Chocolate Month

Doesn't December seem like the chocolate month?  The celebration of chocolate occurs throughout the year in various holidays.  There are so many -  I checked out chocolate holidays at http://www.holidays-and-observances.com/chocolate-holidays.html Just in December are celebration days every week: National Sacher Torte Day - December 5 National Chocolate Brownie Day - December 8 National Cocoa Day - December 12 National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day - December 16 National Chocolate Day - December 28 and 29 What I really notice in December, though, are the Ferrero chocolate promotions everywhere. And then I got to wondering about nutella, produced by Ferrero. It is considered the most popular hazelnut chocolate flavour in the world.  It seems to me it has to be as Ferraro uses 25% of the global supply of hazelnuts. The wikipedia article on nutella lists the ingredients by country.  So if we travelled around the world, we could experience the many variations of nutella.  There are cafes that serve 'nutella everything' - they are owned by the Nutella company.  There's a Chicago cafe, New York cafe, a Toronto cafe (opened in 2015 and supposedly closed in 2019).  There's a Nutella-Mobile that cycles its way around Eataly NYC.  I wonder if we'll find one in the recently opened Eataly Toronto.   Eataly is in the newly revisioned Manulife Centre retail concourse so a destination I'll be visiting soon. Here's Rosewood Winery pond garden with the snow and ice effects of the recent ice storm.

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Oscar's No Host Moments

Here's the beginning of  an article on the 2018 Oscar predictions: "It is crunch time as now I am forced to put up or shut up".  It continues with  "stick-a-fork-in-it" and "take-it-to-the-bank" calls.  I would pronounce this writer an idiom-addict. So on to the "Academy Award of Merit", now called the "Oscar".  It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony.  It started in 1929.  Motion pictures were born in 1885 with the Lumber brothers' short films in Paris. The first studio was built in 1897, and in the 1900's permanent theatre showings occurred.  The first feature length multi-reel film was in 1906.  Newsreels were shown from 1910 on.   By 1914 commercial cinema was established.  So the beginning of awards by 1929 seems to make sense. The first broadcast of the Oscars on television was in 1953. Bob Hope and Conrad Nagel were the first televised hosts.  The next year it was Donald O'Connor and Fredric March.  My remembrance is of Bob Hope and he hosted many times.  Even Frank Sinatra was a host - in 1963.  All the hosts are listed HERE. Did you know that there was no host from 1969 - 1971 and in 1989?  In 1989, it was Lucille Ball's last appearance.  She was a co-presenter with Bob Hope at that Oscar ceremony.  She died a month later at 77.  Bob Hope lived to be 100, and died in 2003. The viewing audience size and the advertising revenues are the Oscar performance measures.  The biggest Oscars were in 1998, and it is attributed to the movie Titanic. 55.25 million people watched.  You can see an amazing piece from Vanity Fair on the 1998 oscars.  It is full of clips and funny lines. Here's our garden snow scene after the storm last week.

Almost Here

pring begins tomorrow at 6:29am.   Our weather yesterday was a fluffy snow fall, and with the ground soft, one could smell all the moisture.  That made it quite cold, too.  How does Accuweather.com predict daily weather into the beginning of May?  It gives the sense of a predictable weather pattern, although we experience otherwise. When I look out my office corner window, (not my corner office window) I can see the Niagara escarpment.  It is one of thirteen UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves in Canada.  The trail along it starts in Queenston. The cairn marking the trail's terminus is in a parking lot, about 160 metres (520 ft) from General Brock's Monument on the easterly side of the monument's park grounds. The trail concludes in Tobermory.  It is 850 kms long, with 400 km of side trails. The idea to create it came about in 1959, and the trail was set in motion in 1960, with regional clubs established along the length of the Trail.  Each club was responsible for obtaining landowner approvals, organizing trail construction, and maintenance efforts within their region of the trail.  The cairn at the northern terminus of the Bruce trail in Tobermory was unveiled in 1967 - Canada's Centennial Year.  It is the oldest and longest marked hiking trail in Canada. When Dezi and I go to Grimsby Beach, we walk one of the spur trails - a side trail from the escarpment to the Lake. We in Canada have the distinction of having the longest hiking trail in the world - the Trans Canada Trail.  It is 24,000 km. It is an astonishing length - the next longest trail in Italy is 5,954 kms long.  Today we say farewell to winter in pictures from yesterday's snowfall.

Winter Gardens

I submitted a few photos to Lee Valley for their Newsletter.  Here is one in the February issue of the Gardening Newsletter.  This image is from my garden, where the Sweet Autumn Clematis climbs over the Lavender Twist Redbud.  Redbuds are beautiful in the spring, with their small fuchsia coloured blossoms.  In the autumn, the Sweet Autumn Clematis flowers are in full display.  And for the first part of the Winter, the seed heads are pretty as well.  Now just for Spring to come our way, to repeat the cycle.  See the Gardening newsletter here:

http://www.leevalley.com/en/newsletters/Gardening/9/2/Article1.htm

Niagara Falls Conservatory Greenhouse

Built in 1946, the Niagara Falls Conservatory Greenhouse has 3 major display houses with different temperatures and plantings.  This bench was in the cool greenhouse last week when I was in, with some fresh spring plants going in.  The gardener's bench looks original to the greenhouse, and gardener said it has always been there.