Mar 7 2024 - Invasive Species on the Run

 

An invasive species is a plant that is non-native to an area, but does very well in its new surroundings and proliferates.  It overruns every other plant in sight.  But the Youtube news is about towns in utah that have been overtaken by tumbleweed.  Homes are surrounded by piles as high as three meters.   There are dozens of videos of brown, dried tumbleweeds taking over, engulfing cars and the fronts of homes.  Here's a video - I hope it works - they cycle through so many different stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUKKxNV5-y8 It looks like high winds and that winter storm caused the invasion.  The videos are fascinating and have made their way around the world. Here's a nice watercolour effect.  This is in Caledon at Plant Paradise.

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Dec 31 2022 - Weird Snow Right Here

 

There's weird snow.  And some of it is right here.  These are things like snow rollers, frost flowers, pancake ice, rabbit ice, penitentes, needle ice, and brinicles.   There are Ontario pictures of ice volcanoes, snow towers,  snow balls , ice caves, crop circles, light pillars, ice pancakes, and so on in the Narcity article HERE.  The article on Treehugger.com describes how they are formed.   There's even better formations from recent storms.  Look at the pictures below.  These came from a lake-front cottage in Dunnville, on Lake Erie in January 2022.  These are formations around Jack's neighbours lamp posts.    For traditional ice formations, the Bored Panda article has beautiful photos of snow formations is HERE.   This next picture comes from that article. I haven't found where this one is located.  So far, the pictures are from Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Michigan.   Our recent storm has resulted in Port Stanley making the news with winter sculptures on the pier.   That was only 3 days ago.  Those pictures are HERE on the CBC website.  And Crystal Beach, just a half hour drive away also made the CBC news with its lakefront homes encased in ice from the same storm.   That picture story is HERE.  These are the Crystal Beach lakefront houses.  They look like they've been painted with Benjamin Moore's Ice Formations 873. And our picture today shows graceful Japanese Forest Grass. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 9 2022 - Racing Racing

 

There are all kinds of races and racing.  We like being fast. race to  race up to race into race around And just plain "race'.   There are many variations on racing jokes, so I picked a few. My friend owned a racing snail. It never won any races so he removed the shell to make it go faster. Sadly it didn't work, if anything it made it more sluggish. I realized why Scandanavians are the fastest runners in the world...all their races start near the Finnish line. A man walks into a bar and is about to order a beer when he's interrupted by the bar phone ringing. The bartender answers. A voice asks, "Is your refrigerator running?" The bartender replies with a sigh. "Yes" The voice replies,"Good. Mine too. I'll see you at the refrigerator races tomorrow." As a hedge-fund manager gets out of his brand-new Audi, a truck goes racing by, taking off the door.“My Audi! My beautiful silver Audi is ruined!” he screams. A police officer on the scene shakes his head in disgust. “I can’t believe you,” he says. “You’re so focused on your possessions that you didn’t even realize your left arm was torn off when the truck hit you.” The hedge fund manager looks down in absolute horror and screams, *“Oh no! My Rolex!”

This is Paradise Grove in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It has some ancient oaks predating the War of 1812, and there are remnants of tallgrass prairie.  Another tallgrass prairie is at the Butterfly Conservatory.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Marilyn's Photo - Feb 28 - MEGA SQUALL in action

What does our weather warning say today?  It says:  "Life-threatening travel conditions with mega-squall."   "Blinding snow and howling winds are all features of a blizzard, but there are specific conditions that must be met or anticipated before it is deemed a blizzard or given a blizzard warning. The criteria are that winds must be sustained at 40 km/h or more for at least four hours combining with falling or blowing snow to cause visibilities to be reduced to 400 m or less, and this is dubbed the 4-4-4 rule." "Towering waves will develop during the windy blizzard conditions and there is the chance that Lake Ontario could see waves that are 6 metres (20 feet) tall in the centre of the lake, and waves as tall as 3 metres on the southern shores of Lake Huron and Lake Erie." We don't have to travel far back in time to find out about the largest blizzards ever experienced. The greatest number of lives lost was in the 1972 Iran Blizzard.  It began in February 1972 and lasted a week.  It dumped 3 to 5 metres of snow.  Four thousand people lost their lives.  We would travel back to 1888 when The Great Blizzard dropped 100 - 130 cm (40-50 in) of snow, had sustained winds of more than 72 km/h and produced snowdrifts in excess of 15 metres. This time also had the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888 in which the temperature allegedly dropped 100 degrees F in 24 hours. Most of the 235 casualties were children attempting to walk back home.  Some teachers kept the children in the one room schoolhouses for a couple of days, ringing bells to alert the community that they were all safe inside. An entire corner of a Nebraska school blew off due to the winds and school teacher Minnie Freeman tied her students together with twine and walked them through the storm to a nearby farmhouse where they took cover. The top storms of all times are HERE.  So many of them! A winter scene for today's image.

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The Second Day of Christmas - One Day Only!

This is the second day of Christmastide.  We know that the boxes of Boxing Day originated in the United Kingdom and were given to tradespeople and servants as a monetary acknowledgement at Christmas - they were mentioned as "Christmas boxes" in Samuel Pepys' diary in 1663. References to the "Christmas box" for the poor and needy date back to the Middle Ages.   And even earlier, in the late Roman and early Christian era, metal boxes were placed outside churches at the Feast of Saint Stephen. Today it is as though there is a north pole and a south pole for Boxing Day - the shopping and sports frenzy of the greedy and hedonistic opposing the charities raising money for their causes. So it is no surprise that our charitable organizations have Boxing Day events: Today and every year, you can run for the YMCA in Hamilton.  Race day pickup and registration opens at noon.  Or one can go on a Charity Boxing Day Dip - and then again on New Year's Day for that one.  In Scarborough Harbour there's a raft race. That's Scarborough, U.K. On the hedonistic side, the British press reports record line-ups showing pictures of people leaving shopping malls with their arms full - at 6:00am.  The U.K. article said 90% reductions were the attraction. And for the sports-minded, in Grimsby, U.K.  there's an important announcement that supporters in the Main Stand will be asked to exit the stadium via the Pontoon Stand exit von Boxing Day.  A big sports day there. We didn't ask the question "What do the Chinese do at Christmas?" There are 1.379 billion people in China.  First of all to say "Merry Christmas" the translation turns out to be "Holy-birth happy."  The top three Chinese Christmas songs: We Wish You a Merry Christmas Silent Night Jingle Bells Read the translations at chinahighlights.com - they stray from the originals making them very entertaining.  How they sing them to the melodies with know is a mystery. We see the Niagara Escarpment forest at Campbellville on Christmas Day.  It really was that dark and blue-black.

Of Trains and Woods

It is interesting that the late autumn Beamer Falls woodland has the same colours and tones as the Strassburg railway passenger cars in the spring.  The first image uses motion blur in the camera, and the second image has a texture overlay for the post card text.

Countdown to Christmas - Winter Solstice

Today's countdown marks the WInter Solstice which occurred yesterday.

“Solstice literally means 'Sun Stands Still', for a few days around the time of the winter solstice the sun appears to stand still in the sky in that its elevation at noon does not seem to change.


The winter solstice date is normally considered to be the 21st of December in the northern hemisphere, however at the winter solstice the position of the sun remains the same for three days.”