May 28 2025 - AI the Garden helper

 

What I "took away" yesterday was that there might be fun asking AI questions.  I have a lot of garden questions.  Let's check out a few.   AI ChatGPT is excellent on these sorts of answers - what adjectives would we use to describe them?  Let's head over to the synonym dictionary - how about fawning, unctuous, smarmy and insincere, slimy, even ingratiating.  I like unctuous, as well. At least ChatGPT didn't recommend I put glue in my cheese to make it stick to the pizza better.  That's one of its answers so far. So I thought I'd conclude with this question and find out its reply.   Does this have a sense of Oscar Wilde to you?  Witty and mocking. It is peony season just starting - the tree peonies are blooming.  They last for a day or two and we've had cooler weather so they might bloom a bit longer.  These are the regular herbaceous peonies that go to bouquets for florists.

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May 28 2022 - It's coming next week - the Platinum Jubilee

 

It is coming next week - the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.  June 2, 2022.   It goes from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th.  Every week on the royal.uk website is a "Royal Week."  There's a picture highlighting each week and it is all part of "The Platinum Jubilee Image Countdown."  How many people does the Queen meet on a weekly basis?  I don't see anything on that, but one can find out her typical daily schedule.  It is divided into mornings, afternoons and evenings.   It never gives any number of people or events.  The number of letters is said to be 300 letters each day.  I expect more than one lady-in-waiting handles the ones she doesn't respond to. She doesn't just wake up:  "The Queen wakes from her slumber each morning at 7:30 am. She stays in bed for a few minutes, listening to the "Today" program on BBC Radio 4." What next?   "The Queen receives assistance from her long-serving personal assistant, Angela Kelly, who draws the Queen's bath, ensuring that it's the correct temperature using a wood-cased thermometer. The bathwater will be precisely seven inches deep." She does two hours of "paperwork" in the morning, and then meets with dignitaries for two hours.  And how about her lunch at 1:30pm? "The Queen enjoys light meals with impeccable presentation. Apparently, all vegetables on her plate must be of equal size." Reading through that summary, it seems to me that the Queen might be alone a fair amount of time, or that what is left out is all the people that she is with and does meet.  When the article was written Prince Phillip was alive, and it says he didn't live at the Palace.  So she would have been busy with a lot of people, it seems to me. You can read that schedule HERE.  It is similar to others that are published.   Haven't you wondered why the Queen looks younger in pictures than one would expect?  I found this picture of her on the royal website.  That seems to me to be closer to what one would expect.   I am waiting for my Itoh peony to bloom.  What is this? This is sa cross between tree peonies and herbaceous peonies.  They share qualities of both parents, strong stems like tree peonies, resistant to blight, and can get a second set of blooms. They come back in spring from the ground.  For now, here's the view at Royal Botanical Gardens. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 11 2020 - Why is Chlorophyll Green?

When I look out the window, I see a lot of green.  That's because there are a lot of plants. Why is chlorophyll green?   The answer:  green plants are green because they contain a pigment called chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll appears green to our eyes because most of the light it absorbs is blue and red, leaving behind the rest of the spectrum, which averages out to green. Why is the sky green before a tornado? One theory that 'holds water', so to speak, is that certain thunderheads filter wavelengths of light, leaving only green. Computer models verify the thickness of the cloud combined with the diameter of the water droplets can produce a green color. A powerful thunderstorm has the right size of clouds, optimal amount of water, and may produce a tornado. Why is water green? Green water lakes commonly have high concentrations of chlorophyll-containing algae which can give water a green color. Chlorophyll can be measured with sensors such as the YSI chlorophyll probe. Green lakes are often eutrophic and typically contain more harmful algal blooms than other types of lakes. Why are frogs green? Frogs are not green because they have green pigment in their skin. Instead, they use a complex arrangement of cells, a more complicated approach to be sure, but one that provides a tremendous potential for changing and adjusting their hue. In their skins they have three types of pigment cells (called chromatophores) stacked on top of each other. At the bottom are melanophores, containing a mostly dark pigment called melanin. These are the same cells that can make human skin various shades of brown. On top of the melanophores are iridophores, packed with highly reflective bundles of purine crystals, and on top of the iridophores are xanthophores, usually packed with yellowish pteridine pigments. In the typical green frog, light penetrates to the iridophores, which act like tiny mirrors to reflect mostly blue light back into the xanthophores above them. These cells act like yellow filters, so the light escaping the skin surface appears green to our eyes. Occasionally a frog is found that lacks the yellow xanthophore cells, and these are hard to miss because they are bright blue! Our first picture is the Houtby farm yesterday.  This is not a happy crop picture.  There's been a heat wave and the peonies are blooming.  This is a crop that is picked in bud, so these are a pretty show, but not a happy moment.   Our next picture is another view of the iris garden at RBG.

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June 10 2020 - How Many Flowers?

