July 22 2024 - Hopscotch vs Curling

 

Hopscotch is a summer activity.  I saw a hopscotch festival in Kelowna.  Funny they should have the tournament in a curling rink.  It turned out to be a beer festival.  And that was a few years ago.  It doesn't seem to be very present in terms of activities and interests. Hopscotch has been with us a long time - since somewhere around 600 BCE in India.  It has history in many countries.  What makes it a casual game rather than a competitive one?  It doesn't look competitive. The World Hopscotch Championship website is from 2016. And in terms of records, there are only a few.  The current Guinness Book of World Records holder for the fastest hopscotch game is Ashrita Furman, at 1 minute and 2 seconds. The Longest Hopscotch Game  was a distance of 7,037.51 m (23,088 ft 11.3 in) a hopscotch game created in Colorado - it has earned the record title for longest hopscotch game and it took 2.5 hours to complete the course.  That was in 2022.  It remains a child's game, and is predominantly thought of as a girl's game.  Interesting how some activities move into the world sports arena, and others remain on the local block. We will see some unusual sports in the next few weeks.  I was at the nearby Mingle Hill Farmer to their Flower Festival yesterday.  There is a lot of lavender there but mostly past its prime.  This season has been early, and lavender generally is a June crop.  This picture is from a few years ago at the NEOB lavender field in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

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Mar 23 2022 the Buzz

 

Have you seen bees yet? There are small spring flowers in bloom so they are about.  But mostly we know spring by the sound of bees in the air - that buzzing in the background.  That's the sign the dandelions are in full bloom. How did the sound of bees come to mean excitement, hype, cool gossip, thrill, joy, exhilaration, and tantalizing? The Merriam dictionary says it means "pleasant sense of intoxication."  And how early has it been recorded?  "Buzzing" is from the late 14th century, and "buzz" was noted in the late 15th century.   "a busy rumour" [Rowe], 1620s (earlier "a fancy," c. 1600), figurative use from buzz (v.). Literal sense of "a humming sound" is from 1640s. A "buzz" was the characteristic sound of an airplane in early 20c.; hence verbal sense "to fly swiftly," by 1928; by 1940 especially in military use, "to fly low over a surface as a warning signal" (for example that target practice is about to begin). The meaning "pleasant sense of intoxication" was first recorded 1935. The children's game of counting off with 7 or multiples of it replaced by buzz is attested from 1864 and is mentioned in "Little Women" (1868). To give (someone) a buzz (by 1922) is from the buzz that announced a call on old telephone systems (1913). Buzz bomb "V1 rocket" is from 1944. And how many tones and sounds of buzzing are there in nature? Cicadas hit the top as the source of buzzing sounds. I just found a youtube video with a buzzing insect and turned up the sound and now Millie is poking around the desk trying to find it. She knows buzzing.  And I listed to a bee buzzing and Millie is looking outside to find that one.  I realize how little descriptive language we regular people use for buzzing sounds.  You can go HERE to "see" the sounds of bees buzzing.  But hear the sounds?  That takes $9.00 to download. I found this collage of bees in Lavender - now there's a visit I look forward to this summer - to get to visit the Lavender farms again.

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School's Out - Mostly, Sort Of

The air smelled like 'Summer' this morning - like the smell when school is out. So I wondered if school is out. There isn't a single answer - it is quite complicated.  I didn't know that there are 194 mandated school days in the year in Ontario.   It is hard to tell when the school closes for the summer.  How can school close on June 26th?  That's today and it is a Sunday when students don't go to school.  In British Columbia it says school closes June 27th.  So students would go tomorrow for one last day. Lucky B.C. students, compared to Niagara. The last day in Niagara is June 28th, so we'll see some crossing guards out tomorrow and Tuesday, and then a declaration of Summer. There are school's out songs too.  Alice Cooper shows up at the top of the list. This from Wikipedia: Cooper has said he was inspired to write the song when answering the question, "What's the greatest three minutes of your life?". Cooper said: "There's two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'... It incorporates the childhood rhyme, "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks" into its lyrics.

It's All About Lilies

So far in July, there have been a number of delightful surprises and there are Lily events coming up!

The first was finding a stand of Candidum Lilies near my brother's Lilycrest Gardens field in St. Catharines. There were probably 30 or 40 plants blooming and in that large a group their colour become so clearly the dominant quality. They are an amazing white - so clean and pure - no other colours on the petals. And the plants were large and healthy - so unusual in Candidums in our area.

The second surprise occurred as I visited more of the front gardens on the OpenGardensToronto 2009 tour. I mentioned this organization in an earlier post. Many of these beautiful gardens are close-by in my neighbourhood so I took the opportunity to visit a few of the front gardens from a previous tour day that I had missed as I wasn't available. Up the street from the Winston Grove garden, I happened upon a front garden at its full peak in full and perfect bloom. It had a beautiful combination of Lilies and Lavender that I'm posting - what a gorgeous colour and form combination!

The Ontario Regional Lily Society Annual Flower show is this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. It will be in the atrium at the Royal Botanical Gardens main building on Plains Road. I will be looking forward to seeing the show in this new venue, and being able to take some scenic photos this time.