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

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 3 2026 - On the Other Side of the Earth

 

That might be a fun game.  What is on the other side of the earth from [somewhere].  This is known as an antipode - a point that is on the exact opposite side of the earth from a given location.  I've not heard of this before.  So choosing Grimsby, the answer is: "On the exact opposite side of the Earth (the antipode) from Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, you will find open ocean.  If you were to dig a tunnel straight down through the center of the planet, you would emerge in the southern Indian Ocean. The precise geographical coordinates for this opposite point are approximately 43.19° S, 100.44° E.  This point is highly isolated, but here is what is closest to it: Nearest Land: The isolated Heard Island and McDonald Islands (an Australian territory) lie roughly 2,000 kilometers to the southwest, and the southwestern coast of Australia (near Perth) is about 1,600 kilometers to the northeast. Because water covers over 70% of the planet's surface, most places in North America similarly line up with the vast waters of the Indian Ocean rather than solid land." It turns out that New Zealand is pretty popular as an antipode location. It even has the Antipodes Islands, southeast of New Zealand. Wikipedia has a ranking by population of antipodal pairs.  This history is interesting with the first Roman geographer asserting that the Earth had two habitable zones but that the unbearable heat at the Equator meant we would never meet. A zoom through the Earth to the other side land only to find water. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 2 2026 - Turtle Tears

 

I saw a picture on the Fine Art America site and thought it was AI-created.  It was a butterfly on the nose of a turtle.  So i screenprinted it and ran it through HIVE, and it was not AI-generated.  So let's go see about butterflies on turtle noses.  In summary, butterflies land on turtle noses to drink their tears for vital salt and minerals. It happens in rainforests as rainforest soil and flower nectar lack enough sodium and amino acids.  The behaviour is called "tear feeding."  Sometimes there are a lot of butterflies around a turtle, and so when they become too bothersome, turtles slide back into the water.  This is specific to the western Amazon basin in Peru and Ecuador.  Our North American turtles?  They don't eat butterflies - they are omnivores or carnivores.  Butterflies are pretty fast-flying to be regular food for them. And our butterflies in our conservatories are well-nourished, so no need to visit the turtles there.   Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 1 2026 - And then there's Messi Tattoos

 

Maybe this recent investigation of tattoos comes from a few sources.  One is the continuing pictures of Lionel Messi.  The photographers seem to go for the tattooed arm waving in the air.   I am well rewarded in looking up his tattoos. This is a long story with Messi having many tattoos.  I found a site that provided a detailed tour of Messi Tattoos - it has its own table of contents as there are 18 of them - they are HERE.  Here's an excerpt for the first six.   1. MOTHER’S PORTRAIT (FIRST EVER TATTOO) Location: Left shoulder blade Meaning: A tribute to Celia Messi, his biggest supporter and foundation runner Story: This was Messi’s very first tattoo, showing where his heart has always been—with family. His mother runs the Leo Messi Foundation, helping underprivileged children worldwide. 2. THIAGO’S HANDPRINTS Location: Left leg Meaning: Actual handprints of his firstborn son Story: Added on November 2, 2012, the day Thiago was born. Initially mistaken for Maradona’s “Hand of God,” Messi clarified by adding his son’s name inside the prints. 3. “THIAGO” NAME TATTOO Location: Within the handprints on left leg Meaning: His eldest son’s name Story: Added to clarify that the handprints belonged to his son, not a football reference, showing his priorities as a father first. 4. ANTONELLA’S EYE Location: Right bicep Meaning: Portrait of his wife’s eye Story: A romantic tribute to Antonella Roccuzzo, his childhood friend turned soulmate, whom he’s known since age five. 5. KISSING LIPS Location: Arm Meaning: Antonella’s lips Story: Another romantic gesture honoring his wife, added after years of dating before their 2017 wedding. 6. FAMILY BIRTHDATES Location: Left leg (within Thiago’s handprints) Meaning: Birth dates of Antonella and all three sons Story: November 2, 2012 (Thiago), September 11, 2015 (Mateo), March 10, 2018 (Ciro), and February 26, 1988 (Antonella). and a bunch more to get to that total of 18.  Here's a picture reference.  It is a visual storybook, don't you think?   Here's a pretty garden scene - one of the Grimsby gardens on the garden tour. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com