June 5 2024 - Horses Amok Update

 

There's a good news story - the fie military horses that ran 'amok' through London, resulting in injuries and blood have all recovered.  Well, except two of them still need operations.  The others are already back to work.  They will take part in the King's birthday parade on June 15.   And the people who were tossed by the horses?  Oh, they are recovering too, and "will likely return to military service".  That's a bit vague to me.  And only one of the several articles - which all use the press release directly - mentioned a cyclist had injuries.   You can scroll through almost a dozen updates in the search list, but the "real" trending stories today seem to be these:   Acolyte Review (the latest Star Wars Movie) in the Guardian - 20K searches Next is Hasley posting a health update that she is lucky to be alive - that's 5,000 searches The number 1 rank search on Google is for YouTube at 1.3 billion searches.  One site says that monthly, there are 337 million searches for YouTube. So it could easily be well over a few billion over time.  When will a search get to be the googol number - 10 to the 100th.  That question has been asked on Quora.  There are 1.2 trillion searches a year.  The answer from Alon Amit on Quora is THIS.  His short version is "never". The London horses running amok story barely made a blip in April searches when it happened.   I found this picture of one of the Japanese Maples in the garden from a few years ago. The trees are larger now, with this beautiful red foliage.  What a background with those rainbow colours of the morning.

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Nov 2 2020 - Of Sand and Sea

 

Gerry found an artist who paints in the sand on the ocean shore.  He is Nico Laan.  His website says: "An anamorphosis is a representation that you have to look at from a specific point of view. With 3D objects this gives a spatial effect and with flat subjects a certain 'friction'. Later on I started to focus more on 'ordinary' drawings, which do not require a special point of view. The challenge lies in finding a camera position in which landscape and drawing reinforce each other."   Vast on the landscape, these transfix our attention.  His website is HERE. It includes a short video and images of how the drawings are used to guide the work, the grid is created and the trenches are dug for the lines.    In 2020 alone he's created 6 works.  The top one, Waterline is one of these, and the next one, Sandmen was created in 2019. The bucket is titled Water to the Sea and created in 2014. Today's picture is my Acer Palmatum Osakazuki out front - this year it has the reddest of red leaves as is the promise of this gorgeous Japanese Maple.  It too is transfixing.

May 12 2020 - In Such Times

I am pleased to report that there is no rock or punk or rapper group named "In Such Times".  There is no song.  There is no movie, no television series, no game series.  There is no Wikipedia entry.  There are no YouTubes with Performances of 'In such Times'. No People also ask What does in such times mean? Who wrote in such times? In such times gif In such times saying The emptiness of the social chatter is both a pleasure and a great relief. Only this entry to galvanize our attention: J.R.R. Tolkien — 'I wish it need not have happened in my time, said Frodo. So do I, said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times.' The weeping Japanese Maple tree out front provides the content for today's image.  There's a square version so that it fits perfectly on a pillow.

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Hallmark's Version of the Advent Calendar - Countdown to Christmas

Do you know about the Hallmark Channel?  It is very popular with feel-good movies.  It began its around-the-clock 24/7 Christmas movie schedule on Friday, Oct. 25th.  Search on Countdown to Christmas and Hallmark comes up for pages and pages. I didn't know about the channel until it came to town - to Grimsby - to make one of its movies.  And then there was our Main Street dressed up in snow and Christmas trees at the beginning of October.   Christmas in Montana - New 2019 Before the holidays, Sara goes to Montana to help resistant Travis save his ranch. Can time on the ranch help restore her faith in Christmas in time for a miracle? Stars Kellie Martin, Colin Ferguson. There are no pictures with Grimsby in the background pretending to be Montana on the website.  But you can go to the Niagarathisweek.com  coverage of it with Teddy's Food, Fun & Spirits looking excellent. The Hallmark Channel has evolved from an originally religious channel.  It was overhauled into a family channel in the late 1999's.  In 2015 Mariah Carey directed and starred in a Christmas movie and show which turned out to be the most viewed show ever.  The Countdown to Christmas programming had started in 2009. It took flight in 2016. So here we are a few years later with 24/7 Christmas from October to January 1st:  The end of the Countdown season culminates with the broadcast of the Tournament of Roses Parade.   Our snow day pictures show the Japanese Maple with its snow-covered leaves.  Many of my trees such as theSeven Sons Flower Tree have all their leaves and are just starting to turn autumn colours.  The big Japanese Maple Versacolour out back has hardly begun to change colour.  The second plant is Ironweed, one of our natives for bees and butterflies.

