From Soup to Nuts

"From Soup to Nuts" came into my mind.  Maybe someone said it last night at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society meeting.  These are great garden meetings - many people, many projects, much discussion.  It is as though I've been transported decades back in a time machine when gardens were vital to the social fabric of a town.  An example is their multi-year project is to plant daffodils for cancer in special gardens in town.  There are 100,000 daffodils ready to bloom.  The ceremony is this Sunday at 1:00pm. Back to "Soup to Nuts": This phrase stuck in my mind and I started to ponder it.  I know it is a metaphor for 'from beginning to end'.  We still serve soup as a first course.  But nuts?  The latter part of the 20th century did not have nuts as a dessert course.  What cookbooks have anything on the "nuts" course? Some of the references say 'desserts with nuts in them'.  If something is to have such a clear meaning, it should be universally understood.  I was still questioning desserts of nuts from the descriptions I read. I decided the plausible answer is at the site straightdope.com: Origin: For centuries, any foods served at the beginning or end of a meal stood for the entire thing: the start and finish and everything in between. This expression was “from eggs to apples” and “from pottage to cheese.” In the United States in the middle of the 20th century, the expression developed into “from soup to nuts.” At many meals, soup is often the first course and a dessert with nuts is sometimes the last. The expression does not have to refer to only to meals, however. It could be the selection of goods for sale or classes offered. ... According to most of the British authors I read, the last course of a meal is port and nuts. But only for the men, I believe. I think the women had to go sequester themselves elsewhere and drink coffee or something until the men got tired of drinking port and joined them. Which of course begs the question, how did *that* get started? At any rate this is a British custom, and “from soup to nuts” is an American idiom. But still it seems clear that in some form or another nuts were considered the last course in a good meal, while soup was the first. And I think that covers this one from soup to nuts. This is their warning at the bottom of the column.  It is a delight in itself: "STAFF REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED." Today's picture is Wisteria.  I checked this one around the corner from me.  Many wisteria in Niagara are grown as small shrubs, like this one.  It is a mystery flower - there are no flower buds as though no wisteria will bloom.  And then - POP - plump little buds will appear.  We're in such a late spring, it may be a few weeks away.

Grocery Time

The history of the word grocery begins this way:  these were dealers who sold by the gross - in large quantities at discounted retail prices.  This was in medieval England.  There was a Grocer's Hall in London in the early 15th century, and the French word grosser, meant a 'grocer's shop' by 1828.  But that seems so far away to what is now the supermarket.  I looked down the last aisle of the Sobey's yesterday and it was a wall of large glass doors of freezer goods. It seemed eerie. The shelving and food storage may have changed, but the large self-service store with food and household goods has been with us for 100 years.  Vincent Astor founded the Astor Market in 1915 in Manhattan, creating an open-air mini-mall that sold meat, fruit, produce and flowers.  While it was not successful, Piggly Wiggly stores opened in 1916.   The Great Atlantic and Pacific Team Company started just after. There was a debate in the U.S. over who opened the first 'true' supermarket.  The Smithsonian Institute along with Heinz researched the history and determined that the first supermarket was opened by Michael J. Cullen in 1930.  The stores were called King Kullen.  The slogan was: "Pile it high. Sell it low."  And that has been the dominant theme of supermarkets - reducing overhead costs to deliver competitive prices. The supermarket was a staple of the MBA program.  It has perfected all the techniques in controlling purchasing behaviour through layout, circulation, coordination and convenience.  There is also a principle about colour psychology.  Did you know that yellow is known to 'evoke energy and increase appetite?"  The grocery store layout principles are explained here at realsimple.com.  This is an example of a site whose goal is to bring shopping behaviour to the attention of consumers. I fall into the category of the consumer who is looking for a few specific things.  I spend time up and down the aisles looking for a single item - this week it was Kosher salt which I didn't find.  "Many stores have layouts that can seem unnecessarily confusing - this is another trick that grocery stores use.  When shoppers go into a store looking to buy a few specific items, they end up walking through the entire store looking for those items if the layout is confusing. They’ll be exposed to more products, spend more time in store, and likely spend more money." This interesting-looking plant was at the Denver Botanical Garden last year. There is one blooming in my greenhouse with long spikes of insignificant flowers. It is bukiniczia cabulica - a member of the plumago family that grows in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  I got it last year at a sale at the Ontario Rock Garden and Hardy Plant Society from one of the members.  Being a biennial, it will die after this flowering.  My job is to save the seed and return to the grower who will start some new plants.

