March 25 - The Song is Ending

CBC interviewed REM band member Mike Mills on the weekend.  The hit End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) came out in 1987 and became a satiric and defiant anthem.  So 30 years on, it has come back into the social consciousness and is being played again. What did I find most compelling in the interview?  He and Michael Stipe wrote the music first, then gave it to Peter Buck to write the lyrics, and this is what he came up with. They had no idea this music was going to say this much.   So while this song is about the 'ending', I started to wonder about how songs conclude.  What kind of endings are there? Some of the songs we were singing in the choir have a little 'hmm', 'ooh' or 'ahh' to signal the end, a sort of fade out.  And some come to a leaping big chord and just stop.  These are pretty fun to sing.  We're singing a sort of Celtic orientation/religious/inspirational set of songs. What comes to my mind on the thumping last chord songs? Oscar Peterson and his big endings.  I found this description of his version of West Side Story's Tonight (1962): "Tonight swings mightily right from the downbeat. Peterson twists the melody and trades lines with bassist Ray Brown as drummer Ed Thigpen lightly stabs and jostles the duo with his sympathetic brush work. And then there’s the big pay-off — chorus after chorus of burning swing, round after round of exuberantly shouted choruses, and finally, a stop-time ending." What are the most famous and enduring song endings? In our time, it is an easy answer: the Beatles ending for A Day in the Life.  "Following the second crescendo, the song ends with a sustained chord, played on several keyboards, that rings for over forty seconds. " This ending is considered to have made history and is the  #1  popular song endings.  For classical songs, the #1 ending is Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3 – IV. I haven't looked at the most interesting song ending lyrics, or the songs with long endings.  There likely are more variants on endings - that's for another day.  We likely have lots ahead. Yesterday's weather was too cold for me to garden, so I created spring with some spring flower photo processing.

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While the weather is always a subject of conversation, our recent weather has demanded widespread attention.  Our daily average in April is between 8 - 12 degrees celsius.  That's in the 40's - 50's fahrenheit.  Today, though, we have a high of 4 degrees. There's  promise that next week will be in the range of the averages.   The 'potentially historic' storm for Southern Ontario is moving on slowly. There were power outages and hundreds of accidents. Ice fell from the CN Tower causing damage to the Roger Centre roof.  Most institutions were closed. That was the weekend. Here we are on Tuesday, and we're nearing the end of the bad weather. Toronto's historic storm was in 1999 with 39 and then 27 cm of snow.  The army was called in to help clear the roads. The rest of the country was amused.  That may be because in comparison in 1999 Tahtsa Lake, B.C. set the record for the largest one-day snowfall with 145 cm falling within a 24-hour period.  It delivered more snow than Calgary, Edmonton or Winnipeg see annually. Niagara's greatest blizzard was in 1977. There was a combination of 60 cm, with gusts of winds up to 80 km/hr.  In some cases drifts covered over houses. There was a state of emergency in Ontario, and New York was declared a federal disaster area.   What should you do in bad weather? Here are today's suggestions from wise bread.com... 1. Plan your summer vacation 2. Make an awesome breakfast 3. Nap 4. Make Candy 5. Take an online class or tutorial 6. redecorate 7. Fireside camp out 8. Pajama day in bed 9. Take a luxurious bath 10. Shop your closet 11. Indoor fort 12. Check out some good blogs 13. Afternoon tea 14. Catch up with family and friends Our picture today is the centre of a white Ranunculus at Sunshine Express Garden Centre.

