Catch the Gingerbread Man

Do we eat gingerbread cookies all year round?  Not at all.  It is special to Christmas.  The ancient Greeks and Egyptians considered it special too - they used it for ceremonies. Being a tropical plant, it came to Europe in the 11th century with the crusaders.  But it wasn't applied to desserts until the 15th century.  Elizabeth 1 is credited with the idea of decorating cookies - she had them made to resemble the dignitaries visiting her court.  They became  the highlight of Gingerbread Fairs.  The role of gingerbread cookies as a love token is shown in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost:  "An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy ginger-bread" Somehow gingerbread men and gingerbread houses became a major tradition of Christmas - the gingerbread house is linked to the Hansel and Gretel story in 1812.  Gingerbread men were made exclusively by gingerbread masters who kept their recipes secret and the cookies eventually became a staple of Christmas fairs. Those times are past, and we happily all can make our own houses and gingerbread cookies.  Get cracking! There are dozens of gingerbread jokes: When should you take a ginger bread cookie to the doctor? When it feels crummy. What does the ginger bread man put on his bed? A cookie sheet. Why do basketball players love gingerbread cookies? Because they can dunk them!  Today's picture is a close-up of a Gerbera flower.

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Surfacing Attention

Surfaces and Textures are an interesting theme for photography.  There are so many kinds of surface structures, details, shapes, and textures as the subject of the image. The photographer's task is to showcase the surface and texture itself.   There are so many places to find these - everywhere - in the grain patterns of wood, the surface of stones, crystals of snow and ice, water, fabric, metal, leaves, sand, woven objects, clouds.  Included are urban decay surfaces such as rust and decay where scratches and dents create surface structure, texture, detail, and colour. Textures can occur at all level – including aerial photography and landscape views. The types of surfaces and textures include: rough, ragged, gritty, bumpy, spiky, sharp, fuzzy, slimy, slick, slippery, smooth, soft, silky, scaly, coarse, burl, knot, slub, abrasive, scratchy, shaggy, bristly, prickly, spiny, thorny, burnished, glossy, polished, powdery, and fine grain. So I went to two of my own portfolios to see what was there - Surfacing Attention and Nature's Impressions - and clipped the thumbnail image displays.  We see the array of surfaces and textures all around us.

Dahlias are Autumn's Flower...More in Flowerography

It's not typical to consider dahlias to be an autumn flower.  To me, though, this seems to be the time when they are at their best in the glorious garden of Ralph Suttell of Beamsville Ontario.  He grows competition dahlias, and they have been wonderful over the last 2 weeks.  Grown in a hoop house, they are protected from winds and insects with screening, and during hotter times umbrellas shade the most prize blooms. It's all a perfect setting for a photographer.

Here are a few of Ralph's beauties.  I've named this one 'The Shadow of Your Smile':

This is 'Demure':

This is 'The Yellow Shines Within':

These images are part of the Flowerography Series.  The Flowerography series derives from the Victorian tradition of using flowers and floral arrangements to express emotions that otherwise could not be spoken or were not allowed.  It is known as floriography or the language of flowers.   

The tradition remains today - red roses still imply passionate, romantic love.  Pink roses represent a lesser affection; white roses suggest virtue and chastity and yellow roses still stand for friendship or devotion. Gerbera (daisy) means innocence or purity. The iris, being named for the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, still represents the sending of a message. A pansy signifies thought, a daffodil regard, and a strand of ivy fidelity.

Ranunculus Studies

I was at Sunshine Express Nursery on Carlton Street in St. Catharines last week and they have lots of flowers in the greenhouses.  I was particularly attracted to the Ranunculus.  For the first 2 I desaturated the colours to bring out the centres.

On this third image, I've kept the brilliant orange colour of the original.

Winter Blues

I did some indoor photography yesterday with cyclamen.  Indoor work lets you sit down, change the colour of the sky, the amount of light, the position of the flowers.  These are the portraits.




"Winter Blues"
Indoor cyclamen looks out to the blue winter sky, longing for the warm summer days outside.

"Spring Longing"
Indoor cyclamen sees the blue winter skies outdoors, filled with frost and snow. It feels alone and wonders if it will ever see Spring, despite the company of its Kin.

Chrysanthemum Festivals

November's flower is the Chrysanthemum, and Longwood Gardens, south of Philadelphia has a masterful display of trained chrysanthemums.  The most spectacular is the Thousand Blossom Tree - shown in the photos here.  Each flower has a metal stake and loop frame around it to keep it in place.  

Fasciation

Fasciation - we've all seen it and wondered what happened to that flower. It's weird and wonderfully interesting.

The University of Saskatchewan's website defines it as: "a widespread phenomena reported in more than 100 vascular plant species. The term refers to a flattened or ribbon-like appearance. Woody plants, annuals and even cacti are affected. In some plants fasciations occur on woody stems; other plants exhibit this condition in the flower stalk, roots, fruit or flower clusters." One plant that we're all familiar with is Celosia where the flowers have inherited fasciation and we can count on their funny shapes in the garden.

I've never seen fasciation in a poppy before. Here's the visual comparison - look at all the petals everywhere in the photo on the bottom compared to the photo on the top with the normal set. These flowers were next to each other.

I'll be hunting for more examples and will report on them - I expect to find some on Sunday in my brother's Lilycrest Gardens field where he has thousands of his own hybridized lilies in bloom.

For now, though, it's the month of July - the month of endless summer days and long, warm summer evenings, so enjoy!