Sep 25 2022 - Do horses come home?

 

Bing has a picture of Emerald Lake in BC, with the description that it was discovered in 1882 by guide Tom Wilson, who accidentally stumbled upon the lake by gathering horses that had gotten away.   To put it correctly,  go to the Wikipedia entry and it says: " The first non-indigenous person to set sight on Emerald Lake was Canadian guide Tom Wilson, who stumbled upon it by accident in 1882. A string of his horses had gotten away, and it was while tracking them that he first entered the valley." As to Wilson's naming of lakes.  it turns out that the entry for Lake Louise says:  "However, this was not the first time Wilson had named a lake 'Emerald'.  Earlier that same year he had discovered another lake which he had given the same name, and that name even appeared briefly on the official map. This first lake however, was shortly renamed Lake Louise. What made Wilson's string "get away?" That seems like the horses were not happy to be with him.  I don't have any personal experience with horses, so I take that from the horse.com  as it says that horses often run away to avoid an unpleasant experience.   And were these domesticated horses going feral or were they wild species being tamed?  Supposedly, wild horses went extinct in North America 11,000 years ago.  Mustangs are considered an "invasive" species and not from North America.  Scientists argue otherwise - that despite the local extinction, it is the same species of horse that was in Europe, with the same genetic lineage. This has been proven by The Original Horse Project .  So we might never find out about feral vs wild.  We can start to correct our historical writings and acknowledge the original Indigenous name of Emerald Lake.  It is Rainbow Lake.   And Lake Louse?  What was its original name?   It was first named Horâ Juthin Îmne (translating to lake of little fishes) by Stoney First Nations people that were the first inhabitants of the area. In 1882 a Stoney First Nations person led a Canadian railway worker named Tom Wilson to the lake.

Gerbera image today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 20 2022 - No Mow May

 

Is the Jordan front lawn part of the No Mow May movement. This movement was started in Britain in 2019 by the U.K. conservation charity Plantlife.  The movement has grown to include thousands of lawns in the U.K. in 2021, and the charity’s head of participation Felicity Harris said 2022 is expected to be the biggest year yet. The campaign is gaining steam in Canada, as municipalities and environmental activism groups across the country champion the cause.  The movement is rooted in research: several studies show that less frequent mowing can be a boon for biodiversity.  Findings from the U.K. suggest that allowing plants to flower in May can create enough nectar to support ten times more pollinators. A 2018 study from Massachusetts found tremendous rise in abundance and diversity of bees in lawns that are mowed every second week instead of every week. “People want to do things to help, and No Mow May is an easy thing to pick up,” said Ms. Knight, “but I think it’s more of a feel-good initiative than a helpful one. We need to do more than just not mowing – first and foremost: planting native.” So let's draw our attention here in Ontario to the lawn campaigns.  First and foremost is the Dandelion - we love and hate them in the lawns.  We see campaigns to save the Dandelions. However, they are not considered great contributors to bees.  Their pollen is not the first, the ideal, mor most nutritious food that bees look for.   What about Creeping Charlie?  It is all over our lawns (especially mine). Creeping Charlie has an ok pollen count.  One of its characteristics is a strategy called "Lucky Hits" where one flower out of many will have much more pollen/nectar.  A U.K. researcher (Southwick et al. 1981) found that bees foraging on Creeping Charlie for 5.9 minutes obtained enough nectar from the flowers to make foraging on Creeping Charlie energetically profitable.  Something tells me that it isn't a significant contributor - I just don't see bees in the lawn on the Creeping Charlie. Bees need a variety of food sources, and the best lawns have many kinds of flowers, hopefully with a range of bloom times.  The flowers recommended for the bee-friendly lawn include English daisies, Speedwell (Veronica) Buttercup, Clover, wild Violets, Thyme and Chamomile.   That makes me think of the realm of the English Cottage Garden.  It seems to me that the Jordan lawn is pretty, but not really a "no mow" poster child garden.  Even Randolph's naturalistic lawn around the corner needs more variety of flowers.   What do you think?   The Wisteria is just starting to open here in Niagara. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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Oct 21 2021 - Last Suppers

 

