Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Send in the Clowns


It is time to send in the clowns, and I found this one in a pot of Oxalis (clover looking leaves) in the Sarasota garden we stayed at last winter.  Sarasota is the winter home of the Ringling Circus, so this would be a great garden theme for ornaments.  Niagara is known for vineyards, orchards and Niagara Falls - what would my garden have as 'regional' ornaments?  Perhaps plastic grape clusters hanging from trees.  There are those bottle trees, although they aren't my favourite.  A common sight is dead fruit trees in front gardens as 'testaments to the past' sculptures.  There is one around the corner from me.  These aren't the sort of ornament to cheer one up, though.  

Our brains process between 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day, according to wikiHow.  So there's lots of opportunity to be grumpy and happy.  Especially in Winter...

Last week on JazzFM, Brad Barker gave the advice of hopping up and down for a few minutes as a technique for cheering up. That seems doable and simple.  Let me know how it goes for you.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Spring Ahead with a Countdown

Counting down is something we like to do.  Those of us who were there for the "Space Era" know about "T-Minus" - the countdown to launch.  
During countdown:
  • Aerospace personnel bring the rocket vehicle to the launch site and load it with payload and propellants;
  • Launch-center computers communicate with sensors in the rocket, which monitor important systems on the launch vehicle and payload;
  • Launch personnel monitor the weather and wait for the launch window;
  • Security personnel prevent unauthorized persons from entering the "keep-out" area.
Each mission requires approximately 100 procedure books.

The same generation will remember early Films and their start with a countdown sequence printed on the head leader so that the film could be synchronized with sound. I hadn't realized that the countdown is in units of feet rather than time.

Our implied countdown today is Spring, as we look at spring flowers. 

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Orange Around


Santa Fe has the most remarkable architecture with adobe walls and courtyards.  This soft coral orange colour seems perfect in the desert landscape.  Below it is a lily from Ontario with its own orange colour that makes sense in the lush Ontario summer landscape.














Sunday, January 17, 2016

Pacific Rim Bonsai Museum

The art of Bonsai is the subject of our image today.  This was taken on a visit to the Pacific Rim Bonsai Museum near Seattle in February 2006, and it looks like a plum in bloom.  I've been back a few times and have a portfolio of images named "A Garden in the Palm of My Hand" showcasing bonsai.

There is a showcase story on the website and the showcase tree is the large Trident Maple that is in the collection.  

 

Domoto Trident Maple

On February 20, 1915, the world celebrated the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, a year-long fair showcasing new technology, fine art and wonders from around the world. The Pacific Bonsai Museum is fortunate enough to have one of these wonders here at the museum.
This trident maple originally came to the United States from Japan as part of a pair of bonsai. One tree went to San Diego for the Panama-California Exposition while this tree went to the fair in San Francisco. Already a large bonsai, it sat proudly on the verandah of the Formosa Tea House in the Japanese Garden and unsurprisingly caught the eye of many at the exposition as it earned both a gold medal and a first place certificate for specimen trees. At the conclusion of the fair Kanetaro Domoto, owner of the local Domoto Brothers Nursery and lover of bonsai, bought it.
Kanetaro and his brothers had immigrated to the United States from Japan in the mid 1880s and established one of the first commercial nurseries in northern California. They imported plants, including bonsai, directly from Japan and trained so many Japanese immigrants in the nursery business that they became known as the “Domoto College.” As interest in exotic plants grew so did the Domoto Brothers Nursery. By 1902 the Domotos were running a 35 acre nursery in Oakland, California, the first large scale nursery in the United States.
Toichi and Tree_Cropped
Toichi Domoto and the trident maple
Kanetaro continued to care for his trident maple for many years until, in the late 1920s, the nursery encountered financial troubles and the property was foreclosed. However, the receiver for the bank recognized how important the tree was to Kanetaro and allowed him to keep it. It was then moved to Hayward, California where his son, Toichi, had started his own nursery. Toichi showed the tree at flower shows around the area throughout the 1930s until he and his family were forced into internment camps during World War II. While interned he relied on friends to water the maple. Upon returning home after the war he found that the tree had sent roots through the bottom of its planter and had grown immensely. Over the next four decades Toichi refined and cared for the tree until he could no longer climb a ladder to prune it. Finally in 1990 after watching the leaves change color one last time he decided the tree should be loaned to the newly established Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection.
2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and still, the Domoto Trident Maple sits proudly for all to admire. The tree, like the Domoto family, has persevered and despite the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II, both have recovered. Thanks to the family’s generous donation of the tree to the museum the Domoto legacy is ensured for future generations.
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Friday, January 15, 2016

The Colours of Water

"That cool, refreshing glass of water on a hot day may appear colorless, but water is actually a faint blue color. The blue color becomes visible when we look down into, or through, a large volume of water.
We see water in a variety of ways. It may be colored by particles, the presence of bacteria, or by reflecting the world above its surface. Ice and snow may reveal a vivid internal blue. Water itself has an intrinsic blue color that is a result of its molecular structure and its behavior."

