March Ending

A rainy day is forecast for us today.  So I brought out the conservatory flowers to remind us that rain is good in the spring. These are Cineraria, a pot plant traditionally grown in the spring here and showcased in cool conservatories.  A native to the Canary Islands, one can imagine these daisy bushes in spectacular blues, whites, pinks and purples growing everywhere. I can always count on these at Sunshine Express Nursery and  at the Niagara Falls Floral Showcase Greenhouses during the Easter display.  View this email in your browser

Another Hour

Another hour before Spring is here at 6:29am.   Poets have given us beautiful Spring verses for as long as there have been poets.  So let us revel in its first moments. In Spring, everything is full of promise.... The child sporting upon the lawn, and the season, sympathize together, and nature rejoices in her virgin loveliness. ~Charles Lanman, "The Dying Year," 1840 It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective The year’s at the spring And day’s at the morn; Morning’s at seven; The hillside’s dew-pearled; The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His heaven - All’s right with the world! ~Robert Browning It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o’er the green corn-field did pass, In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding; Sweet lovers love the spring. (As You Like It, 5.3.15-20 Our Grimsby Garden Club members planted the town's hanging baskets yesterday at Trillium Hill Greenhouses, located at the west end of Grimsby.  This year, the group celebrated the event with a Lilitopia moment.

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.

Snow in the Headlines

Today's weather headlines:   Blizzard barrels towards northeast Snowstorm slams northeast Here are more great headlines about snow: Ice Scream! Now, Melt! The Brrrfect Storm From snow to whoa Gee bliss - New York socked by snow Snow fly zone No-mageddon:  The Washington, D.C. snow hole Snow Maggetin' Gipped The Snow Must Go On S'no Foolin' BONUS:  Have You Been Plowed? How many snowflakes are in a blizzard?  Is there a number big enough to represent a snow storm's parts?  Of course there is, and someone has created a table to show us this at thealmightyguru.com.  Here's the introduction: "Ever wonder what a number with 228 zeros after it is called? No? Well who asked you anyway? Actually, it's called a quinseptuagintillion. Duh! Here is a list of all the big numbers up till the infamous centillion. Just some more incredibly useless trivia for you from TheAlmightyGuru." I scrolled to the bottom and clicked on Pointless to see a page with  "all the useless knowledge I've posted over the course of my page. I've been told many times that I know too much about everything, and not enough about anything. As you can see from this page, it's pretty much true. I'll continue to update this page with more and more pointless data just so you'll know all sorts of things you never really cared to know in the first place. I'm doing this as a public service. You're welcome."

Spoons and Spoons

Spoons have been around a long time. Spoons with handles were used in ancient Egypt for religious purposes as early as 1000 BC.  When it came to consuming food, the most common material was wood, which was easily available.  The wealthy had spoons made of bronze and silver during the Greek and Roman empires and on into the Middle Ages.   Spoons have also always been ceremonial.  Before the coronation of every British king,  the monarch would be anointed by a ceremonial spoon.  There were apostle spoons during the Tudor and Stuart periods.  The practice of giving christening spoons started then.  The spoons we use today took on their form in the 18th century. There is a famous rude spoon in the restaurant joke.  You can check it out by clicking on the link.  As spoons are so common, I thought there would be many spoon jokes, but that doesn't turn out to be the case, and spoon quotes are mostly about the 'silver spoon' metaphor, so seemed a bit tedious to me to read famous people claiming they weren't born with a silver spoon... Edward Lear's 'runcible' spoon popped up on my searches.  It turns out that "runcible" is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear. The word appears (as an adjective) several times in his works, most famously as the "runcible spoon" used by the Owl and the Pussycat. I guess one could use a runcible spoon to eat "the frim fram sauce with oss-en-fay with sha fafa on the side." Today's train layout has the most remarkable trees.  I know you will enjoy them too.

Is that 9ty or 9tee?

How has written language evolved?  There was no formal learning of  words with letters and numbers together.  And yet, when personalized license plates became widely available, the creativity burst forth and all kinds of 'play-words' evolved to be seen on passing cars.  I took a look at Plates4Less: "We at Plates 4 Less love to get creative in looking for private number plates so that we can give your vehicle a splash of personality! Our expert search team have created this page especially for people looking for private number plates featuring the number 9. We have been as crafty as we can, trying out as many different combinations as possible to get the best matches available. We hope you find the masterpiece you’ve been looking for! " The plates4less search team.  What makes a license plate cost 33,000, 306,000 or 6,500 pounds?  Our brain has an innate ability to translate letters and numbers.  This is the title of a post at turnerink.co.uk "F1gur471v3ly 5p34k1ng? How your brain can read words made of numbers" Didn't that make you smile? At the Fun with Words site there are observations about numbers, as spelled out in English, as in "Eight is the first number alphabetically, zero is the last" or this: "Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland, once noted that "eleven plus two" and "twelve plus one" use the same letters and produce the same sum." To conclude, we look to letter and number humour on jokeomania.weebly.com: Why was the 6 sad? A: 7 8 9 What did the alphabet say when it fell down? A: I-M-O-K Which rock channel do they letters of the alphabet watch? A: M-T-V Where does Mr.Alphabet sit when he comes home from work? A: In his E-Z chair What kind of sale did the number store have A: 2-4-1 Which letter and number when put together mean victory? A: I-1 What monsters do you find in the haunted alphabet? A: Killer B's Which letters and what number tell you to be careful? A: B-4-WARNED! What to letters mean good-bye?  A: C-U

