Showing posts with label coronavirus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coronavirus. Show all posts

Saturday, May 2, 2020

May 2 2020 - Golf Courses Get Distancing Markers?

The power of gardens and gardening has asserted itself in Ontario.  Garden centres will be open starting Monday.  This is for curbside service and delivery.

What else makes the threshold?  Not hair salons.  It is auto dealers, car washes, more construction sites.  The key news? Marinas and golf courses can 'get ready'.

You can't imagine how deeply disheartened golfers are as the trees blossom and the lawns green up.  Ontario Golfers seeing those dandelions blooming this week probably had a gut-wrenching moment.  Perhaps memories of a wonderful experience just a year ago.

Calgary golfers?  Opening weekend now.  Manitoba?  They start opening Monday.  B.C. golfers?  They are like B.C. gardeners.  There are 100 golf courses that remained open during the lockdown.  Remember their spring?  Their spring  started before COVID-19 lockdowns.


The 'weighing-in' on the benefits of opening up is freely shared on social media. When it comes to sharing the risks, the advice is naive, flippant and even stupid.  It's a good thing golf courses were locked down - here's what muskokahighlands.com advised on March 19 2020: 

"If you are going to play, Dreher said it’s advisable to disinfect your clubs and any equipment before and after you play. And when you arrive at the course, if there’s a valet waiting to take your clubs to the staging area, you may want to wave him off and take your clubs yourself. “You want to do as much as you can to keep that 6 feet of distance between people, so reducing your risks,” Dreher said. “If you’re in a group, that means keeping that distance, covering any coughs, walking the course instead of using carts that may be touched multiple times throughout a week, avoiding locker rooms or dining areas, maybe leave the flag or pin in.” So, it’s not advisable to give your buddy’s new driver a try.

Can you imagine saying things like 'waving away the valet' and 'not trying your buddy's new driver'?  Given there's no update on the website, we might wonder how things will go. How will we prepare for distancing on the golf course?  Our retail spaces have new designs on the floors - with lots of markers to guide distanced foot traffic.  Wouldn't that be hysterical on golf courses?  Great orange circles all over would make a wonderful aerial art piece.  

With the delusional and illusional in mind, I used  a Georgia O'Keefe filter - her beautiful wiggly brush strokes - to create the psychedelic sense of the current social scene. This is the massive Magnolia tree at the old experimental station on Niagara Street, St. Catharines. 
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Friday, March 20, 2020

March 20 2020 - Berserk on Florida Beaches

"Youth is wasted on the young"

This is attributed to Oscar Wilde and to George Bernard Shaw.  It is considered to combine wistfulness together with jealousy.

This is a perfect quote for the pictures of college students on the beaches of the Eastern U.S. where Florida  and other southern states are struggling to get on with closing beaches, and then to make the closures actually happen. 


That's because the headline yesterday - on March 19th (a week after closures of everything was underway here) - was:

'If I get corona, I get corona': Coronavirus pandemic doesn't slow spring breakers' party

This comes from a CBS video and is the headline that is being repeated over and over on social media and other news sites.

We Canadians turn out to have our own eccentrics and foolish people - at the other end of the age spectrum.  The National Post covered the story of Bruce Beach, born 1934.  He lives in Horning's Mills, 2 hours northwest of Toronto.  He has built 10,000 square foot nuclear fallout shelter out of old school buses, buried beneath several metres of concrete and soil.  The National Post article from 2017 is HERE. The article repeats that he is originally from Kansas.

The Global News article in 2015 describes how it is the site of the biggest preparedness event in Canada. The article is HERE.  This article has pictures of the 'bunkers' and gives sufficient creepy details of the zombie survival event.  This makes Bruce Beach a worrisome figure and a pathetic one given he predicted the doomsday date to be December, 2002.  


So I guess foolishness isn't wasted on any age group. 

We're on to blue lilies today.  It is Brian's birthday and so we celebrate the hybridizer's wildest dreams.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Mar 17 2020 - St. Patrick's Day Green

I wonder how St. Patrick's Day is unfolding on the Emerald Isle.  Livestreaming is the offer of the day. The Dropkick Murphys are in the headlines for scheduling a livestream of their concert in the evening of St. Patrick's Day.  There will be lots of livestreaming during the next few weeks.