Irises come in every colour.  Yesterday's visit to the Laking garden at Royal Botanical Gardens was a tumultuous gathering of colours.  How many flowers were blooming?  There are over 1,000 types of irises in the collection.  There likely are least 20 stems on every planting.  Each stem has at least one flower in bloom.  So we were looking at something in the range of 20,000 flowers yesterday.  It is satisfying to see so many flowers. There are lots of theories on why humans love flowers.  One article says this: One clue is that flowers stimulate the same sensory apparatus that humans use for assessing the quality of fruits. Fruits often have colors similar to flowers, and one theory suggests that trichromatic color vision in primates has evolved to better detect and evaluate edible fruits. From an olfactory perspective, floral volatiles are chemically similar or even identical to those emitted by fruits, and thus smelling a flower may possibly bring to mind a ripe, sweet fruit. Psychology Today's article says  it more simply:  dopamine. Dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. Flowers were a huge reward signal in the world our brain evolved in because they marked the coming of abundance after a hungry winter. Today we have enough to eat all year round so we don’t consciously link flowers with food. But the blossoming of a flower triggers the sense that something special is coming because it triggers dopamine. Isn't it nice to know we can look at flowers and get the same effect as a physical  fitness class. Here are two views of the Laking Garden.

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June 8 2020 - Peonies, Peonies

Public gardens have opened their outdoor spaces. We are just in time for  peonies.  I went to Whistling Gardens yesterday. It opened on June 3rd, so I was there for the first open week.   What did I go to see? The largest peony collection in North America.  There are over 1,200 varieties. Here's the excerpt from the website: "Since the fall of 2013 with the first plantings of donated peonies, the collection now encompasses 1,200 species and varieties. It is the largest collection in North America by far. It is also one of the most complete collections of peonies in the world. A new formal garden was initially planted in 2017 and finished in 2018 with well over 500 varieties. David (Maltby) and the Cooks continue to donate new specimens each season. The Itoh Hybrid collection is moving into the conifer garden." In comparison the Michigan national collection located in Ann Arbor,  at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nicols Arboretum, has 262 varieties.  It has a long tradition and has been been preserving peony varieties since 1922.   The first picture shows the rarest peony in the collection.  Darren was very happy to have it blooming this year, and he says he can make divisions of it later season - that would allow him to preserve it.  There are a lot of species of peonies.  At the most general level, the types are herbaceous - what we mostly see in gardens; tree peonies - they re tall with woody stems and enormous flowers, and itoh (or "Intersectional") and these are a 1948 cross between tree peonies and herbaceous.  Peonies are beloved for their delicate appearance, sweet fragrance and as a symbol of good fortune and a happy marriage. Marco Polo described them as roses as big as cabbages.  Can you imagine seeing them for the first time?

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April 11 - The Moon Has So Many Places in the Sky

When I look up out the window I see the moon ver the computer in the south.  Just a few days ago, during the Supermoon it was in the west over the back garden.  It is always somewhere different.  I never know where to look.  What makes it do this? "To keep the Moon in the same place at the same time every night, (i.e. to be able to say “It’s 2am - so the moon must be over the church”), the Moon would have to have an orbital period that was a fixed fraction of a day (i.e. a whole day, half a day etc). It doesn't." The moon orbits around the earth every 27.322 days.  And it orbits west to east and the earth rotes west to east, so all things in the sky move east to west. I hadn't thought about our rotation. Why don't I experience the earth move in its rotation when I jump up?  Here's a 'smart version' of my question: "If I'm standing at the equator, jump, and land 1 second later, the Earth does NOT move 1000mph (or .28 miles per second) relative to me, since my velocity while jumping is also 1000mph.  However, the Earth is moving in a circle (albeit a very large one), while I, while jumping, am moving in a straight line.  How much do I move relative to my starting point because of this? I realize it will be a miniscule amount, and not noticeable in practise, but I'd be interested in the theoretical answer." I don't need to look further - the question itself is sufficient to answer my own sufficiently. Here are some jumping jokes: My neighbor tried to wager money on whether I could jump the row of bushes between our properties... But I don't like to hedge my bets What do you call it when a thousand rabbits jump backwards? A receding hare line What does a janitor say when he jumps out of the closet? Supplies! We see a lovely bed of peonies blooming at Winterthur last May.  Winterthur is near Longwood, both south of Philadelphia.  Winterthur has America's greatest naturalistic garden and foremost Museum of American decorative and fine art objects.

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Peony Flower Crops

Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field is at the Houtby Farm, a grower of pussy willows, peonies and gladiolus.  This field, below, shows the Styer's Peony Festival At their Chadd's Ford Nursery when we were visiting on Victoria Day weekend.  We saw the signs, so followed them to the growing field with thousands of plants and flowers in bloom. The celebration tent is in the top left, so you can see how large the field is.  There are over 100 varieties on over 25 acres.  Styer's have seven farms, and originated with botanist J. Franklin Styer, a Pennsylvania Quaker. He was a pioneer in hybridizing and propagating peonies. His father is credited with bringing the mushroom industry to Kennett Square, where Longwood is located.  What made me surprised?  As a cut flower farm, I could see lots of flowers blooming.  I don't get to see that many flowers in the Houtby fields. While one can see some peonies in bloom in the rows, they mostly are picked at the right bud stage, and then placed into cold storage.  Peonies last in cold storage until August - they are a prime wedding flower.  The Gladiolus crop hardly ever has colour in the field - they are picked as soon as the smallest hint of colour shows. Like many things, the floral industry is now global.  In the past, roses were grown in greenhouses in Niagara as flowers were grown locally, near their markets. Now roses are grown in Ecuador and Colombia.  Colombia accounts for almost 60% of all flowers imported to the U.S.A.  The Netherlands is losing ground as the centre of production for the European floral market. However, it remains the leader in hybridization and culture, and technology advances come from the Netherlands for the greenhouse growers.