Marilyn's Photos - Apr 12 2026 - That Marshmallow Drop

 

Remember the headline about "The Marshmallow Drop" yesterday?  Here is how it goes. Locations: Primarily held at Elizabeth Park in Trenton and Nankin Mills Park in Westland. How it Works: Helicopters make multiple passes releasing marshmallows; children are divided into age groups (4 and under, 5-7, 8+). The Goal: Children collect the marshmallows (not for eating) and trade them for prize bags. (They are flour-coated, around 15,000 - 20,000 of them.) Special Prize: One specially colored marshmallow is often hidden, with the finder receiving a larger prize. Origin: The tradition has been running for over 30 years.  The event is typically free and held regardless of weather, except for extreme conditions.  There's a "blizzard of marshmallows"  and one must find the "special marshmallow" to win an "amazing prize" - check out the BBC video HERE.   The headlines show they happen in lots of places.  It began in Michigan in 1985, and took all these years for me to find out about it. Maybe because there were glitches to start - for example, the marshmallows fell in one large, sticky clump, and then they have to keep the kids from trying to eat them.  Now volunteers flour them so they "rain down." I can see Shirley Temple in the middle of the field, singing and dancing.   Dog-tooth violets are one of the native ephermals - early Spring risers who go dormant in the summer. You will spot many of these small, spotted leaves in the woods - thousands of them - and possibly a few flowers.  Given how wonderful the leaves are, it all works.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 17 2026 - Shamrock Green the Colour

 

Since the internet, technical information abounds - it knows no limits. Take Shamrock Green. It is  #009E60 the hex code in photoshop and similar tools to specify exact colours.  It is a strong, lively green tone.   "In the RBG colour space, it  is 0% red, 62% green and 37.6% blue.  Whereas in a CMYK color space, it is composed of 100% cyan, 0% magenta, 39.2% yellow and 38% black. It has a hue angle of 156.5 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 31%. #009e60 color hex could be obtained by blending #00ffc0 with #003d00. Closest websafe color is: #009966." You can see what I mean - lots of technical specifications.  And the details turn out to be fascinating in this article HERE.  This is colorhexa.com.  Perhaps things haven’t got more complicated - they are just more available for us to read and learn about them.  The article includes the simulation of how colour blindness experiences the colour.   Our watercolour class yesterday involved painting pretty little shamrocks in delicate patterns - and the lively Shamrock Green works wonderfully with these pictures. Other pictures?  Not so great. Garish. Shamrock jokes are very corny.  Head over to Guinness World Records and there are records for the largest human shamrock shape, the cultivation of genetically modified plants - 63-leaf clover, and a person in the U.S. with the largest collection - 118,791 clovers. OK so this picture isn’t a Shamrock or an Oxalis.  It is the Jade Vine.  Isn’t this a splendid colour?  I wonder what its hex code might be.

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Skipping Along

I hadn't skipped a rope since I was a little girl.  I do this now in exercise class.  It is lots of cardio activity with balance added to it, so more work and skill than jumping jacks.  

I wonder why skipping is not a sport for adults in comparison to the many sports that are considered mainstream. It has a world federation and championships, and is included in the Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympic Games.  Will it make it to the Olympics?  I learn that it might make it in 2028.  

I am including the link to the Daily Mail's video of 11 year old Chinese athlete Can Xiaolin who is shown in the video HERE skipping at 216 skips in 30 seconds.  It is so fast that I can't see the rope. That was in 2015.  It put him in the Guinness Book of Records. There are a few videos - in 2017 and then 2018 where he is was 15 years old and he has the two world records at 222 jumps in 30 seconds and 1,1110 in three minutes. While he is the fastest skipper, he scored poorly on free style, so doesn't show up as the overall champion.  

Back to our question of when it will get to the Olympics. There was a jumping rope show at the London Games in 2012.  The video is HERE.  There's also a video with a Chinese acrobatic team using one of their members as the rope.  

There likely is lots of work to get to the Olympics in comparison to sports with the biggest fan bases.   Soccer has 4 billion fans, cricket has 2.5 billion fans, field hockey has 2 billion fans, tennis has 1 billion.  Baseball has a mere 500 million fans.  There aren't any statistics on the number of fans for jump rope.

I think today's image comes from the Ringling Museum - it seems to say time is flying and soon spring will be here.