Marilyn's Photos - Jan 31st 2026 - Counting Winter Months

 

I observe winter as December, January and February - the meteorological definition.   That means that we 2/3 of the way through winter.  With February the month of hearts  and flowers, we can have a sense of optimism and good spirits for the rest of the winter.   However, there was a blow to the garden community’s February.  I found out yesterday  that the Orchid Society is not having their annual show at the Royal Botanical Gardens on February 7th.  Each year, it displays hundreds of special and rare orchids grown by amateurs and professionals.  Sellers fill the atrium with wonderful and diverse orchid plants for sale.   Last year the RBG had the Alice in Wonderland Show with a “competing”  display of Phalaenopsis orchids - thousands of flowers on display and also many for sale. It was unpleasant.  What was the RBG thinking?  It seemed like a competitive show to the Orchid Show weekend or a disregard for the society’s special weekend. We will have to wait until next year to find out if there is a resolution with RBG, or if there will be an orchid show at another venue.  Hamilton’s Gage Park would be fantastic. At least we are 2/3 through winter if you count things meteorologically.  Here’s an orchid from a past show - the background is one of my motion blue images. This is one of the last year’s show displays of Phalaenopsis orchids - the common name is moth orchid, and these are the ones available in grocery stores and very easy to grow.

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Marilyn's Photos - Jan 30 2026 - Ice Sculpture Time

 

Niagara Falls alert!  With the freezing temperatures, it is an ice sculpture wonderland.  Everything is coated in ice. It makes me wonder if the light standards could collapse under the weight of the ice.   It is that frozen mist effect.  The Tunnel viewing platform at the Niagara Parks Power Station is the place to get the best view, according to news articles.  The great historic ice bridge happened  1848 and water stopped flowing for 30 hours.  An ice bridge will form when the strong currents push water and ice to the surface where frigid temperatures freeze the mixture.  They can still happen, but are small and not stable.  . Here’s the story of the day the water stopped flowing and the ice bridge formed in March 1848: “For thirty long, silent hours, the river dried up and those who were brave enough walked or rode horses over the rock floor of the channel. Then, with a roar that shook the foundations of the earth, a solid wall of water, cresting to a great height, curled down the channel and crashed over the brink of the precipice. Niagara was back in business to the immense relief of everyone.” “News traveled slowly in those days but the explanation finally came. High winds set the ice fields of Lake Erie in motion and millions of tons of ice became lodged at the source of the river, blocking the channel completely until finally a shift in the forces of nature released it and the pent up weight of water broke through.” Did you know: Lake Erie is the major producer of ice that flows down the Niagara River and is capable of producing 16,093 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of ice. The ice is blown down the river and over the Falls, where it becomes caught as the river narrows near the Canadian Maid of the Mist Landing;  some of the ice is pushed back upriver, which can build up to form an ice jam.  Ice jams can be very erosive; ice grinds on the river bed, moves large boulders and alters the shoreline.  When wind stops forcing water out of Lake Erie into the river, the water level drops leaving the ice jam aloft like a bridge. The phenomenon of the ice bridge is a familiar occurrence each winter.” Ice bridges were popular events in the 1800s and there would be trans-national parties below the river.  This came to an end in 1912 when the jam broke and people perished in the icy flood. Here’s the historic 1848 picture (even though I see water flowing, so who knows). Here’s my tiny patch of ice on Lake Ontario’s shore at Grimsby Beach.

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Marilyn's Photos - Jan 20 2026 - Catch the Falling Chainsaw

 

I saw this expression for the first time yesterday.  It was in the business section of the Globe and Mail.  And the sentence was:  No one wants to catch the falling chainsaw that is the American dollar. "Catching the falling chainsaw" is a metaphor used in financial news to describe the high-risk action of buying an asset (specifically the U.S. dollar in January 2026) that is rapidly declining in value. Look how fast AI got to work to take the quote out of the Globe and Mail.  It doesn’t  want to do any real work, like telling me the actual origin of the phrase.  It is willing to say it started as catching the falling knife and was recorded in literature in 1919, so a common phrase by then.  Where it really originates is lost in the buzz about its relationship to the financial markets and buying and selling strategies. And then the Chainsaw Massacre movie. While looking for the origin of the falling knife, I came upon a website with the origins for many common expressions/idioms.  The site is HERE.  Here’s one I found very amusing. How did sirloin come about as a name for a cut of steak? “Once upon a time, some king came upon an inn and was served beef not quite like he'd ever eaten before. He was also drinking alot with this meal and after a while (being a bit drunk) he pulled out his sword and knighted the meat "Sir Loin."  And so in today's society a good sir loin steak is sold in the fine restaurants only fit for kings! Or...the word smiths feel that it really comes from the word 'surlonge' in French which means beef just above the loin.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be so creative to make up an origin like this! What might falling knife jokes look like?  I found this one: A technical analyst and a fundamental analyst are in the kitchen. The technician knocks a knife off the table, and it lands in the fundamental analyst's foot. The fundamental analyst asks, "Why didn't you catch the knife?" The technician replies, "You know technicians don't catch falling knives!" So the technical analyst replies, "Why didn't you move your foot?" The fundamental analyst answers, "I didn't think it could go that low". This picture comes from a Toronto back lane, and I guess some gasoline had been spilled, making a little rainbow line against the asphalt.

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Marilyn's Photos - Jan 28 2026 - Backpedaling

 

t is a political expression or behaviour. I guess there is so much of it now, that it seems to be getting my attention.  “To retreat from a previously held position, opinion, or commitment.  We can mentally see the origins - to pedal backwards on a bicycle.” The expression came about in the 1880s during the “global bicycle craze.”  It stayed with bicycling until the mid-20th century.   Before that it was “misspeaking.”  And a synonym  is backtracking. There was lots of that in the past, too. And what happened in the 1950s to make this a common behaviour? The marker that is given was U.S. politicians during the 1950s McCarthy era where his accusations “grew more outlandish” and they had to reverse their stances. There was the famous Richard Nixon’s Checkers Speech in 1952 where he backpedaled from a scandal for maintaining a secret political fund. It turns out that McCarthy backpedaled on the anti-communist witch hunts.  Adlai Stevenson backpedaled when it was revealed to have a private expense fund, and George Wallace reversed his position and turned towards a hardline segregationist rhetoric - that’s a strange example to me. There’s an American bias in google retrievals so that’s what comes up in the searches because of our proximity to the U.S. There are unlimited examples in other countries.  It seems odd that Wikipedia doesn’t have an entry for the greatest back[pedals in history.   The jokes are all about sports backpedaling - especially football.  But here are a few lines in the humorous range: I'm not changing my mind; I'm just adjusting my direction I stand by my statement, which is why I’m currently walking away from it My favourite exercise is backpedaling on my promises "Don't look back unless it's hilarious I’m just here to back your bad decisions... then immediately backpedal on them And what about this example? Here’s a collage of a Sea Grape leaf so that it looks like flowing silk.

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