Marilyn's Photos - Sep 8 2026 - Chocolate Dobby

 

What are all the chocolate Dobby headlines?  You remember Dobby - that gnome-sized character in Harry Potter.  A benevolent elf.  What makes him the subject of chocolate sculpting.  Two hundred and fifty hours to create a dark chocolate Dobby on YouTube.  Looking at the YouTube lineup Chocolate Dobby is one of many in the world of Amaury Guichon who turned a citrus slice into a pastry, built a giant rainforest frog entirely from chocolate, turned a peacock into chocolate... you get the trend.  So I guess Chocolate Dobby gets the biggest headlines because of this combination of Harry Potter and celebrity chocolate chef, Amaury Gichon.  Having Swiss and French parents, he seems to have the best heritage in the culinary dessert world. He won the French reality show titled - "Who will be the next great pastry chef?"  That seems so divine compared to North American reality show themes. He's only 35 now and has run the Lenotre boutique and school in Cannes, was the executive chef at the Hugo and Victor patisserie and chocolate shop, and reached the level of executive chef by the age of 21.  He hosts his own reality show School of Chocolate where contestants construct chocolate sculptures.  As a social media celebrity he has 22.0 million subscribers on YouTube, and so on.  I checked out some of his sculptures - massive things.  Isn't he a smiling and creative sort of celebrity?  A bright dazzling smile to light up our day and bring a little Harry Potter fun our way on the first day of school. To me, September is very much the month of Dahlias.  This is their best blooming time just before the frost.  I find out they like warm days and cool nights - that's September here.  Dahlias originate from the high plains of Mexico - even there they have a dormant season.  But it seems Dahlia origins are long gone to growers and hybridizers who only speak of hard frost and lifting the tubers.  This picture was taken at Ralph Suttell's Dahlia house quite a few years ago. He was a well-known grower and show competitor, and lived close by. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 7 2026 - The Biggest Monday Holiday

 

My guess is that this is the biggest holiday Monday of the year.  Victoria Day, Thanksgiving - these are nice holidays.  But this holiday Monday launches into new territory - it is the day before the beginning of the school year for Canadians.  All the other holidays are landing places which have events of their own.  I can't think of Labour Day events that are significant.  And then our Ontario landing day events such as the CNE and the International Air Show conclude on Labour Day.  That makes them closing events to the summer and focus attention on what's next.   And what's next here in Canada is the school year.  A substantial portion of the population - those under 20 or so, if we include anyone going to post-secondary education consider this a significant day for other reasons than Labour and workers. We have to look back in history - the workers being celebrated on Labour Day worked for a specific kind of owner - the ones we think of as Robber barons and "Captains of industry" (as I call them).  These were the corporate titans who weren't considered as predatory as robber barons. To me the amassing of personal wealth and the control of major sectors of industry/economy, not just creating monopolies are the criteria for being in the "Owner" Class.   The instigating event that led to all this celebration is the 1872 printers' strike in Toronto. It was about the fight for a nine-hour work day - down from 12 hours. At that time union activity was illegal, and the strikers were put in prison.  The fight over rights developed between George Brown, owner of The Globe and John A MacDonald, Prime Minister of Canada.  MacDonald changed the laws, so he won the titan battle.  However,  the strikers mostly lost their jobs.  Workers did get the right to a nine-hour day and a 54-hour week.  There was an annual celebration of the victory of the Nine Hour Movement.   The U.S. had started a "labor day" commemoration each year.  Canada declared a national labour holiday in 1894, and made Labour Day official.  Winnipeg's Labour Day parade stretched five kilometres.   So here we are at the milestone of the year that celebrates the little person's right to a decent work day, wages and working conditions. But we're actually looking ahead to the next volume to unfold in the lives of children and students where the path of education is considered paramount in Canada.    Here's a wonderful farm nearby - Substrata - selling organic produce. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 6 2026 - Vote for "they"

 

I've never considered this a complicated decision to English: making a singular, no-gender pronoun official.  It seems it is very complicated.  It has been on and off for centuries. "They" emerged by the 14th century and was in use then.  But it got criticism since the mid-18th century by "prescriptive commentators."  There were alternatives proposed, but they didn't land well. There were suggestions of "it" and "which"  by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1808.  I guess a poet counts as having more expertise.  There were some really odd ideas - Thon (the blend of that and one).  How about zie? That's a recent one. Looking back, there was a similar resistance to "you" replacing "thou, thee, and thy" in the 1600s.  We shouldn't be surprised at resistance in the 20th century and into the 21st where it has become much more nuanced. This from the oed.com: "In 1794, a contributor to the New Bedford Medley mansplains to three women that the singular they they used in an earlier essay in the newspaper was grammatically incorrect and does no ‘honor to themselves, or the female sex in general.’ To which they honourably reply that they used singular they on purpose because ‘we wished to conceal the gender,’ and they challenge their critic to invent a new pronoun if their politically-charged use of singular they upsets him so much. More recently, a colleague who is otherwise conservative told me that they found singular they useful ‘when talking about what certain people in my field say about other people in my field as a way of concealing the identity of my source.’" Now we have those who want to identify as not being male or female in the traditional sense.  That's what I think is the likely source of controversy now.  It's not about concealing gender, but of casting gender descriptions off or aside.  The Chief Editor of the OED, Robert Burchfield considers the trend to be irreversible.   Shakespeare didn't have any problems with unspecified or general genders.  But remember that was in the 14th century when using they was ok.  As in Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 4.  "God send every one their heart's desire!"   An excellent sentiment.     The heart and the rose come together for this image.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 5 2026 - A Cloffice sized room

