April 18 2020 - Making Toilet Paper

We know that toilet paper is not going to drift into the background.  A top CTV story online this morning is that the Forest Products Association of Canada says the demand for toilet paper has increased by 241 per cent during the pandemic.  But the sawmills across the country that produce the wood chips needed to make pulp have closed down due to the pandemic. Amazon toilet paper from China won't arrive any time soon, according to the Los Angeles Times. ABC News explains the shortages of toilet paper by describing the supply chain:  toilet paper is bulky and not very profitable, so retailers don't keep a lot of inventory.  They get frequent shipments and restock shelves.  The Independent has a section on toilet paper now with late breaking news:  Water firms issue blockage warning for toilet paper 'alternatives', and Trump boards Air Force One with 'toilet paper' stuck to his shoe (that was from 2018, but the Independent considers it current news).  Ryerson University made the news with a two-tier system of toilet paper - staff get the two-ply of course. Here's the story - it is from 2015. So you can expect to see instructions on how to make toilet paper.  Caroline Baldwin seems to have covered this in 2017.  The instructions are HERE. They involve newspaper, a bucket of water, a large pot on the stove, rolling pins, and more. I was entertained by some of the images of toilet paper that accompany this current frenzy.  Here are two of them. And our picture today comes from the Salt Spring Island farmers market September 2019.  Won't we be growing our Victory Gardens this summer.  That's a trending garden topic now.

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All Carved Up

Wake Up on the Bright Side    What If  our food was art - and then we ate it?  Would you eat something that looked like this? It doesn't look likely that it can be preserved, but who would break apart the globe for a watermelon snack? These would be examples of the kinds of entries in the IKA Culinary Olympics.  There are more HERE in the enroute magazine article.   This is a popular Asian tradition.  There are many fruits that can be used in this process; the most popular that artists use are watermelons, apples, strawberries, pineapples, and cantaloupes. In the vegetable realm, there are carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers.  You can find a zucchini cactus rose, a carrot candle, a banana daschund, blueberry penguins, and so on.         So a scenario came to me - carving onions.  Wouldn't this be for the sturdiest and fastest of carvers.  The tears would get in the way of the result. Look at the results - red onions are carved to look like lotus flowers.      These onions start to take on a life of their own - so here's their joke of the day: One day two onions, who were best friends, were walking together down the street. They stepped off the curb and a speeding car came around the corner and ran one of them over. The uninjured onion called 911 and helped his injured friend as best he was able. The injured onion was taken to emergency at the hospital and rushed into surgery. After a long and agonizing wait, the doctor finally appeared. He told the uninjured onion, "I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news is that your friend is going to pull through. The bad news is that he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life". Here's an ornamental allium/onion for today's image.

Things to do in Niagara

Will Niagara become a destination for more than Niagara Falls and wineries?  Westbrook Floral sold the greenhouses on the South Service Road at Bartlett last year to a cannabis company.  It has been building ever since - greenhouses, warehouses, all kinds of buildings.  So the sign was up yesterday - hiring.  The company is Up Cannabis.  Are you a Quality Assurance associate?  A Cannabis greenhouse worker?  Packaging technician? Health and safety coordinator?  What about VP Operations? There are a lot of jobs for cannabis-related workers.  Up Cannabis seems to have locations in Hamilton, Beamsville, Grimsby,  There is almost nothing on the Up Cannabis website. Search, shipping, contact, terms, privacy, careers are the headings.  One has to join the online community to receive any information about products.  This is due to the age restriction. I wonder if garden clubs and horticultural societies will include this topic in their speaker series?  Growing Marijuana in the garden.  Or perhaps this summer's off-site visit will be to the new UP Cannabis facility.  My preference is for the flower-growing facilities like the COSMIC orchid greenhouses.  The challenge for visits to these places is that they use natural pesticides and don't want any external contaminants brought in.   Greenhousecanada.com has great headlines that outline what's happening - and has an article on a natural pest control beetle that is relevant to cannabis growing.  In addition, they indicate that we can expect shortages of some floral crops as flower growers sell/sold their facilities to cannabis growers.  More shortages may be on the way.  In B.C. acreage of vegetable production has decreased because of conversion to cannabis.  So could we in Niagara be seeing fields of cannabis this summer?  Driving along the QEW or the blossom trail could turn out be an expanding experience. Our picture today is another image of the hippopotamus at the Disney World in Florida.

Niagara's Little Garden Show

A Garden Show in Niagara I went to the Niagara College Greenhouse 'Student Open House' last Friday.  This was the day before they presented the open house so I got the preview and got to meet the students. Everyone was running around, getting things ready, and they were all having a good time of it.  The students took time out from organizing the displays to show me their work and explain the compositions and plants.  It is encouraging and delightful to see a new generation of workers who are engaged and enjoying their work.  They had displays showcasing recycling of materials, as in the humorous use of tires with grass.  There were tiny space gardens and vertical displays.  The horticultural program teaches the latest techniques so the hydroponic lettuces were as interesting looking as they were delicious looking. It was so enjoyable to see this kind of garden show compared to Canada Blooms this year.  It is small, creative, personal and alive. More on Canada Blooms tomorrow.