There are websites that still have all the St. Patrick's Day events listed and they seem eerie and even creepy now.  This is an interesting time for online announcements - things not updated at all versus things updated by the minute - especially those twitter feeds - you can see the #coronavirusoutbreak posts here if you want to see just how diverse the posts can be.

As I looked about for the response to St. Patrick's Day without its celebrations, I came upon a picture of Niagara Falls lit up for St. Patrick's Day.  What website was this on?  On the rte.ie website - that's in Ireland.

So I checked out the official illumination schedule.  It shows tonight's as starting at 7:30 and going until 1:00am with the St. Patrick's Day Global Greening - colour green - every hour for 15 minutes.  The detailed schedule is at infoniagara.com

There are many countries - 48 last year - that have illuminations for St. Patrick's Day - the emerald London Eye is famous. Will Disneyland still have its illumination despite being closed?

The famous green beer will have to flow at home.  One hopes there is some green food dye left over after making the crystal egg geodes yesterday or purchased in preparation of making the crystal egg geodes.  I expect there is lots of dye in the grocery store.  The shelves are a compelling insight into our fears and responses.  No toilet paper, no frozen vegetables, and no pasta or rice.  Lots of Atlantic Salmon and other meat, lots of vegetables such as broccoli.  Surprise.

Every holiday has its plant, and the shamrock is represented by the showy hybridized Oxalis. It is the first picture in the collage.  
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Friday, March 13, 2020

Mar 13 2020 - Waves Coming

What are the tallest waves that lighthouses experience?  We saw a documentary on lighthouses of New York State along Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.  All the footage was shot in sunlight.  Everything looked so quaint, especially the lighthouse homes that are now private residences.

Following that I saw a picture of Roker Pier Sunderland in the North Sea and the wave was so large and wide that only the top of the lighthouse showed.  One can go see pictures of waves crashing onto people HERE.  The first picture shows two men at a lighthouse about to be hit by a 30 foot wall of water.  It says they were rescued.

Maybe these pictures are so compelling because they remind me of the massive impact of COVID-19 - it is like these pictures and is just about to happen.

The news today says Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the wife of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tested positive for the virus.  The Prime Minister is working from home for 14 days.  Ontario's public schools will be closed from March 14 through April 5. We usually go see the Home Show and Canada Blooms next week - it too is suspended.  The list of suspended and cancelled events is getting long.

I received an email with forwarded advice from Stanford - this has been checked, and Stanford says it does not come from them and is not good advice.  Here's the link.  This is at theverge.com
.

They say that one should go to WHO's website for information. The myth busters are HERE.  I guess there are all kinds of things floating on social media by now.

I remember writing an article for the Garden Tripod on conservatories and found a folder on my computer full of working greenhouse pictures amongst the Photo of the Day files.  Here are Niagara Falls, Langdon Hall and Sonnenberg Gardens working greenhouses.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Mar 10 2020 - Lonely Olympic Flame

The Olympic Flame lighting and handover are scheduled to start this week.  The events will be without spectators.  The reason is that the number of infections are 'surging' in Greece.  Local officials wanted to postpone the ceremony to May, but were refused by the Olympic committee.   The 'sacred flame' gets lit in Olympia, and the handover takes place in Athens, and then it makes its journey to Japan.

What will happen with the journey?  It starts in Olympia and ends with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Olympic games.  Do you know how many people are involved in the torch relay?  Hundreds in Greece and around 10,000 people in Japan. One article claims that the torch is not handed between runners, but rather the flame of one lights the next, meaning limited human contact.

"The Olympic torch was designed by Tokujin Yoshioka and unveiled 19 March 2019; the design is inspired by cherry blossoms, with 5 petal-shaped columns around the tip of the torch, and a rose-gold "sakura gold" color finish. Their construction will incorporate aluminium recycled from unused shelters deployed in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami."

The Olympics opening ceremony is July 24th.  It seems close now, doesn't it?  What is your guess on the spread of the coronavirus - will it have slowed by then?  I wonder what will tip the Olympics being cancelled.  Late May is the deadline that has been given by Dick Pound, not the president of the organization.  He says it will not be cancelled.  There's something so add to our watch list.


