Where Eagles Go

Wake Up on the Bright Side   It was Hawkfest on Easter Friday.This happens at Beamer Park on top of the escarpment at the point i;n the escarpment that juts out towards the lake.  The hawk count has been done each year since 1975.  Here is the site with North American summaries - Mexico, the U.S., Panama and Canada. There are over 300 sites that capture data.  Grimsby is one of 20 sites that list the daily count.  There are large numbers (1490) coming through New York sites, with 207 yesterday counted in Grimsby.  Yesterday would be a good day - sunny and windy.  So there will be bigger numbers coming through to Grimsby in the next few days and weeks, depending on the weather. It was too bad that our festival day was a dull, rainy day.  There were few hawks to be seen and counted.  Other years, there is a stream of birds passing high and low overhead.  It is quite exciting to hear it when there's a Bald Eagle sighted overhead - our highlight was this Bald Eagle up close.

Spring Start

Wake Up on the Bright Side   This lane is situated along the lake in Beamsville.  For me it has the distinction of being where Ralph Suttell's dahlia growing garden is situated.   So I've photographed this row of apple trees along the lane quite a few times.  However, I've not known quite what to do with the photographs as there is a house in the background and the lane itself is unattractive.  Yesterday I did a little spruce-up with textures so that the pictures focus on the compressed row of trees arching up the hill.   Now they look like the start of Spring.

Are there Queen's Tears?

Wake Up on the Bright Side The Grimsby Garden Club will have a speaker on Monday whose topic is the naming of flowers.  My experience so far is that most plants are named after plant discoverers.  Common names, though, seem to relate to how the plant looks or behaves. This first plant has a common name of Firecracker Plant.  It looks like firecrackers amongst the green foliage.  It also has the name of Coral Plant.  This second flower, a Bilbergia, has the common name of Queen's Tears.  The flowers are known to drip nectar when touched.   In comparison to common names, the Latin names of plants seems complicated and extensive. The origins and current day naming are in Latin - references go back to 370 B.C. with Theophrastus, who was Greek. I wonder how it was that Latin has been the universal scientific language from such an early time.  Perhaps Monday's speaker has all the answers. Have a Happy Easter Weekend!

Stormy Weather

Wake Up on the Bright Side There was an ice storm in Southern Ontario yesterday that affected the areas west of us and around the lake to Toronto.  One could see how the escarpment plays a major role in our weather.  Towards the top of the escarpment, there was ice on the trees. At the bottom, it was raining.  Anywhere over the escarpment (which is south of us) the roads were icy and the trees encased in ice.  At the bottom of the escarpment there was rain. This was the scene at Benchscape where I garden the raised beds of herbs and flowers. Benchscape sits on the escarpment in Beamsville looking out over Lake Ontario to the north.  In the top picture, you can see the ice on the trees with the view out over Lake Ontario.   Everything was lightly coated in ice.

Surface Texture

Wake Up on the Bright Side We normally see Clematis in summer when there is an abundance of flowers and colour.  This one is blooming at Seaway Gardens. In the greenhouse setting, the detail of texture and tones can be appreciated.  Most often clematis is above, climbing on an arbour, so we miss out on this marvel of surface and texture.

The Bright Side of Spring

Wake Up on the Bright Side It is the bright side of Spring today.  With such an early Easter, the greenhouse nursery growers have retail operations open. We saw Sunshine Express last week, and today we see the growing greenhouses of Seaway Gardens.  They are located on Lakeshore Road, on the east side of the canal.  I mention this for those of you who want to check out the bargains at Seaway. Flats of pansies are 3 for $30.00 or $10.99 each. This first picture shows you just one of the many greenhouses of hanging pots.  In the second picture, I want you to notice the top photo of the lavender-coloured chair in the lavender field.  This is a picture by Marjorie Wallace, an artist I know from redbubble.  You can see the picture on her site here.  I've seen it in all the garden centres, so this is a great licensing sale for Marjorie. You may be asking the question:  When will the orchards bloom?  When should I drive to Niagara to see the blossoms?  Here is what they look like now, as you pull out of the Seaway parking lot and look towards the Lake.  The colour is showing on the branches.  My guess is we'll see our orchards in bloom for our normal Mother's Day celebration.