Conventional Wisdom

People are talking about: "Last year compared to this year" weather differences.  Our fitness instructor mowed the lawn three times by yesterday's date last year.  I'd sent out pictures of orchards in bloom, having spotted the first orchard trees blooming in mid-April.  The Magnolias were in bloom in Queenston, a beautiful town on the Niagara River.   I was thinking of what conventional wisdoms have become common practice in the 20th century. I expected to find things like the 80-20 principle.  While the term dates back to 1838,  it is associated with John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1958 book The Affluent Society in which he displayed his contrarian view of economic theories of the day. Conventional wisdom is considered a derogatory term - it is defined as "ideas so accepted that they go unquestioned".  The example that is cited is that it was once believed that the Earth is flat, and that at the Earth is the centre of the universe.   Wikipedia puts it more specifically:  "It is widely believed that prior to Christopher Columbus people thought the world was flat, but in actuality, scholars of that time had long accepted that the earth is a sphere.  The above sentence is true; people today often think that Columbus discovered the world to be round, when in fact the world's roundness was already widely known by Columbus' time. However, if enough people read and believe the above sentence, the above sentence will eventually supplant the old belief (the old belief in past belief in a flat earth). The above sentence would become the new conventional wisdom. (Ironically, however, this would also turn the above sentence, the new conventional wisdom, into a false claim; because the new conventional wisdom would propose that people are confused about past beliefs in a way that they actually wouldn't be.)" So complicated a term to consider.  In seeking a list of typical conventional wisdoms, I find lead-in paragraphs to research studies and their results and financial investors and their advice. My sense is that this expression has been hijacked by writers. If it is a serious area of investigation, perhaps it is obscure rather than popular. And now what we experience is that it is conventional wisdom to challenge conventional wisdom.  There's something circular about this concept! The fascinating Canada Blooms' wall sculpture is today's subject.  The second picture shows it interpreted by the Flaming Pear plug-in "India Ink".  The third one interprets it with the Topaz Labs plug-in "Glow".  Both interpretations show off its wonderful design structure.

Storming into History

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 15. Catch up with family and friends Our picture today is the centre of a white Ranunculus at Sunshine Express Garden Centre.

Glass over Grass

It used to be that a greenhouse was constructed on good soil, so that the plants could flourish under the warmer conditions during the winter.  I can remember these greenhouses - Niagara had many floral crops under glass - you could see and smell roses  and lilies in the middle of winter and buy a bouquet. There's no soil in a commercial greenhouse today. Everything is sterile to reduce issues like fungus and insects.  Biological controls are used - no chemical sprays anymore.   So Niagara soil is often covered with hundreds of acres of greenhouses on cement floors.  It is up to thousands of acres under glass - peppers, cucumbers and tomato production represents 3,000 acres of greenhouse growing. (This would include the Windsor corridor.) There were 223 vegetables and 400 flower greenhouse operations in Ontario in 2015. The greenhouse produce industry in Canada is worth $1.3 billion. I was able to see in to some of them because of an open house on the weekend in support of charity. Seven in the Jordan area were on the tour.  Included was CosMic the phalanopsis orchid grower and Jeffrey's where I buy overflowed pot plants in the summer.  Jeffery's is particularly large. It also grows other seasonal pot plants, such as Chrysanthemums for autumn and Poinsettias for the Christmas market. There were floral greenhouses on the tour that I hadn't seen before.  Below is a picture of  statice - one of the bouquet flowers.  They also grow amaryllis for the floral trade and peonies outside for the June market, to keep their staff employed. The number one cost of greenhouse operations is labour - around 30-40%. And that is with migrant workers who are below minimum wage.   There is some automation - little robots space the plants perfectly for maximum efficiency.  Automation supports moving plants up to the next pot size - filling pots with soil. There are a few other areas applications.  But all the pinching is done by hand, and there's a fair amount of it.    We didn't get to see a tomato production house. I ran out of time to see St. David's Pepper production.  Here is a wonderful Financial Post article HERE covering the largest tomato greenhouse producer in Canada - located in the Windsor area.  There are great pictures and video.  What I was interested in was that the article covers the Vineland Research Station's new 1 acre test greenhouse.  It has a greenhouse tomato breeding program.  They are hybridizing like crazy in there - cross-pollinating commercial and heirloom tomatoes to get the supreme tomato of great flavour and great durability. It is just a matter of time... We see what the industrial floral landscape looks like. Our first picture shows a typical migrant worker - they come from Mexico and South America.  In the second image is the water reclamation pond.  Little irrigation hoses go to every pot.   Our third picture shows the work at hand - pinching, etc. There are some flowers to see - but mostly a vast landscape of green all around. There were some pretty pot plants in Jeffery's showing colour.  They will likely get shipped out this week to their major customer Costco.

