Hooyah! Mission accomplished

Yesterday we looked at the Guinness records about roofs.  Today, in celebration of the rescue of the cave-bound Thailand boys, we look at underground records.   We were there for that record too. It was August 2010 and 33 miners were trapped underground in Chile for 69 days.   But how about this record?  It would be on a lighter note (!): The deepest concert underground was at 1271 m (4,169 ft 11 in) below sea level at Pyhäsalmi Mine Oy, Pyhäjärvi, Finland and was performed by Agonizer (Finland) on 4 August 2007. My Google search goes off-course with a fascinating title: 20 Guinness World Record-breaking destinations to visit around the world.  1.  The largest railway station by number of platforms is New York City's Grand Central Terminal. 2. World's narrowest Street - Germany's Spreuerhofstrasse street. Located in Reutlingen, the thin street is only a foot wide at its narrowest point. ... World's Oldest Restaurant:  You can still dine at the world's oldest restaurant - Restaurante Botín - located in Madrid, Spain. Created in 1725, it still maintains its original 18th-century interiors and firewood oven today. Then Google results return to the topic in a bizarre headline:  "A man who has been buried alive in a pub garden for more than three months has broken the record for the length of time spent in a wooden box underground". Geoff Smith, 37, beat the European record of 101 days - set by his mother - at midnight on Monday. Could you make these stories up?  His mother did it when he was seven years old. "He did it at 37, and it has been his ambition to go and bury himself in a box". Back above ground, it is Lilycrest blooming time.

Ba + Na2

Do you know about the banana peels and how they became a familiar joke?  Mental Floss has the story on this. In the mid-1800s bananas started being shipped from Panama to New York City. They became a popular street food.  At the time, people tossed their garbage  (I gather lots of it) into the streets, and this included bananas, so they would linger there accumulating and decaying. It was so prevalent, that Harper's Weekly in 1880 admonished anyone who tossed their banana peels on a public walkway, as this would likely result in broke limbs.  Virginia Scott Jenkins in her book   Bananas:  An American History says that in 1909 the St. Louis city council completely outlawed "throwing or casting" a banana rind on public thoroughfares because of falls and broken limbs.  Dan Keppel's book on the banana describes how the banana peel epidemic in New York City resulted in the first large-scale recycling effort in the United States:  a fleet or uniformed workers swept the streets in shifts and disposed of the waste. Vaudeville comedians took up the cause with the banana-peel pratfall. It became a fixture of physical comedy.  Harold Lloyd included the gag in his silent film The Flirt, and Buster Keaton in The High Sign.  Even Woody Allen included the gag in Sleeper. I thought today's topic might be advice for 2018, and  I gave up - this is one topic where there is way more than one can get through...well, it is advice!  I did find something that appealed to me (or if put in banana speak 'a-peeled'). Retirement is the beginning of the time when you can sit back and give advice to others, even though you never followed it in your own life. Here are two Niagara crops you may not be familiar with - roses and Gingko trees - these are in the Bakker's growing field near Lilycrest Gardens. And our third picture is a Canadian History moment - this was a poster given to us by our friend in Colorado.

Polka Dots and Moonbeams

Polka dot is a pattern consisting of an array of large filled circles. Wikipedia says: "It is likely that the term originated in popularity of polka dance at the time the pattern became fashionable, just as many other products and fashions of the era also adopted the polka name." This is around 1834 and was a dance craze until the 1890's. Polka dot patterns got their name capitalizing on the polka craze - polka was added to the names of a wide variety of products. Polka dots today find themselves on informal sorts of things - cup cakes and candy, children's clothing and toys, and fanciful house ware and women's clothing.  Definitely cakes and dresses lead the way for polka dot expressions. And then there is the Polka Dot Queen - this is a different realm of polka dot expression.  The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known as the Polka Dot Queen because of her repetitive dot patterns in all her work.  Her museum in Tokyo was recently opened, and included large polka dots on the exterior.  Inside are her works with their polka dots on canvases, sculptures, and more. She has  mirrored installations where visitors are immersed for 20 to 30 seconds to "replicate the sense of infinity".  This is astonishing and creative work.  Her room of polka dot pumpkins is mesmerizing. Our picture today uses the Topaz Glow software on the fanciful Fusion lily.