Wake Up to Spring

Wake Up on the Bright Side Spring starts tomorrow at 12:30am EDT, so we'll wake up to spring.  If we were in the west, it would be 9:30pm tonight on Saturday March 19. Somehow this seems reversed, so it is most interesting. This will be the earliest arrival of spring in our lifetime in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the Farmer's Almanac.  On the equinox, Earth’s two hemispheres are receiving the Sun’s rays about equally because the tilt of the Earth is zero relative to the Sun, which means that Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the Sun.  (Note, however, that the Earth never orbits upright, but is always tilted on its axis by about 23.5 degrees.)  The Farmer's Almanac is an interesting source of fun facts:  Did you know that the March Moon is called "The Full Worm Moon"?  And if you are planting your garden, blooming crocus are the cue to plant radishes, parsnips and spinach. Our local garden centre is busy making changes - out front is a bob cat and dumpster.  Inside there is a treasure trove of spring flowers. View this email in your browser

Exam Question: Calculate Easter

Perhaps Spring is early this year because Easter is early - on March 27th in just over a week.  The garden centres in Niagara sell a lot of potted flowers for Easter.  Sunshine Nurseries on Carlton Street on the NOTL side of the canal is full of blooms.  Pot plants, perennials, and annuals are on show.  You see the 'sea' of flowers in the top picture and an interpretation of the pretty flower Ranunculus in the bottom picture. There was a question the other day on how do we calculate Easter.  I gather from a search that there are dozens of ways of calculating Easter. This link to  the U.K. Independent Newspaper article describes the Easter calculation.  Here are two of the key calculations. "For most of its history Christians have calculated Easter independently of the Jewish calendar. In principle, Easter falls on the Sunday following the full moon that follows the northern spring equinox (the paschal full moon). However, the vernal equinox and the full moon are not determined by astronomical observation." "In 325CE the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox."

Near the Top

These pictures are a combination of rust on peeling, crackled paint, and paper.  The effect seems to make the textures look like precious metals and velvet.   I usually check out the news before each day's post, and at the bottom of the top 5 stores, below all the ads and  signups (which seem to increase remarkably every day), I saw an article on the 9 best places to retire in Canada.   1. Moncton, NB 2. Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON 3. Kingston, ON 4. Stratford, ON 5. Comox, BC 6. Rimouski, Quebec 7. Ottawa, ON 8. Estevan, Saskatchewan 9, Salmon Arm, BC With Niagara-on-the-Lake just down the road from me, I can enjoy the benefits of a high-class community without the costs that come with it.   V

I Didn't Know What Time It Was

Our title today is a song title by Rogers and Hart. On Saturday I stopped at Moyer Road in Vineland to photograph the solitary oak tree.  I've taken this tree's portrait for a while now and there are two pictures of it - one of these pictures is from December and one from Saturday.  They seem indistinguishable to me.  It will be interesting to see how spring unfolds on the landscape and shows its presence.

Time's Up

It is now Daylight Savings Time.  It brings to mind  our expressions and idioms that describe time. The Wikipedia Time Philosophy Section brings us this introduction: Two distinct viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. An opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of actually existing dimension that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead an intellectual concept (together with space and number) that enables humans to sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that space and time "do not exist in and of themselves, but ... are the product of the way we represent things", because we can know objects only as they appear to us. Here are a few of the expressions/idioms from The Free Dictionary's Time entry: (a) quarter of (a given hour in time) (someone) puts (his/her) trousers on one leg at a time (just like ever a (ticking) time bomb a devil of a time A good time was had by all a hard time a legend in( one's) own time a matter of time a question of time a race against time A stitch in time a week is a long time in politics a whale of a (good) time about time against the clock against time ahead of one's time ahead of time all in good time all the time all the time in the world any time appear at some time arrange for some time arrive on the stroke of some time at a set time at a time at no time at one time at one time or another at present at some time sharp at that point at the appointed time at the present time

Exit Ice from Niagara

It seems that we are having an early start to Spring. The ice at Grimsby Beach was hanging on a few days ago, but is melted now with exceptionally warm weather this week. Snow drops are blooming, along with Christmas Roses (Hellebores) and the Snow Crocuses are blooming too.  Of course, Pussy Willows and Witch Hazel are in bloom.  Pansies and spring flowers are for sale in our garden centres. People are more interested in what was eaten at the White House last night.  It seems that poutine was on the menu:  "White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford will have a “more formal take on the fast food,”  served up as a single bite canapé, featuring “shavings of smoked duck and cheese curds finished with red wine gravy and served on delicate wafer fries.” I found the dinner menu "here".   View this email in your browser

North vs South: Tropical Garden Gems

Something that a tropical garden has that we cannot reproduce here in the north is Spanish moss. An image of beautiful Spanish moss hanging from majestic trees is iconic of South U.S. gardens. It is a Tillandsia, like air plants,  and is related to pineapples.  It does not live 'off' the trees that it lives in, so is of no harm.  In the first picture, it is hanging in a grove of Crepe Myrtles at the Coastal Georgia Botanical Garden in Savannah.  In the second picture are all the elements we associate with Spanish moss - the large, overhanging trees with the stately house in the background.