Mr and Mrs America - in Niagara

Beauty pageants have not been in my thinking for decades.  I wondered what became of the Miss America Pageant.  It joins the Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss Earth and Miss International pageants.  These are the "big Four'. There are 190 countries involved and it is seen by more than half a billion people annually.    The entire list of female and male beauty pageants is extensive -  major and minor international pageants, continental and regional pageants, and national pageants.  The Men's pageants have interesting names such as Manhunt international. There are varying dates when female beauty pageants began - 1920 or 1926, probably depending on which pageant one is referring to.  It used to be that contestants needed to be 'of white race' until 1940.  There was also controversy in 1945 when a Jewish winner was told to change her surname.  She refused.  There are current controversial rules now.  They are listed HERE. They include not allowed to get engaged, never having any children - biological or adopted, never to have been pregnant, and so on. Today the big four female pageant organization and brand is owned by a talent agency.  Everything about the pageant is HERE on Wikipedia.  Did you know that Donald Trump bought the pageant in 1996?  The pageant was broadcast in the United States on NBC until 2014, but in September 2015, NBC cancelled all business relationships with Trump and the Miss Universe Organization in response to controversial statements about illegal immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico.  He became the sole owner, and then sold the company to WME/IMG. What about the Mister World pageant?  It is sponsored by the Miss World Organization.  It is biennial and started in 1996.  The entrants compete in various activities including waterskiing, mountain biking and marathon running.  Mr. Rohit Khandelwal became the first Asian to win the title of Mister World in July 2016. He also competed for various sub-titles at the pageant, including but not limited to Mr. World Multimedia Award, Mr. World Talent, Mobstar People’s Choice Awards, Mr. World Sports Event and won the subtitle of Mr. World Mutimedia Award.  You can see more HERE in Wikipedia on the Misters. Now we're up to date on beauty pageants - not much seems to have changed since I watched one on television in the 1960's.   Tomorrow I'll tell you more about yesterday's greenhouse tour of 7 growing greenhouses in Niagara.  This was the message at one of the stops on the tour.

A Cup to Measure By

Pyrex came along in 1908.  Corning introduced it for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware.  Pyrex is a purely arbitrary word, devised as a trade-mark. This glass is used in astronomy applications.  Corning cast the mirror for the California  Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory project during the same time period.  It took a year of cooling after it was cast.    It was the the shape of the measuring cup that my attention was focused on.  It has remained the same for a long time.  I have a measuring cup that is more than 50 years old.  It looks like new, yet it seems that there would be better designs that are more accurate.  It is hard to measure small amounts of liquid. You can see one here at kickstarter.com.  The design has 2,748 backers and has reached $129,159 of its $30,000 goal.  The estimated delivery is May 2018.  The product information says:  "We're tech nerds with a passion for cooking, and we've created a better measuring up.  Euclid's patented shape delivers a level of accuracy that no traditional measuring cup can match."   What is that shape? It made me think of the pretty Calla lilies in today's pictures.

Life Experiences with Elvis

If I were a younger person, would I use this service?  Lifexperiences.ca will help me find an 'experience' and send it as a gift.  If we look at the Lifestyle section, there are experiences such as: Axe Throwing in Saint Anns 30 Day Yoga Adventure - For Two Learn to Shop like a Pro Home-staging to sell OR Home-staging to stay My own idea is the following:  Did you know that there is a Niagara Falls Elvis Festival from April 20 - 22?  This is its second year.  There are gala shows, an Elvis Competition, delicious food, fun times and cool surprises, according to the website.  And then there is the Niagara Falls, with its thunderous water, flowers, and attractions. How many Elvis Festivals are there?  There's the Official Elvis Festival, at Lake George, New York.  There's one in Collingwood, Las Vegas, Texas, Georgia, and more.  Did you know that the largest festival is in Collingwood, Ontario?  It's in July.  If we were visiting Australia, the festival is January 9 - 13th next year.    There is an Elvis Week in Memphis in August.  It includes a candlelight vigil celebration.  Or watch the coverage here and see Elvis' comeback performance.  There's so much Elvis to go around that there is Elvis Radio - it is a station that plays Elvis 24/7.  That's a lot of Elvis music having been recorded.  Quora lists 523 albums and approximately 784 songs.   Some pretty pink lilies today.

Where's Fido?