We've got pictures of three bodies of water in Grimsby today.  The first is the Forty Creek, and we can see the muddy colour from sediment.  The second is recognizable as Grimsby Beach on the Lake with that blue tone. As these pictures were taken on the same day and within a half hour of each other, one can see how much the sky plays a part in creating the colour of water. And then we have the creek next to the Cemetery - it seems to be  black.

Wikipedia says: "A few tens of meters of water will absorb all light, so without scattering, all bodies of water would appear black."  
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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Congratulations to 'They'!

We're still on the theme of headlines, and the word of the year has been announced with a delightful headline from Voice of America:

'They' Wins as Linguists' Word of the Year 
"Its usage has been a source of contention since the times of Shakespeare and Chaucer — both of whom, for your Grade 3 teacher’s information, used “they” to refer to a single person on occasion.
Puritanical grammar nerds have been sticklers, however, for pairing singular subjects (for example, “the suspect”) with singular pronouns (“he” or “she”) — even when the person’s gender is not known. The rationale is that “they” should only refer to multiple persons, not just one.
So traditionalists would rather see this:
“Everyone took his or her chances on the roads that day.”
Than this:
“Everyone took their chances on the roads that day.”
That’s started to change, slowly: The Washington Post, for example, changed its style guide last year to accept a singular “they.”
But this kind of “they” got a thumbs up from some of the nerdiest word nerds Friday evening, when an overwhelming majority of the American Dialect Society cast their annual words of the year ballots for:
 “they: gender-neutral singular pronoun for a known person, particularly as a nonbinary identifier.”

Congratulations to "They"!

On to our pictures of the day:  The Ontario Regional Lily Society has its flower show at the Royal Botanical Gardens atrium each year.  The natural light in the atrium and the tall open space showcase the flower colours and forms beautifully.  I stopped in the perennial gardens and the conservatory, and found a cornucopia of flowers and model trains. They seem to be together a lot.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Winter Retreat to Lilycrest Gardens

Winter's cold winds are gusting across the Grimsby landscape so it is a good time to retreat to the landscape of summer's beautiful Lilies.  These are in Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field, in St. Catharines on Fifth Street, close to the QEW.  

Friday, January 8, 2016

Peninsula Ridge - Photogenic in any weather

What could be better than the headline on the online  CBC news 'Snowy owl ppotted soaring by Montreal traffic camera.'  It is a great shot of the owl looking directly into the camera with the characteristic curiosity of an owl. Take a look "here" if you hare interested.

Today we see the difference in temperature and snow cover in the pictures of Peninsula Ridge Winery.  The tones and colours are so dissimilar in different weather, and different skies.




 

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Winter's Infinity Pool

A return visit to Grimsby Beach yesterday revealed a winter landscape of ice on rocks.  The waves of the day before have frozen and formed icicles.

The old Grimsby pier still stretches out into the water even though it is much smaller than the days when the steamer Turbinia docked there.  I've included an historical postcard so you can see what it was like then.

Yesterday's sunny scene was a remarkable one - with the pier covered in ice.  It had the appearance of an infinity pool with the blue ice floating over the blue water.  The gulls standing at the end of the pier make a wonderful focal point.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Full Steam Ahead for 2016!

Steam Traction!  These are too big to be called 'Tractors'.

That's what these pictures show.  We drove to Puslinch Ontario which isn't very far away - only a half hour or so.  It seemed like a century away - into the rural landscape of Ontario and into the past of farming.

This is part of the collection of private collector and restorer Wayne Fischer.  He had an open house for the volunteers of the Steam Heritage Museum.  This is a private facility on his property.  Volunteers were allowed to invite a few friends and Gerry and I were lucky to be invited.

We saw dozens of these massive steam tractors in the shop. The facility houses his own collection and has engines from other collectors so it is a big facility and is packed with these machines in varied states of restoration. At the far end is a boat which has the story of being the sister boat to the "African Queen" in the Humphrey Bogart movie.

It seemed much bigger than Strasburg.  Or was it the music and food and everyone talking and enjoying themselves. There was a fiddle orchestra for entertainment along with the big table of potluck food.  It was a wonderful community event full of good spirits and steam enjoyment.

And why have the Open House in the winter?  The reason is significant: this is the only place in Canada that you can come year round and see the machines running on steam.  The facility has special telescopic smoke stacks to allow the steam engines to be started indoors and driven outside.

What an amazing day for lovers of steam!

See and read more here.  Or also here for a news article.

And wrapping up 2015 there is Contest News of Finalist in the November Betterphoto Contest for a Japanese Iris image.

And I've published a photo essay about the Calamus Rusty Shed at Lifeashuman.com.  It's here.