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Jan 1 2019 - If It's a New Year it's Nostradamus Time

There was fireworks everywhere to celebrate the New Year - Dubai's was the world's record-setting show - illuminating the world's tallest building and having the largest LED illuminated facade. It is amazing - see the video HERE.  Or watch the NBC News around the world HERE.  Our own Toronto show is HERE. We Canadians want to make sure that people know this is Toronto so have the 3D TORONTO Sign.  It was installed in July 2015 for the Toronto Pan American/Parapan American Games. The letters are 10 feet tall and the LED lights can transition to 228 million different colours.       And what predictions are there this year?  Let's turn to Nostradamus, or should we? He was born in 1503, and initially an apothecary. He 'latinized' his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus when he moved away from apothecary towards the occult.  His 'Les Propheties' was published in 1555. He attracted supporters at the time who were looking for predictions through astrology.  He was rejected by the academic community at the time and since then, but remains popular with the press and public.  This is the repeated reason throughout the internet: the persistence in popular culture seems to be partly because their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits". This is demonstrated by the Nostradamus predictions from the UK Express. "EXCLUSIVE: Nostradamus’ eerie predictions have baffled people for centuries – but did Nostradamus have any visions of what will happen in 2019? One psychic expert believes 2019 could be an incredibly turbulent year for the US, the UK and the rest of the world.   According to the psychic expert, Nostradamus warned of an assassination attempt on Mr Trump, armed conflict in the Middle East and renewed relations with his Russian counterpart between 2019 and 2020. Mr Hamilton-Parker told Express.co.uk: "I feel Trump will have a second term but Nostradamus's predicted an assassination attempt will be in the second term. One thing Nostradamus did not predict, however, is the result or the effects of the Brexit vote.  Mr Hamilton-Parker himself foresaw a no-deal hard Brexit in the pipeline which is why he said he was surprised to see Brexit omitted from Nostradamus’s prophecies". With stories like this, it is easy to side with the academics in their skepticism that Nostradamus' predictions could, should or even would be taken seriously. Today's image is a Japanese Maple fiery abstract.

I'll Take Mine Fried

I made it in time to capture the fiery foliage of the Cemetery Japanese Maple.  It is entwined around a headstone, which is not visible in these photos.  November is their month for vivid colour - as long as it doesn't get too windy.  That's always a dilemma here in Grimsby with the wind off the escarpment or the Lake. I planned to capture the large tree in front of one of our heritage homes and the leaves are gone - they dropped in one day.    And around the corner from me is the largest Japanese Maple I've seen in Niagara, with the glorious red colour on the tree and in the driveway. From the den garden website: "In Japan, maple trees are known as kaede (楓/"frog's hands"), as well as momiji (紅葉), which means both "become crimson leaves" and "baby's hands". Momiji is commonly used as the term for autumn foliage in general in Japanese, but it is also used as a term for maple trees. These names come from the appearance of the leaves, which resemble the hands of a baby or a frog. The scientific term for Japanese maples is Acer palmatum."   "In Japan's Osaka prefecture, the red and orange maple leaves are a sight to see during the fall. As is the case in the rest of Japan, people go out in droves to see the beautiful fall scenery. However, in Osaka, locals also go out in droves to collect the leaves and turn them into a deep-fried delicacy! Fried maple leaves are a very popular snack in Osaka, and apparently have been for at least a thousand years. The city of Minoh, located in the north part of the prefecture, is particularly famous for their fried leaves. The maple leaves are dipped and fried in tempura butter, which give them their unique taste. The secret of Minoh's success with fried leaves really isn't much of a secret at all. Chefs there usually store their leaves in barrels of salt for one year, which makes their leaves particularly tasty!"