'd share some of the pictures from the day, but in reality I'm just overly excited about these fairy houses and want to share some of them on my blog. I couldn't take many pictures of the cool trees because the lighting didn't do them justice and it made me frustrated because it looked way nicer IRL.