The Stratus Sphere

I do mean into the "Stratus"- sphere.  I had thought that the clouds in today's pictures were likely the stratus type of clouds on the horizon yesterday morning.  They were vast bands of whipping cream slathered across the sky. Or perhaps snow drifts.  It was like looking at the gills of a mushroom and seeing an ivory silk-pleated dress.   How many kinds of clouds can be in the sky at one time? It looked like Stratus and Altostratus all together.   But when I read this article with pictures, this is likely incorrect.  Because of the format of Mailchimp, the pictures are small.  If you look at the lower left above the 'w' in the first picture, there's a taller tree. That's the microwave tower at Brian's Lilycrest Garden hybridizing field.  I was at the Seventh Street exit of the QEW, looking across the wonderful orchards on Niagara.  And then they continued on their journey and flew away.

Betterphoto 2nd Place Winner - Dezi!

One of the most intriguing, yet easy to accomplish adventures from yesterday's top 100 was to: Send a message in a bottle So I found the 10 most famous floating note discoveries and here's what the article says: "People have been putting messages in bottles for much longer than a century: in 310 BC, Greek philosopher Theophrastus put sealed bottles into the sea as part of an experiment to prove the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean. Oceanography is a common reason drift bottles are thrown overboard, but there are also some romantic and surprising stories of sending messages across the sea throughout history.  I've copied the top 3 most famous floating note discoveries: 1. FOUND BY: Konrad Fischer in the Baltic Sea, 2014 SENT FROM: Richard Platz in the Baltic Sea, 1913 TIME AT SEA: 101 years A message in a bottle tossed in the sea in Germany 101 years ago, believed to be the world's oldest, was presented to the sender's granddaughter, a Hamburg museum has said. A fisherman pulled the beer bottle with the scribbled message out of the Baltic Sea off the northern city of Kiel in March, Holger von Neuhoff of the International Maritime Museum in the northern port city of Hamburg said. Mr Von Neuhoff said researchers were able to determine, based on the address, that it was 20-year-old baker's son Richard Platz who threw the bottle in the Baltic while on a hike with a nature appreciation group in 1913. 2, FOUND BY: Scottish skipper Andrew Leaper near the Shetland Isles, 2012 SENT FROM: Captain C. Hunter Brown near the Shetland Isles, 1914 TIME AT SEA: 97 years and 309 days A drift bottle released out to sea on June 10, 1914 by Captain C. Hunter Brown was recovered by UK fisherman Andrew Leaper almost 98 years later, on April 12, 2012. Brown was a scientist at the Glasgow School of Navigation studying the currents of the North Sea, and the bottle was one of 1,890 released on June 10, 1914. It is the current Guinness World Record holder for oldest message in a bottle. The message inside read: "Please state where and when this card was found, and then put it in the nearest Post Office. You will be informed in reply where and when it was set adrift. Our object is to find out the direction of the deep currents of the North Sea." The bottle was discovered 9.38 nautical miles from the position it was originally deployed. 3. FOUND BY: Matea Medak Rezic in Croatia, 2013 SENT BY: Jonathon (identity unknown) from Nova Scotia, Canada, 1985 TIME AT SEA: 28 years A 23-year-old kite surfer, Matea Medak Rezic, stumbled across a half-broken bottle while clearing debris from a Croatian beach at the mouth of the Neretva river in the southern Adriatic. Inside the bottle was a message from Jonathan, from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, who had written it 28 years earlier, honouring his promise to write to a woman named Mary. The message reads: "Mary, you really are a great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write. Your friend always, Jonathon, Nova Scotia, 1985." The bottle would have had to have travelled approximately 6,000 kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean, entered the Mediterranean Sea, and then drifted into the Adriatic Sea. Jonathan and Mary's identity, and how the two knew each other, is unknown. Looking across the Twelve Mile Creek bridge towards Port Dalhousie, our 2nd place winner in the BetterPhoto contest.