Russia - a Nation of Humour!

Did you know there is a very long tradition of Russian Political jokes?  I find this out from Wikipedia.  The jokes start with Imperial Russia and conclude with Post-soviet Russia.  They are HERE.  A Bloomberg article with the best jokes is HERE. Bloomberg's article, as with Wikipedia, demonstrates that Russian humour about the way the country is run is an unbroken tradition from the czarist era to the present day.  The article's author, like me, finds that many of them aren't funny.  But there are some great jokes in the article.  Here is Reagan's joke. "The CIA-Reagan Soviet joke pipeline was no secret at the time. One from a list declassified in 2013 was a particular favorite — Reagan told it repeatedly, once adding he’d shared it with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and gotten a laugh from him. The CIA version goes like this: An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, “To hell with Ronald Reagan.” The Russian replies: “That’s nothing. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan,” too. Two more from Wikipedia: A Gulag joke: Three men are sitting in a cell in the (KGB headquarters) Dzerzhinsky Square. The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned, who replies, "Because I criticized Karl Radek." The first man responds, "But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Radek!" They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly in the back, and ask him why he is in jail. He answers, "I'm Karl Radek." A Stalin joke: Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!" and resumes his speech. Our pictures today come from Moyer Road - this is the road that Vineland Estates Winery is located on.  This silver barked bush along the side of the road is very photogenic as it is.  It becomes the texture for an abstract pattern created in photoshop.

When is IV IIII?

Do you ever panic when you see the end of the movie scroll and you can't read the Roman Numerals?  Yesterday's clock tower in Kingston had Roman Numerals to mark the hours.   Names of monarchs and popes use what is called regnal numbers which are Roman Numerals  Generational suffixes - you could be John Smith VI Year of production of films - and was the story goes was started by the BBC News "in an attempt to disguise the age of films or television programmes" Hour marks on time pieces where the traditional IIII rather than IV is prevalent as in our picture yesterday Buildings - the year of construction  Page numbering of prefaces and introductions Book Volumes and chapter numbers Outlines that use numbers to show hierarchical relationships Occurrences of a recurring grand event - none other than the Olympic Games Then there are uses within specific disciplines - music, astronomy, chemistry, computing, theology, and so on.  It seems Roman Numerals show up in many places. So we might be presented with the issue of how to represent zero.  It does not have its own Roman numeral.  And fractions seem to be complicated.  The Romans used a duodecimal system for fractions.  And then what did they do for large numbers? The system Apostrophes was developed for these. So while the system declined, it has remained with us in quite a few small ways. Our Autumn pictures come from last year - there's little colour to see this year so far - the wind has swept many leaves away.  There was no show of colour as we drove down the road past Morningstar Mill at Decew Falls in St. Catharines.  Just down the road is Decew House where Laura Secord ended her 32 km walk from Queenston.

Barking Up a Tree

How loud is a typical day? I wondered this when I was walking into the wind yesterday and it seemed to fill up my ears. Here are the measurements of a blogger who has serious hearing impairment: "I wake up to the flash of the alarm on my iPhone. (For those of us with hearing loss, there’s no point having an alarm that makes a sound, as we aren’t able to hear it.) The noise in my quiet bedroom room measures 44dB. I cough (87dB), then I get up and nip to the loo. Flushing the toilet registers 84dB. I go downstairs to let our dog, Tilly out. As I wait for her to come back in, I run the tap (85dB) and put the kettle on to boil (82dB). I pour water from the kettle into a cup (52dB), and open the door of the refrigerator (65dB). Then, I empty the dishwasher and put away the items, which make the following sounds: Crockery/Dishes  (89dB) Cutlery (91dB) Glasses clinking together (94dB) I pop some bread in the toaster and it makes a kind of ‘ticking’ sound as the control knob rotates. (70dB) I go for my shower (93 dB), then I dry my hair using the hairdryer (95dB). The loudest sound I was exposed to on this particular day, was the traffic noise when in the car with the windows open, which registered 99dB. The hedge-trimmer was the second loudest sound I encountered at 97dB.  She used the Decibel 10th app. Her article says that sounds louder than 85 dB can cause permanent hearing loss.  So I guess I met a big noise yesterday.  Here are abstracts of tree bark.

