MARILYN CORNWELL: pretty gardens

Our winter months' celebration days are colour-coded. Christmas is red and green, Valentine's Day is red, St. Patrick's Day is green. As we move into Easter, it is pastel colours, but not a dominant colour theme. We go on to Victoria Day - and abandon colour coding. We pop up with the national flag of red and white on July 1st, but don't worry about colours until Christmas again. We do sprinkle a little orange in for Thanksgiving and Halloween, as though in readiness for the darker, colder, and starker days of winter.

I became aware of this at the long-term care home yesterday, where the St. Patrick Day display is up with its shiny, green hats and clover leaves replacing February's red hearts.

February being the chocolate highlight month, I can let you know that February concludes with a chocolate theme - it is National Chocolate Soufflé Day tomorrow, February 28th. And while February has a high concentration of chocolate celebration days, there are chocolate festivals, fairs and celebrations all year long, and national chocolate days throughout the entire year. Here are two stories that popped up:

What is the longest chocolate truffle? A choo-choo.
This 111-ft 8-in-long (34.05-m) chocolate choo-choo was put on display at Brussels South railroad station in Belgium on November 19, 2012. The tasty train was crafted from Belcolade chocolate by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia (Malta) as part of Brussels Chocolate Week. A jazz band provided the musical accompaniment on the day, with the keyboard player tinkling away on a grand piano that was also made from chocolate!

The Chocolate Fashion Show. This is an annual chocolate trade show in Paris in October - the link is HERE. You can see the dresses, purses, decorations on shoes - chocolate creations everywhere.

We enjoy summer skies by Skylum today with pictures from the Minneapolis Arboretum.