Marilyn's Photos - Feb 23 2026 - Olympic Highs and Lows

 

It is time for the Olympic wrap-up. And that means the Highs and Lows of the 2026 Winter Games. But whose highs and lows are these? The Globe and Mail’s reporters weighed in on their own version of highs and lows.  It seems like it is about which country won the most medals. Norway is the winner of the highs here. There are lots of countries who won no medals - new competitors and smaller countries. Canada is noted for experiencing the worst medal total and ranking since 1992. This has been tied to decreased funding for the past 20 years. In contrast, Norway’s children-focused sports model was seen as the winner of sports models along with medals.  Norway has been dominating the Winter Olympics since 2014. It has won the most gold medals at every winter games since Vancouver 2010.  Everyone wants to report on why is Norway so successful.  Here’s one answer listed: “The point of doing sport in Norway is to lead a good life. So you start young and learn motor skills, social skills, and then you learn how to use your body in a physical setting."  Here’s another article: “Until the age of 12 in Norway, nobody in youth sports is allowed to keep score, and there are no league standings either. As a result, there is far less destructive pressure and no reason to specialize too soon, and young athletes are encouraged to try out multiple sports. If one player gets a trophy, everyone gets a trophy; they want as many children as possible to return the following season.” Here’s a downhill snowboard scene from a few years ago in Toronto.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 22 2026 - Snowdrop Sighting

 

Enough snow was gone yesterday to reveal the leaves and grass, and that means the garden.  I looked and looked and finally found some tiny leaves coming up - Snowdrops. This is late for them.  I guess being buried under snow gives them the sense that they can have a long winter nap.  Snowdrops are considered our earliest spring bloomer. I went looking for blooming cherry trees in Victoria but alas, the internet has lost its retrieval tools.  It wants to show me things from whenever and wherever.  I got to thinking that we went to Vancouver in February many years ago, and then went to Victoria. We visited Sooke Harbour House. Early spring was everywhere.  Sooke got my attention because it was a boutique hotel with a pioneering culinary approach of the 100 mile diet, a garden-to-table approach which included edible flowers. Since then, we have visited every so often whenever we were on the West Coast.  Sooke Harbour House went through a few years of financial and legal controversies - all with much news coverage. In July 2025, restauranteur Luke Evanow purchased it after a $14 million dollar renovation. Here’s what it loos like from the air - far larger than the last time we were there.   Here are some of my pictures from February 2006.  I remember the Erica (Heather) everywhere, and Rosemary was a perennial in the gardens. This is likely an ornamental plum tree blooming beside the wood storage.  And of course, the beautiful view of the mountains and ocean.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 21 2026 - Who is related to who?

 

My initial thought about former Prince Andrew being removed from the line of success to the throne is about the immediate Royal family dying in some catastrophic event, and there he is - the next Royal standing.  More of a plot from the 1500s or 1600s, don’t you think? Or not, given the urgency there seems to be to remove him. We focus greatly on the Royal succession.  Then I wondered this question?  Who walk among us today as the living relatives of some of our most revered humans throughout history?  Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare? Let’s start somewhere and find the closest living relative to Leonardo da Vinci.   From the Smithsonian Magazine:   Fourteen people (men) alive today, ranging in age from 1 to 85 years old have a direct genetic link to the famed Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci.  Only one of these knew about their link to da Vinci.  There are other relatives that are mostly indirect from the female line - that includes Franco Zeffirelli. They can’t help with information about Leonard’s DNA - particularly on the Y-chromosome which is transmitted to male descendants and remains almost unchanged for 25 generations. Narrowing down the list of Leonardo’s blood relatives is time-consuming, complicated work. Leonardo never married or had children, so there are no direct descendants. The scientist and artist was born out of wedlock to Ser Piero, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a young peasant woman, in 1452. All told, Leonardo had an estimated 22 half-siblings, including 17 from his father’s multiple relationships.  So the next question is:  So what? That means:  What is there to learn in this DNA revelation? The project doing this gruelling research wants “to understand how his extraordinary talents, such as visual acuity and creativity, may have been influenced by his genetics…The project’s findings could reshape the way the art world thinks about authenticating works and provide a deeper understanding of da Vinci’s genius.”  There’s an idea that his elusive DNA may be right here in his art work. I finished my presentation on Great Public Gardens in Your Own Backyard.  Then I realized that I had omitted a very important but tiny garden in St. Catharines.  This is the Harriet Tubman Memorial Garden at the Salem Chapel, BME Church on Geneva Street.  The picture is from 2014 when I was a garden volunteer taking care of the tiny Memorial Garden that held this statue of her.  This was her church from 1851 to 1858.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 20 2026 - Yosemite Horsetail Fall