There are well-know dog names - Fido, Rover and Spot.  Where do these names come from - particularly Fido?  Here's a case on not remembering much Latin from Grade 10 Latin class.  Fido means "to trust, believe, confide in".   Did you ever meet a dog named Fido?  If you had known Abraham Lincoln, you would have met his 'faithful' dog Fido, always by his side.   It was in 1941, when Fido became one of the best known dogs in Italy,  and then around the world.  This dog came to public attention in 1943 because of his demonstration of unwavering loyalty to his dead owner.  Fido was a rescue dog brought back to health by Soriano.  They would go to the bus stop each day and Fido would watch Soriano board the bus for his job.  Fido would stay in the town square for the day, and be there at the end of the day to greet his friend at the bus stop. However, this was during the second world war, and one day Soriano did not return - the factory had been bombed.  Fido waited and waited for Soriano on the day of Soriano's death, and then finally went home.  He returned every day for fourteen years - watching and sniffing the air, waiting for Soriano.  Soon Fido's unwavering loyalty became widely known.  Magazines ran stories of Fido, movies were made, and he was awarded a gold medal.  Even Time Magazine covered Fido in 1957.  He had his own sculpture created "Monument to the dog Fido" - this was during his lifetime - he was famous and revered. When Fido died in 1958, his obituary was in the paper, and he was buried near his owner.   Are there other dogs with such remarkable stories?  Yes - there are at least three who are famous for similar reasons - the Japanese dog Hachiko, the American Shep, and the Scottish Greyfriars Bobby. Today's picture is a yellow Baptisia blooming in the Sunshine Express greenhouses.

From Kitchen Garden to Keukenhof

How many bulbs will bloom at Keukenhof this year?  Over 7 million bulbs in 32 hectares (79 acres) of flowers.  This is the largest flower garden on the planet - a festival that has been expanding since 1949 as a promotion for tulip growers.  In the 15th century it was used for hunting and gathering herbs for the castle's kitchen.  Keukenhof means Kitchen Garden. Today there are 30 full-time gardeners who work year-round.  Can you imagine what needs to happen in the autumn?  It takes 3 months to plant it. What do they do with the flowers that have bloomed?  They dig out the bulbs and most are used as food for livestock, a reminder that tulips are edible. This year's theme is Romance in Flowers.  The rose show - and the red rose - will be showcased in a grand style.  How do you make 32 hectares of flowers interesting?  The park is divided into theme gardens -  Historical Garden, Inspirational Garden, Cupid's Garden, Holiday Romance Garden, Rob's Oriental Romance, Rebel Garden, Delft Blue Garden, Hipster Garden, Tea Garden and Health Garden.  There are flower shows inside pavilions throughout the Festival (March 22 - May 13).  Each one is based on a specific flower -  Anthurium, Orchid, Lisianthus, Freesia, Gerbera...and on. What about the sightseeing flight over Keukenhof and neighbouring flower bulb growing fields?  Flying at 300 meters, it would be a wonderful view of the Dutch landscape and those abstract squares of floral colour.  With all the canals, one can travel through the bulb fields around Keukenhof in an electrically-propelled whisper boat.  The Facebook Page has photographs - a mini-vacation for us.  I really enjoyed the cheeseweb.eu site coverage. It showed coverage over the years. Here's one of my favourite tulip images.

Hamlet's Lament

Consider Hamlet.  His existential angst has become is a crossword puzzle question and answer in the world of Google.  Pages of crossword puzzle hits come up for the search for Hamlet.  Question: Hamlet's lament Answer: Alas Ophelia fares no better.  She comes up as a song by the Lumineers. It's on top of the list as it as gotten 221 million streams on Spotify. Compared to this King Lear is "King Lear" and Othello is "Othello".  They are characters in Shakespeare plays - no more than that. What about Romeo?  He lives on, having become synonymous with the 'lover'. The urban dictionary defines romeo as an attractive, passionate male seducer or lover.  I found a context we wouldn't think of:  in the world of espionage, the romeo is a male who is carefully placed within a high level of government agency to seduce lonely females placed high in the government.  Females used in this capacity during the cold war were called romiettes. Is the Alfa Romeo named after Romeo?  No it isn't.  Instead, it is the combination of the original name of the company and the last name of entrepreneur Nicola Romeo, who took control of the company in 1915:  "A.L.F.A." ("Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobile") Romeo. Our diverse exploration of Shakespearean character names can only be done now with our tools like google. There's the much longer-lived academic investigation of Shakespeare as the authentic playwright of his works.  Here is a recent update:  a most interesting article from the New York Times, February 7, 2018. "Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare's Plays" The findings were made by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who describe them in a book to be published next week by the academic press D. S. Brewer and the British Library. The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden. The article is HERE.  Our picture shows the greenhouse at the beginning of May 2017.  Only a few weeks away and this will be our landscape.