 

A home office in a space that would normally be a closet or a laundry room has a happy name - the Cloffice. How big is a cloffice, or perhaps more importantly, how small can a cloffice be to function?   It can be so tiny as to be a desk where the chair sits outside the space - 22 go 24 inches deep.  It would be 44 to 48 inches deep if your chair sits in it.  The width would be 3 to 4 feet wide.  In the past, we called these nooks.  The word is still used along with alcoves and recesses.  When there is a nook involved, the term is nook cloffice.  The next size up is a deep reach-in or small-walk-in would be 4 to 6 feet wide and 4 to 7 feet deep. A large walk-in would be 7 by 7 feet or larger.  That's bigger than the 'standard' closet which is considered to be 3 to 6 feet wide and 24 inches in depth.  So the corner office in our house would be considered large.  However it isn't a converted closet.  It was a bedroom, but could only fit a single bed, and not a double or queen size bed.  It isn't much larger than the standard walk-in closet size of 10 feet by 10 feet.  And considering trends, it might have been converted into a walk-in closet by a different owner.  So many options these days - we really enjoy being creative in our home spaces.  I typically come to a topic a few years late. Today's inspiration was a Globe and Mail article where the pictures of the cloffices were of rooms so large I couldn't image these were once closets. I began to wonder if I knew what size closets are today.  Our house is 1960s, back when closets were small things.   So I looked for some history and see a lot of articles on the cloffice from 2021 - the cloffice was a pandemic trend.  And with condos in Toronto being 500 to 900 square feet, a cloffice would be a normal thing. Articles confirm that the trend became standard in the 2010s and exploded with COVID, where home offices absolutely had to happen.  Widen the search and you will find yourself in the garden! There are articles that show how to convert the garden shed into a shed office, (maybe a shedfice or a garfice).  There are way more pictures of turning garden sheds into offices.  Perhaps this is more novel and appealing as a story. The Home Depot is full of ideas on this topic.  Take a 7 by 7 foot Rubbermaid storage shed, and turn it into a she shed kind of office - just steps outside the back door of your home.  Most of these how-to articles were published in 2021 during COVID, something to keep you busy during those strange times. No heating or ventilation is mentioned in the articles, so I guess they thought COVID would be gone by winter.  But it turns out that standalone garden offices and backyard office pods are trending in 2026.  Biophilic and nature-connected designs, multifunction layouts with electrical and climate control for year-round.  Palram and Summerwood are noted companies that advertise.  The price tag?  Around $20,000 for the starter size.  I bet the one pictured with the grand piano costs a fit more than that.  Isn't that perfect - a grand piano out in the open with no climate-control.  Tune that one each week, and then throw it out in no time when it's warped.   Isn't this picture delightful for the topic - a dog house converted to a dog shed.  This is at Beth Powell's garden in Canboro. Sophie might want one, but Millie is not so interested.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Mairlyn's Photos - Sep 4 2026 - Lone Trees Look Out

 

I've been depicting trees in my watercolour/digital drawing work.  This picture came up with this story.   "For 300 years, a single tree stood alone in the heart of the Sahara. The most isolated tree on earth. The only tree for 250 miles in any direction. In 1973, a truck driver hit it. The Tree of Ténéré was so significant that it was one of the only trees ever marked on a map drawn at a scale of 1:4,000,000. In a desert the size of a continent, cartographers felt it was too important to leave off. Caravans navigated by it. Tuareg nomads considered it sacred. The Tuareg people who passed it on their journeys never used it for firewood or allowed their camels to graze on it. In a desert where survival demanded using everything available, this single tree was left completely untouched out of reverence. During a dig near the tree in 1938, researchers found that its roots had reached the water table 33 to 36 metres below the surface. In 1973, a Libyan truck driver, reportedly drunk, followed the old caravan route and drove directly into the trunk. His name was never released. The impact shattered the acacia beyond recovery. The remains were taken to the National Museum of Niger in Niamey, where they are still kept today." Reading the story, it comes across as a promotion for something or other product.  It is that dramatic tone of voice.  So I researched this to find out if it is a true story, and it is. This picture was taken in 1961 and is in the Wikipedia entry.  Its name is the Tree of Ténéré.   It has been memorialized since its destruction, and there are reproductions of it in bronze in various places. And it joins a long list of famous trees that have been destroyed.  The 200-ear-old Sycamore Gap Tree in Northumberland, England was chainsawed in 2023.  The Golden Spruce, a rare genetic mutation,  in Haida Gwaii, B.C. was destroyed in 1997 by a disgruntled forest worker.  The Mark Twain Tree was a massive, 1,300 giant sequois in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.  It was deliberately felled to send plants to museums to prove how big and old it was.  The oldest felled tree was Prometheus a britstlecone pine, cut down in 1964.  It was thought to have been the oldest known organism on the planet - somewhere between 4800 and 5000 years old.  This was in the U.S. where a student was studying trees in North Carolina and found a very old specimen  He couldn't optain a sample core, so got permission to cut the tree down in order to count its rings.   There are more stories like these - covered HERE.  Doesn't this history lesson have a moral meaning.  I had no idea our species is so consistent in its destruction of special things.  And look out if you are a lone tree.   Here is the symbol of the Royal Horticultural Society in the U.K.  A massive single tree. I took this picture many years ago.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com