Can you imagine this?  Painting blue-on-white ceramic kiln-fired dishwater with images of US prison inmates' final dinner requests?  What I can't imagine is that over 21 years, 1,000 plates illuminated "the complex emotional decisions of those facing imminent death, as well as the racial and historic implications of capital punishment in the United States." This was done by artist Julie Green who died last week at the age of 60.   "Menus provide clues on region, race, and economic background," Green said in the statement. "A family history becomes apparent when (the) Indiana Department of Correction adds, 'He told us he never had a birthday cake so we ordered a birthday cake for him.'" The last execution in Canada was in 1962.  In the US, the death penalty is still legal punishment in 27 states, including the US military. Trump resumed federal executions in 2019 after a 17 year hiatus.  The juvenile death penalty in the US was only abolished in 2005.   Wikipedia shows the US execution statistics by year, which means the death penalty has been exercised every year since 1981.  Since 1976, 1,516 men have been executed and 17 women.  There seems to be great enthusiasm for the death penalty in the US - the total number of prisoners on Death Row has been exponentially climbing over the decades.  It looks like there are over 3,000 people on death row now.   In comparison to Canada, this is catastrophic.  What do other countries do? Amnesty International recorded at least 2,307 death sentences in 56 countries in 2019.  China is the world's most active country on executions.  The number is considered a state secret, but is estimated to be between 400 to 2,400 a year.  The top executing countries after China are Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Julie Green must have been courageous to carry out her project.  Her  plates can be seen here:  The Last Supper - Final Meals of U.S. Death Row Inmates.  They are listed by state. I've been checking through Dahlia pictures, and liked this one.

June 15 20321 - Join jeff and Mark in Space

 

It's actually a "spare ticket" and it auctioned for $28 million.  It is an 11-minute trip into suborbital space alongside Jeff Bezos. Jeff will be with his brother Mark, so don't think you'll get some special treatment.  There were 7,600 people from 159 countries who registered to bid in the auction. The Blue Origin flight is expected to take off on July 20th.   Jeff is on the flight because Blue Origin is the rocket venture Bezos founded in 2000. It has spent almost a decade testing New Shepard, the 60-foot-tall rocket and capsule system. It will mark the first time humans have flown aboard the fully autonomous New Shepard vehicle after 15 uncrewed test flights carried out by the company since 2015.  The $28 million price point the ticket sold for is far more than what Blue Origin's direct competitor, Virgin Galactic, has sold its tickets for. Though Galactic has yet to fly paying customers, it has already sold roughly 600 tickets for between $200,000 and $250,000 each. Now I wonder what makes him want a rocket venture?  Shipping things from the Moon to Earth?  Here's a quote from when he was 18 and interviewed as the valedictorian of his high school class: The 18-year-old Bezos said he wanted "to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit. 'The whole idea is to preserve the earth' he told the newspaper ... The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park. A happy flower day - this is a Gazania - they open with the sun.

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Apr 24 2020 - Catching Up on Winners

One of the fulfillment sites for my pictures is Redbubble, and they recently removed Groups from the site.  Groups had functionality to bring artists work together into portfolios based on themes.  The host would curate features on a regular basis and showcase member work.  Contests were a regular part of groups as well. This was interesting and fun to submit images to groups to see which ones would be featured and how many times.  With groups gone, I have moved this kind of activity over to Fine Art America, another fulfillment site I belong to.  This is supposedly the largest site - hundreds of thousands of artists and thousands of groups.  In comparison Redbubble is international and now oriented to graphic artists.  Fine Art America is US-based and oriented to fine art and photography.  Both print and deliver one's images on a wide variety of products with outstanding quality. With bad weather keeping me from the garden, I have spent a little time on my website, hosted by BetterPhoto.  What I liked about BetterPhoto is the monthly contest, and one could enter images every day and at the end of each month, winners are selected.  Going through my images, I see winning badges in recent monthly contests.  I have focused on other things and had not been checking on the winners anymore. First is a tulip image from December 2019, a Finalist.  It's a pleasant image with great details and clarity on the tulip petals, along with relatively good shapes of the leaves pointing up, and then contrasting vivid blur in the background. A favourite orchard image that was a Finalist in January, probably thanks to the beautiful Skylum sky I added. What makes it a favourite, though, are the overarching branches in the foreground outstretched as arms inviting you into the view. The Antithirum trio was a second place winner in January. These are wonderful flowers - very thick and veined, and with good colour variation.  With work in Photoshop and Topaz filters, the background is mostly removed just leaving lines of some leaves, so that the image is also a study in the movement of curves.  The heart shape of Antithirum flowers gives it an emotional element as well and the angle of the shot with their placement makes an interesting story.