Barking

In the Land of Cotton

I went to the East Georgia Botanical Garden in Savannah, Georgia on the trip down to Florida.  I was startled by a crop in the vegetable garden.  Clearly it was cotton.  I'd never seen a cotton plant.  My picture has captured cotton that has been left on the plant over the winter, so we don't see the fluffy cellulose at its best.  It remains a major crop world-wide.  I can't think of any crop here in Niagara that has such a pretty winter show.  For me, it is pussy willows in the spring that give this sense of delicate fluffiness.   Our next picture is one that we associate with Florida.  It is a cypress tree reflecting in the water - a wonderful natural landscape within the botanical garden.  We can grow cypress here in Niagara and many parts of warmer Ontario.  Like the Dawn Redwood, it is a striking structure in the landscape - vertical, fanning out towards the bottom. No garden is complete without a reference to the human element of structures and buildings. The warm colour of the wall gives us a sense of the backdrop we can expect in tropical gardens. Our northern backdrops are most often grey, blue, white, red brick, taupe stucco - all quiet colours in the winter that blend in with a white winter setting.

Farewell to the Sunrise

Every day is a different day Our month of sunrises is concluding today.  These are yesterday's spectacle.  The intensity of the coral pinks and reds on the water was an experience. I had thought that sunsets would be more intense than sunrises, and find science is right.  They are equally wonderful.  The beautiful skies concluded with great cloud cover that brought in winds and rain.   View this email in your browser

Seasons' Jump

The mums are now blooming at the garden centres.  The pop-up stand at 3rd Street and the QEW has  discount mums on the flatbed truck - a welcome transition from the kalanchoes that have been there all summer long.  So now,  the bright orange-red geraniums at my front kitchen window are now replaced with red-rust mums.  They signal the change of colours in the landscape as we move from the the lush green with fiery reds of summer to the autumn tones that are more integrated. Our photos today were taken in Marion Jarvie's garden.  The first two show the entrance in April and then in early June.  For me, it demonstrates the transition from the browns of spring to the lush greens of summer.  Isn't it interesting how the white trellis picks up the greens  around it in the second photo. I didn't notice it at the time, yet now it seems striking. The visit in Spring was April 28, a time when people are starting to garden.  So it was easy to take pictures without people.  The visit in June was with the Garden Bloggers Association, and the garden was full of people and plants.    Marion is a collector of the distinctive and the unusual so the garden writers were abuzz with discussions on everything around them.

Colour in Summer

COLOUR


It seems so far away that there could be this much colour all around us every day.  This is the Grimsby Market and the Wendalane Flower Farm stall.  I am enthralled by Jen's combination of floral materials - creative and inventive.  I've seen people point at a flower like the Queen Anne's Lace and say - 'that's a weed'.  And then they buy a posie or bouquet with it.  It is one of those graceful, delicate flowers with a vintage sense to it.  Jen is choosing her flowers for 2015 and will be starting seeds soon.  I hope she grows the Walking Gourds again.  They were fun in the garden urns in Autumn.

Here's their Facebook and website to take a look:
https://www.facebook.com/wendalanefarms
http://www.wendalane.com

Countdown to Christmas - the Landscape in December

It is the countdown to Christmas and everyone is busy shopping, going to concerts, baking, and going to special events.  These activities seem to be excellent distractions from the loss of our beautiful fall colours and glowing landscapes.  

These two pictures show the entrance to one of the Royal Botanical Gardens hiking trails.  They were taken just over a month apart, and with similar light in the sky.  But how the autumn colours make everything glow and how the winter sky and sombre reduced colour palatte makes for a stark comparison.

Of course, we will next experience Winter in Niagara.  The colour palette will reduce to the point where the images are black and white naturally.  It is a significant contrast to the many colours and hues of summer and autumn.  Of course, we then experience the cycle anew and our glorious spring returns.