We in Canada are on the forefront of recreation and play. Jack's play options expanded in Canada just a month ago with the legalization of recreational cannabis. I hadn't realized we as a country were the most in need of more play options and that we must have a record deficiency level of play.
The latest from the CBC yesterday was on the topic of what is termed 'edibles'. This expression means food with cannabis in it. Wikipedia tells me that most edibles contain a significant amount of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). The medical edibles contain a negligible amount of THC, so would not be dual-purpose.
The edibles story starts in the Indian subcontinent, where people prepared food and drinks with 'bhang' for thousands of years - for spiritual and medicinal purposes. The Hindu spring festival of Holi is known for this. We skip ahead to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook in 1954 with its famous 'hash brownies'. 'Space cakes' are another recent tradition.
But our modern day edibles seem to be far beyond this. I went to a site - leafy.ca - to find out more and there are pictures and pictures of candy - the first is a pink and green sugar candy. So I continued on to budderweeds.com and the pictures there are of candy as well.
Here are a few of the names: gummy blooms, green apple rings, giant sour jack n' cola, berry good slices, all natural pistachio crunch, maple syrup leafs, berry good slices...All good looking candy with attractive names.
The CBC topic yesterday was the warning about children consuming edibles - that there was an increase in children consuming edibles in Colorado when cannabis became legal there. So I guess the expression "Don't take candy from strangers" has more significance and weight than ever.
We have some Sarasota ocean shore abstracts today.
There don't seem to be as many garage sales as a few years ago. Is that really the case? Do we sell more stuff on Craig's List and Kijiji now? I didn't see any statistics, but did find that there is a lot of advice on what to sell, what to buy, when to have it, how to advertise it, what are the top deals and treasures...
Our wonderful plant store, Cole's, is having a parking lot sale very shortly. Starting at 7:00am! They have purchased the stock of one of Westbrook Floral's Beamsville location greenhouses - thousands and thousands of those decorative little plant holders and garden things that you see in shops. Except this is thousands all at once. Westbrook is the largest floral greenhouse grower in Niagara.
"In 1959, William Vermeer Sr. founded a small 14,000 square foot greenhouse operation. The early years of production included orchids, cut chrysanthemums, cut roses and sweethearts, cut lilies and carnations as well as a few potted plants. From these humble beginnings, Westbrook has expanded to become the large complete floral wholesaler we are today. Growing in over 1.5 million square feet of greenhouse space and 250,000 square feet of production and office space Westbrook services customers all over North America."
What made Westbrook sell off this inventory? Westbrook made the headlines when it recently sold one of its greenhouse facilities to Up Cannabis Inc., who will be growing medical marijuana. The article is HERE. I've heard stories of greenhouse growers who are planning to convert to medical marijuana - I hope it isn't so. I would hate to lose our only producer of Medenilla plants and one of our major Kalanchoe producers.
The major difference, of course, is security. I was told by one of the Vineland Research staff that security is a greater cost than plant production.
“What we need to do at that site is add in the proper security,” said Wilgar. In order to adhere to Health Canada’s tight security regulations for marijuana production, they will have to install hundreds of cameras, a laser detection system, a vault to hold the finished product and more."
I guess I won't be asking to take pictures in a laser detection facility with hundreds of cameras.
