Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Gnome will Go Homeless in Grimsby

Our little Gnome home across the street at 6 Sunnylea Cres is under attack from the Town of Grimsby.  Apparently, this tiny home could pose a risk for flooding of the next door house, or even to houses further down the street.  A town employee gave the word to our neighbour yesterday, much to her surprise.  Who would guess the possible consequences of harbouring a gnome.

The installation can be left in place for tonight's Open Garden Week Tour sponsored by the Hamilton Spectator's Rob Howard.  Both of our gardens are on the tour this year.

We have mounted a campaign. I've contacted our local newspaper and Mike will do a story next week.  I hope we can gather enough gnomes at the site to show solidarity - I have added two guard gnomes yesterday.  This gnome has its own children's book written about it - the author is Randolph across the street.  Perhaps copies can be sold to raise funds.


This is not a singular story - of one homeless gnome - a search results in a wealth of news and entertainment, with the biggest story in Pennsylvania,  so make sure to check this one out.

Homeless gnomes in Pennsylvania in which nearly 40 gnome homes have been evicted from a Pennsylvania state park after a decision change sent them packing.

Homeless gnomes gather dust in France  A French police station has been stuck with a room of homeless garden gnomes...

Monty's Potting Shed - A Homeless Gnome  A U.K. garden blogger begins a garden for a newly arrived Gnome.

Western Australia's Ferguson Valley has the opposite - a thriving community of gnomes - over 5000.

Would you like a Gnome made just for you?  Go to Gnome de Plume

To follow the journeys of other homeless Gnomes, go to Facebook - here's an example:

Manny the Homeless Gnome has achieved a number of water certifications, though he is homeless.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

School's Out Mostly, Sort-Of

The air smelled like 'Summer' this morning - like the smell when school is out.

So I wondered if school is out. There isn't a single answer - it is quite complicated.  I didn't know that there are 194 mandated school days in the year in Ontario.   It is hard to tell when the school closes for the summer.  How can school close on June 26th?  That's today and it is a Sunday when students don't go to school.  In British Columbia it says school closes June 27th.  So students would go tomorrow for one last day. Lucky B.C. students, compared to Niagara. The last day in Niagara is June 28th, so we'll see some crossing guards out tomorrow and Tuesday, and then a declaration of Summer.

There are school's out songs too.  Alice Cooper shows up at the top of the list. This from Wikipedia: Cooper has said he was inspired to write the song when answering the question, "What's the greatest three minutes of your life?". Cooper said: "There's two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'... It incorporates the childhood rhyme, "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks" into its lyrics.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Adventures in Cycling and Gardens

A few weeks ago I told you about Mark Quattrocchi's adventure of cycling around the world to raise money to build schools in developing countries.  Here's the Global News coverage of his return home. 

Our pictures come from the Niagara-on-the-Lake Shaw Guild garden tour.  Niagara-on-the-Lake has some large properties - I assume created around the War of 1812 or earlier. It was settled around 1781 and known as Butlersburg, in honour of Colonel John Butler, the commander of Butler's Rangers.  It was a British military base, the first capital of Upper Canada, and a central battle site in the War of 1812.  

What we see on the tour is how beautiful some of these back gardens are today with their spacious proportions and mature greenery.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Benchscape Tour Today

Gardens On Tour 

It is a garden tour today for Benchscape, the Beamsville Bench house and garden that Lex Parker designed.

I plant and maintain the raised beds of herbs and flowers and the pots located around the house.  The pictures today show just this area.

This is the house with the lovely meadow garden this year. I posted pictures of it a week ago or so.

 

Thursday, June 16, 2016

What Say You about Summer?

Summer Sayings

What are the quotes of summer?  What comes to your mind?
Shakespeare has an abundance of summer references.  Sonnet 18 opens with a truly famous question.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

There are Summer words and expressions we take for granted. I found this site - it lists the subscribers' grade level estimate for this page as 1st to 3rd grade.  Typically the vocabulary sites are related to learning English. One can go to the positive thesaurus and see a long list of summer expressions here or we can browse this small list - 

Summer beer
Summer break
Summer breeze
Summer camp
Summer celebration
Summer colors
Summer crush
Summer day
Summer fashion
Summer festival
Summer fling
Summer friends
Summer fun
Summer games
Summer gardening
Summer holiday
Summer love
Summer months
Summer night
Summer romance
Summer sauna
Summer sizzle
Summer smiles
Summer solace
Summer solstice
Summer storm
Summer vacation
Summer wardrobe
Summer wedding
Summertime
Summery

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Fun Facts

WHAT ARE THE FUN FACTS TODAY?

This comes from thefactsite.com:  "If you’re bored and have ten minutes to kill, then why not check out this awesome list of the top one hundred most random and fun facts.  
  1. Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour.
  2. In the UK, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day!
  3. Pteronophobia is the fear of being tickled by feathers!
  4. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.
  5. A flock of crows is known as a murder.
  6. “Facebook Addiction Disorder” is a mental disorder identified by Psychologists.
  7. The average woman uses her height in lipstick every 5 years.
  8. 29th May is officially “Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day“.
  9. Cherophobia is the fear of fun.
  10. Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water."
I admit that I found the first fact a little bizarre as something fun. 

Friday, June 10, 2016

Patio Lantern Festival

The Festival of Trees is a Christmas celebration in Grimsby and it raises money for Rotary's charitable causes.  It is very popular with sponsors who pay for trees and decorations.  It is equally popular with the public who view the trees and buy lottery tickets for donated items.  

I started the search for a summer equivalent - some sort of fantasy of summer trees - perhaps a patio lantern festival. I did a search for patio lantern and found so many results.  Of course we find Kim Mitchell's Patio Lanterns hit song, and all the summer festivals he has appeared at recently.

A surprise is more than one winter solstice festival.  I was intrigued by the Secret Lantern Society with their festival at the Winter Solstice.  There's Zoominations where zoos have lantern festivals. The Calgary festival was named Illuminasia.

These all sound so great - how to bring these to Grimsby for a distinct summer event.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Lilycrest Gardens Begin


Lilycrest Gardens, Brian Bergman's lily hybridizing field is full of hope and potential.  The lilies have arisen from their winter dormancy and there are a few early bloomers - martagons and species.  

Our first picture is the noteworthy plant this year - it seems to glow with its brown foliage and green markings.  Brian is checking it regularly to see if it maintains  the foliage colour.  It stands out in the field of thousands of lilies, so this would be a hybridizing achievement.

Our collage together shows  our first blooms, along with the many variations in foliage. 

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Longwood Wisteria

Sometimes I find that I've taken pictures of the same scene without realizing it.  With Longwood's wisteria, I enjoy taking the pictures of wisteria every time we visit.  These wisteria are trained as trees so the flowers are easily viewed and smelled.  They aren't high above on a pergola out of reach.  

These two pictures have been processed with the Georgia O'Keefe filter in the Topaz Labs Impressions software.  The wiggly, liquid lines and soft focus of the filter match the misty day and emphasize the vertical lines of the wisteria