Message in a Bottle

Just a few months ago, the world's oldest known message just got older.  It is almost 132 years old - thrown into the sea as part of a German oceanographic experiment in 1886.   The bottle was found in January by a Perth, Australia family walking on a remove beach in West Australia.  The previous record was 108 years old.  The note had faint writing and the name of the ship, Paula. They took the find to the Western Australia Museum, and the message was researched with colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands.  They found an archival record of Paula's meteorological journal, recording that a drift bottle had been thrown overboard.  They matched the handwriting on the journal and the message in the bottle.   These were experiments to track the ocean currents.  Thousands of bottles were thrown overboard in the 69-year German experiment.  Six hundred and sixty-two messages were returned.  The last German message in a bottle was found in 1934 in Denmark. There is one listed as longer than these - 151 years found in 1935 in Japan. There are questions whether this is authentic-  the couple's intentions had been questioned, but so far the evidence confirms authenticity.  Here's the Youtube video. Messages in bottles have diverse intentions - from scientific experiments tracking ocean currents, to distress calls, to memorial tributes of deceased loved ones, and invitations to imagined and past love interests.  The message in a bottle has been with us since Grecian times.   Scientific bottles are designed for the purpose - they are formally named  'drift objects' and provide information about currents to help researchers develop ocean circulation maps.  The U.S. Coast Guard launched bottles as recently as 1966, and started using them in 1846.  A low percentage are recovered.  It is thought to be less than 3 percent overall.  Recovery rates decrease as bottles are released further from shore.  A rule of thumb is that bottles released more than 100 miles from shore have recovery rates below 10 percent.  Wikipedia has the list of long-duration (>25 years) events involving messages in bottles HERE. We look at the fleeting flowers of spring - these are Ranunculus in the Sunshine Express Greenhouses.

Fools Rush In

If we were in ancient Rome, this would be the Festival of Hilaria.  So let us celebrate the festival of Hilaria in style today! If we consider Wikipedia's observation, we will be on the look-out for pranks - "With the advent of the Internet and readily available global news services, April Fools' pranks can catch and embarrass a wider audience than ever before." So before I go discover what might be in the Globe and Mail, I took a spin with a google search. The Telegraph headline today is April Fool's Day:  all the best fake news April Fool's day is usually only observed by children, that 'really hilarious' person in your office and journalists who have to write about it. And of course, the people in charge of press for large companies, who spend the days before April Fool's sending over weird, wonderful and sometimes tiresome press releases. In a time of fake news as well as weird and wonderful real news, you'd be forgiven for thinking some of these were real." So the article proceeds to showcase the best April 1st news stories  - so check out the link. There are so many that it is hard to pick out the best one so I picked two for your pets.   "Amazon Echo - for pets! "Now, wouldn't this be nice if it were true - which it clearly isn't. Amazon claims to have updated its Alexa personal assistant to make it compatible for pets. Introducing Petlexa! The Petlexa feature allows dogs, cats, and other animals to communicate with Alexa just like you do. The Petlexa feature gives pets the freedom to place orders from Amazon, and to activate smart home enabled toys." "Introducing the world's first hot tub for birds Guarantee your feathered friends aviary good time with Wilko’s brand new Hot Tub for Birds  – the ideal garden accessory for bird lovers looking for a modern upgrade to the traditional bird bath.  Complete with mini-jets for a truly relaxing spa(rrow) experience, this is the perfect way to attract beautiful British birds into your garden and allow them to play, splash and wash. The flow of bubbles mean it will never freeze in cold weather, offering fresh drinking water all year round - creating an eye-catching centrepiece for any outdoor space.   Big enough to make sure your garden birds are never left owl by themselves and that it never gets hawk-ward, this bubblicious hot tub is sure to attract birds in their flocks. Priced at an affordable £25, plans are already underway to release a bird-friendly bubble bath later this year – the ultimate pampering for your feathered friends. Neil Fairhurst, Pet Buyer at Wilko, commented: “We’ve got a soft spot for wild birds here at Wilko and know our customers love to make the most of their outdoor space to encourage natural wildlife into their gardens. Hot tubs are the centrepiece for many British gardens, but why should they be reserved for humans? Birds deserve bubbles, too!” View this email in your browser

Toronto Blooms in March at Canada Blooms

The Canada Blooms and Home Show was on last week, and I had a chance to visit.  While there are still landscape planting displays, the overall trend has transitioned to luxurious outdoor living rooms and outdoor kitchens with built-in barbecues, etc.  Water features are very popular in the landscaped areas. My favourite part of the show is the floral display competition featuring international artists and their creative arrangements. There are always so many people in these areas and the overall lighting isn't that good.  As a result, I don't get too many pictures.  Here are the few that worked out. I've included the last picture of Ranunculus.  Each year there is a mass display of Ranunculus flowers in vases.   It is another lovely part of the show, and a welcome sign of Spring.

Ranunculus Studies

I was at Sunshine Express Nursery on Carlton Street in St. Catharines last week and they have lots of flowers in the greenhouses.  I was particularly attracted to the Ranunculus.  For the first 2 I desaturated the colours to bring out the centres.

On this third image, I've kept the brilliant orange colour of the original.