 

Seeing Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall now is complicated with permits and restrictions.   And then recommendations:  “From mid to late February, the waterfall begins to light up 5 to 15 minutes before sunset. However, you should plan to invest several hours to get to the right place in time.”  That would be referring to “you” in the thousands. No reservations for 2026, so I guess it will be a Photographers Shove-Fest. That’s because it is an alignment of sun, waterfall and the Viewer.  Alternatively, we can sign into one of the webcams - such as  the El Capitan Webcam to check the water flow in Horsetail Fall before you make the trip. That’s funny for us here in Niagara to think that would be useful.  At the same time, we get to see what’s going on for ourselves with many webcams positioned around  Yosemite.  The webcams are all  HERE.   Some of those thousands jostling for a view will get to stand where Galen Rowell stood when he took the first photo that was published and revealed the astonishing phenomenon.  Ansel Adams got the photograph earlier - but it was in monochrome - too bad.  So it has only been since 1973 that we have had this marvel available to us through photography. Here it is.  Doesn’t it look like lava or fire!  And the second photo is just one of many of his that brings home the reason why Yosemite has been a sacred place since humans have experienced it. John Muir referred to it as a sacred temple. Lincoln protected it in 1864, the first time the U.S. government protected land. We can marvel at the every-day reflections.  Here’s Main Street Grimsby with the red light reflected on the wet pavement, giving a shimmering effect. Not Yosemite, but a little reminder there are beautiful things all around us every day.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 19 2026 - Snow Melting

 

With the snow  receding, I’ve been doing dog duty in the back yard for the last week.  With each few  inches, another clean-up can occur.  I’m not sure how much of a melt we will get. to complete the clean-up.  Likely I will be cleaning up till March.  And then a new season starts. I notice Millie never stepped in her own poop.  I would watch her in the yard covered in snow, and she made zigs and zags along her route to avoid things.  I am not so lucky.  The human foot is attracted to a dog poop like a metal to a magnet.   While dog poop is the normal sort of every-day find after snow and ice melt, there are many more interesting things found as glaciers melt. Poor 5,300-year-old Iceman Otzi, found in the Alps.  He received a severe arrow wound causing rapid blood loss, and then a severe, potentially fatal head injury.  No accident there.  And the remains look too real to show you here.  This is breakfast time when I am writing. And likely there’s no time that seems the right time.   Besides finding people under the snow, there’s a history of the mundane. Take mittens.  A 1,100-year-old-mitten was found in Norway.  I wonder what the history of lost mittens through the ages might be.  AI is at the ready:  A famous lost mitten dating to 16th-17th century in Sweden had the “two-end” knitting technique.  Supposedly that was a lost practice.  Seems strange to me - it is just normal to tie two mittens together with a string.  There’s no genius involved. Did you know that scientists left a message in a bottle in 1951 on a glacier under a rock cairn on Ward Hund Island in the Canadian Arctic?  It was to document the retreat of the ice between the rock cairn and glacier edge. In 1959 it was 4 feet, and in 2013 when found, the distance was 333 feet. The 2013 team left the note in the bottle, and added their own asking to continue the experiment.  Here are some mittens showcased on a previous year’s Fantasy of Trees wreath.