I was out in the garden yesterday doing work in the warm weather.  Here is the garden in early July a few years ago. This presentation is produced from my portfolio at Fine Art America.  

And here's the link to the new shop display at Redbubble: marilyncornwell.redbubble.com

I've also copied the full link in case the one above doesn't work:  

https://www.redbubble.com/people/marilyncornwell/shop?asc=u


 
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Monday, March 9, 2020

Mar 9 2020 - Counting Flower

That's right, Victoria is in the middle of its annual light-hearted promotion of counting flowers.   While it is light-hearted, I would expect there is great determination to beat last year's count. 

I went over to the twitter feed and the total was almost 45,000,000,000 on Friday.  You can check out the twitter feed with beautiful blooming landscapes here:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23flowercount&src=typed_query

The hashtag is #flowercount to see all the posts of trees, shrubs and flowers in bloom. There is a great display at Instagram demonstrating to all non-Victorians what makes Victoria so wonderful. 

Could we predict that there is the possibility in the future that we would look at the latest update on Coronavirus before going out to count flowers? There are now before and after photos of famous tourist attractions in Europe. The article showing the photos is HERE.

And that made me think of the immediate vacation plans for March Break to popular U.S. destinations like Disney World in Orlando?  The Washington Post had an article about children making a cancer charity visit to Orlando with this statement: "the virus wasn't anyone's top concern".  Following that statement, the article goes on to outline the declared state of emergency on Sunday, the death of two patients in Florida, and that 278 people being monitored.

I wonder what the tipping point is?  What would it take for you to not travel or cancel travel? Which locations would you worry about?  How many cases would concern you?  These are questions that will be with us for a while now.


Our picture today celebrates Spring in Victoria.
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Saturday, February 8, 2020

Feb 8 2020 - Quarantine Cruising

This is the Lantern Festival Day.  The full moon was out last night.  I experienced it when Baxter went to the greenhouse instead of outside in the night.  This is now a ritual for him.  He bangs on the window blinds in the bedroom, races off to the dining room for the exit, I pick him up and take him to the greenhouse where he has a basket and extensive view of everyone in the back garden.  I think there are also mice in the greenhouse, as sometimes he is reluctant to come out in the morning.

The full moon through the curved glass ceiling is amazing.  It seems like a lantern with the diffusion caused by the slightly frosted glass.  And then there is the magic of shadows in the night. 


There is one stunning picture of the lantern festival that is repeated over and over - so I screen clipped it for you.




You can see that the posting was made on December 25th.  Without the presence of the coronavirus outbreak, it was a delightful article on the traditions of the New Year celebration.  The scenario changes so quickly:  There are more than 28,000 confirmed cases in China, with a worrying 15% daily growth.

The sensational news is about a quarantined Norwegian cruise ship, Dream Cruises World Dream, with more than 3,600 passengers and crew onboard.  They will be isolated in their cabins for about 2 weeks - that will be a story told for a while.   Social media makes it possible to send out news and messages easily - these are things like people not getting meals, pictures of the miserable-looking meals, and concerning stories of a diabetic not getting any meals.  This meal theme makes sense, because people always come back from cruises boasting about food and meals.


There's news that impacts all of us -the closing of factories - global automakers are the first to suspend operations.  The world supply chain is laid out clearly - the world's biggest maker of smartphone chips Qualcomm has sent out the alarm of interrupted supplies.  According to a study by the World Bank, a severe pandemic could cause economic losses equal to nearly 5% of global GDP, or more than $3 trillion. Losses from a weaker flu pandemic, such as the 2009 H1N1 virus, can still wipe 0.5% off global GDP. 

But then - Wait!  Incoming news not surprisingly based on yesterday's topic:  The 2020 hourly rates of lawyers in Grimsby might surprise you!  (Sponsored: Top Lawyers/Sponsored Listings).  What's the picture?  A glass head with one of those 'lawyer/judge' wigs on it. 

Continuing our Valentine's theme - our Valentine today comes from the Sarasota Ringling Museum display.
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