Feb 7 - Successful Lawyers in Beamsville

One of the sponsored ads on the Weather Channel is "The Most Successful Lawyers in Beamsville" and the picture is of a young woman with long hair and casual top.  This is a 'dating-style' picture, rather than the picture of what you'd expect a lawyer to look like.  And what makes them choose Beamsville rather than Grimsby?  It all gives rise to curiosity to find.  That's because we know what a 'stock lawyer' looks like. Photo stock pictures show us people dressed in dark suits and white shirts.  There is an exception -  pictures from the careerist.com in an article about successful Chinese Female lawyers.  Are the three women in the pictures are lawyers - they have no names, so I expect they are stock pictures of some sort. Their clothes are too colourful to "represent" lawyers in the workplace.  The article is about Chinese lawyers in top firms, but it is too liberal with personal opinions rather than facts. The fashion advice from lawandstyle.ca matches up with the images of lawyer on stock services: "Choose conservative pieces: sheath dresses with jackets, shoes in pristine condition, simple jewelry and accessories. For skirts, go with knee-length or slightly above the knee. Always wear a cardigan or jacket if you’re meeting with clients or if you’re wearing a sleeveless top. To make daring fashion choices when you’re just starting out takes the focus off your talent as a lawyer during that precarious time when you’re trying to stake out space and build your identity at the firm. Once you’ve proven yourself to be bright, capable and hard-working, then you can experiment with fashion within your comfort zone (and that of your workplace)." What is the advice for men?  Well-kept facial hair is fine. Just no soul patch. Ever When the collars or cuffs start to wear, toss the shirt Skip the bow tie So I completed my investigation by googling "best lawyer in beamsville" and took a look at the top three lines of images - all wearing dark suits, white/light shirts.  After that, the flaws of google retrieval come forth and anything can show up - purple bricks ads abound. Our Valentine today is the spring flower "Bleeding Heart".

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Meadow Made

From the cultivated wisteria of yesterday, we move to the cultivation of a wildflower meadow at Benchscape.  What a delightful vista of wild flowers at the lower portion of the property.  The flowers seemed to float above the vertical stems of green - annual bachelor buttons in blues, pinks, and whites, punctuated by the occasional red poppy.   A great success for our friend, the designer, Lex Parker!

Solstice Lights

Decorations get prettier every year - this heritage house on Beamville's Main Street is an example of how wonderful the lights are. We can count on Lifehacker for telling us where to find the best Christmas Lights.  The Places to Visit in Each State for Incredible Christmas Lights showcases a picture of a decorated train and then lists the top 5 places to visit in the U.S. The Canadian search takes us to a Government of Canada website that says the Christmas Lights Across Canada program was launched in 1985 to highlight landmarks and sites along Confederation Boulevard and Parliament Hill, and has a guide to all the capitals to visit. The top display in Canada is listed as Niagara Falls, with Christmas Lights Across Canada (above), and then Toronto's downtown core.

Farewell to Beamsville Fairgrounds I think of the string of towns in the Niagara Peninsula as beads in a necklace:  Stoney Creek, Grimsby, Beamsville, Vineland, Jordan and St. Catharines.  Niagara-on-the-Lake isn't in the string of beads.  It is so beautiful that it is a jewel on a pendant.  Beamsville is our next-door neighbour.  It had a big expanse of land - almost 25 acres in the downtown that was a fairground.  No one thought about it - it had been a fairground for 150 years.  It had a baseball diamond and a horse track as well as 12 buildings with entrances for sheep, cattle, etc.  It was privately owned by the Lincoln Agricultural Society and a sale was announced in 2008.  It was finalized for residential and commercial development in 2011.  The building is moving right along now.  It is as dense as one would find in Toronto, so it is a startling sight set in the rural layout of Beamsville.  One looks to the right and sees an old town, and looks to the left and sees a dense city block. The pictures today were taken at the Beamsville Fairground before it underwent its transformation.  These were transport trailers on the property that were being used as storage.  Their bright logos were peeling and blistering in the sun.  When I look at the bottom image, the title that comes to me is 'Concussion' or 'Slap Shot'. And thanks so much for those who gave advice on the wisteria images for the contest. It turns out to be a 3-way tie between the images.  Does anyone want to break the tie?

Dahlias are Romantic

I realize these are florals and that will be posted in Open Gardens Niagara, and thought they were so pretty that you would like to see them at the Marilyn Cornwell blog too.  Dahlias are beautiful flowers that are a delight to photograph.  So many different shapes and styles of petals.  Some are geometric and uniform, and others are wavy and flowing.  These are all from Ralph Suttell's Beamsville showcase growing garden.

Last Fruit Standing

These rows of old apple trees are near Ralph Suttell's place in Beamsville.  Ralph is the dahlia grower whose dahlias have been showcased here and on my website.  These photos were taken on the weekend - the first time in December that I can remember everything still looking like autumn.  The late afternoon light made long shadows across the field and turned everything golden.

Ralph Suttell - Dahlias and Lilies

Yesterday was another great garden day for me. My brother and I went to his Lily field in St. Catharines, then on to Ralph Suttell's who is a hybridizer and competitor in lilies and dahlias. Our day concluded with a trip to Ridley Garden to connect with Reggie and John for hybridizing.

Ralph's garden an acre and a half in Beamsville at the lake (yes, I'm jealous). It's a spectacle of plantsmanship and horticulture. Every dahlia is perfect and there seem to be hundreds of plants. They are specially grown so with a hoop house so that he can cover them before the competition to keep the blooms perfect from the elements (e.g. rain). He's not just a dahlia grower, though. There are a lot of lilies that he's working with. His garden is beautifully landscaped with interesting materials and there's a beautiful vegetable garden.