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April 10 2020 - How Much Stuff in a House?

I have a sense that in the future there will be less stuff around to keep virus-free. For now, it is staying at home as the location donation organization is not accepting things because of COVID-19 (open for food donations). How much stuff is there to donate?  I found 21 surprising statistics about how much stuff we actually own HERE - this is a website on becoming minimalist. How many items does a person own?  There are 300,000 items in the average American home, according to the LA Times.  British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily, according to the Telegraph. The average American woman owns 30 outfits - one for every day of the month.  In 1930, that figure was nine.  Source:  Forbes. What is the impact of owning this many things? Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail).  The Pansy Orchid is our picture of the day.

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Feb 27 - Chocolate Month Completing

Our winter months' celebration days are colour-coded.  Christmas is red and green, Valentine's Day is red, St. Patrick's Day is green.  As we move into Easter, it is pastel colours, but not a dominant  colour theme.  We go on to Victoria Day - and abandon colour coding.  We pop up with the national flag of red and white on July 1st, but don't worry about colours until Christmas again.  We do sprinkle a little orange in for Thanksgiving and Halloween, as though in readiness for the darker, colder, and starker days of winter. I became aware of this at the long-term care home yesterday, where the St. Patrick Day display is up with its shiny, green hats and clover leaves replacing February's red hearts. February being the chocolate highlight month, I can let you know that February concludes with a chocolate theme - it is National Chocolate Soufflé Day tomorrow, February 28th.   And while February has a high concentration of chocolate celebration days, there are chocolate festivals, fairs and celebrations all year long, and national chocolate days throughout the entire year.  Here are two stories that popped up: What is the longest chocolate truffle?  A choo-choo. This 111-ft 8-in-long (34.05-m) chocolate choo-choo was put on display at Brussels South railroad station in Belgium on November 19, 2012. The tasty train was crafted from Belcolade chocolate by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia (Malta) as part of Brussels Chocolate Week. A jazz band provided the musical accompaniment on the day, with the keyboard player tinkling away on a grand piano that was also made from chocolate! The Chocolate Fashion Show. This is an annual chocolate trade show in Paris in October - the link is HERE. You can see the dresses, purses, decorations on shoes - chocolate creations everywhere.  We enjoy summer skies by Skylum today with pictures from the Minneapolis Arboretum.

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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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11-11-11

We are expecting a major winter storm.  Snowvember occurred a few years ago on Nov 13 - 21, 2014. This is where the Niagara escarpment and Lake Ontario came together with lake-effect snowstorms of such sizable proportions that the 2014 storm buried houses leaving people stranded in their homes, trapping motorists, and depositing enough snow to make a record.  One place had 88 inches.  The forecast is for snow to start in the early morning, and I can see white roofs now, but no snow flying.  I expect the snow today will be a lesser a problem for Remembrance Day ceremonies than it might have been. We are very aware of Remembrance Day and its purpose to commemorate the moment armistice became effective in the first world war.  It is remarkable to consider the millions of people who will participate in silence.  This  will move through Commonwealth countries, along with others such as France and Belgium.  Each with its time zone will stop and remain silent at 11:00am.  Queen Elizabeth has already laid the wreath at the Remembrance Day ceremony.  The news stories say it was an emotional service for her, with her shedding a tear.   Our pictoral stories today show the fallen leaves of November and the Peace Lily.

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White is Right

Porcelain turns white after being fired.  So toilets are white.  They are porcelain as it is extremely sturdy and easy to keep clean. Did you know that there are pubs in England that play Black Adder in the toilets?  I was able to find a Black Adder toilet quote. Red Baron: 'How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing. For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you it is the basis of an entire culture.' The Red Baron proceeds to tell Black Adder that a fate that is worse than death awaits him:   von Richthoven: But, instead, an even worse fate awaits you. Tomorrow, you will be taken back to Germany . . . Black Adder: Here it comes! von Richthoven: . . . to a convent school, outside Heidelberg, where you will spend the rest of the war teaching the young girls home economics. Usually I get an email from betterphoto when my pictures are finalists and then winners. I was doing some work on my portfolio on betterphoto and found out that I'd won a Second Place in last month's contest, along with a Finalist for the collage of the Canadian flag. Here's the Second Place picture - little orchids at Longwood.

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