Repeat Again

This is Groundhog Week!  The Groundhog Day movie is a movie on the theme of repetition.  What about unnecessary repetition?  Wouldn't that be what redundancy is?  Do you think Bill Murray's character felt the repetitions were redundant? Here are expressions that could be termed 'groundhog moments' in celebration of the movie.  Redundant is what they are: a moment in time – A moment is essentially a period of time. ATM machine – ATM already stands for “Automated Teller Machine” true fact – By definition, facts are true. join together – How else would something join? free gift – Because when’s the last time you had to pay for a gift? added bonus – The word bonus indicates something outside of what’s expected, so of course it’s added. end result – Results always come at the end. final outcome – Related to the above, an outcome signifies the end, or finality. plan ahead – Planning always refers to the future, or what’s ahead. repeat again – Ah, the irony here! close proximity – To be close to something is to be in proximity. past experience – Experience refers to what has happened in the past. most unique – Unique implies there’s nothing like it, so one cannot compare it to something else. rise up – When rising, there’s no other way to go but up. the reason why – A reason explains the why. new innovations – An innovation is something that did not exist before, i.e., it is new in and of itself. unexpected surprise – If you were expecting it, it wouldn’t be a surprise. advance notice – When giving someone notice, you’re always doing so in advance. What redundant phrase do you find yourself using most often? Are you having Groundhog moments? This wonderful list is courtesy of proofreadnow.com  The orchid arch at Longwood is twelve feet high and contains more than 600 orchids. The reconstruction of the Longwood Main Found Garden is shown in this youtube video time-lapse :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjuioDG74Jk

Morris Arboretum Fernery

The Morris Arboretum Fernery

The Fernery at Morris Arboretum We have two pictures of the Fernery.  The first is a scale version on an outdoor railway at the Morris Arboretum.  The second is the actual fernery at the Morris Arboretum.  It is located in Philadelphia.  Stepping into the fernery, one sees the appeal of a year-round grotto garden.  This fernery seems to illustrate how much the Victorians loved gardens. It was the Victorians who started the advances in hybridization and gave us the garden as environment. The Victorian metaphor of the landscape is a series of distinct outdoor rooms with the hardscaping forming the walls, floors and doorways.  The furniture is trees and shrubs, the carpets are lawns.  Victorian gardening books described the proper ways to 'ornament the lawn' with trees and shrubs.  Trees, shrubs and flowers weren't chosen to 'block a view' like we would do.  They were chosen as objects of art to be admired.  This was the time when advances in hybridization were large, and where expeditions brought exotic introductions to the landscape. Gardens soon were filled with as many exotic and novel specimens as possible. When I visited Winterthur, the Dupont Museum of American Decorative Arts, I took a guided tour of the gardens on the bus.  The travel guide was tremendously knowledgeable, and she stopped in front of two huge cherry trees.  She said that they are the oldest Sargent Cherry trees in North America, brought back as whips by Charles Sargent from his expedition to China.  Like Morris, he was a great Victorian garden adventurer.