Voyager Sees Us

We looked at the Voyageurs yesterday.  Today we consider it was the 40th anniversary of Voyager 2's journey through our solar system in August. The coverage below is from theatlantic.com. "In August of 1977, the first of two identical robotic probes was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bound for our outermost planets and beyond. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have each traveled more than 10 billion miles in the past 40 years, sending back invaluable observations and images. They discovered two dozen new moons, discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, took a famous “family portrait” of our solar system, and much more. Voyager 1 recently became the first spacecraft to leave the heliosphere and enter interstellar space. The Voyagers are also famous for being our most remote emissaries, carrying with them identical “golden records” with images and sounds from Earth. On this 40th anniversary of the first launch, a look back at the still-running Voyager mission follows." Our first picture from Lilycrest Gardens is obvious.  What is our second picture? I've copied it from the article - This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed "Pale Blue Dot," is a part of the first-ever "portrait" of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixels in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. In 1994, Carl Sagan said of this image: "That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

Lilycrest Lilies in Review 2016

Christmas isn't finished till its over for the Orthodox Christians.  How do they live the rest of the year if they use the Julian calendar and not the Gregorian calendar?  There are 13 days difference. Many Soviet Union and Middle Eastern churches tend towards the "Old Calendar" while most of those in the United States have made the switch.  It appears more of a country-wide choice rather than a church choice as the public holiday falls on the chosen date for Christmas. It seems interesting that Easter isn't impacted but celebrated on the same day by everyone. This is the week that we look back at the closing year and decide on the top news, events, photos, etc. What area do you look for highlights?  I went to the Oxford Dictionary for the Word of the Year.   "After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’." Wikipedia has the words of the year from 1990 - 2015 listed.  The source is the American Dialect Society.  They are so slow in deciding for 2016 that they are still in the process of accepting nominations.  Their meeting is January 5 - 8 2017 if they announce it then, it would be in time for Orthodox Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ and the birth of a new word. Our 2016 review starts with Lilycrest Gardens.

When will there be a blue lily?

In the late 80's, we worked on the information technology strategic planning methodology.   We distinguished between data, information, knowledge and wisdom, showing the logical relationship between them.  Wikipedia has these graphical representations - often we did it as a pyramid with wisdom the peak - a pinnacle of thinking processes.  If we achieved wisdom with technology, we would achieve the ultimate.  The components are described here. The Wikipedia article continues with a section on criticisms:  Rafael Capurro, a philosopher based in Germany, argues that ... any impression of a logical hierarchy between these concepts "is a fairytale". What do others say in this discussion?  In my search,  I found this very fun and quotable assertion.  It was my "morning smile". "Owning a state-of-the-art CD player is pointless if you use it only to listen to polkas played by a kazoo ensemble." - T.H. Davenport and L.Prusak in "What do we talk about when we talk about knowledge?" Our picture today brings together the bizarre and the beautiful.  The bizarre is that this is a fasciated lily in the Lilycrest hybridizing field this year.  It is a mutation caused by growing conditions that cause a flattened stem which produces dozens of flowers crowded together in a 'bouquet'.  The beautiful is the blue lily - it's been given a blue wash in one of my photography filter programs. A blue lily isn't achievable with its normal dna. Likely a Delphinium will need to get spliced into it to get this colour range.

Lilies in the Field

It is considered unlikely that the Lilies of the Field reference in the Bible refers to Lilium lilies.  This is contrary to the beautiful Tiffany Stuido stained glass showing white lilies - looking like white Madonna lilies. From Wikipedia: Many varieties of flowers grow wildly and abundantly in Galilee. The translation of lilies is traditional, but far from certain. Modern scholars have proposed a number of different flowers that Jesus could be here referring to, according to Fowler these include the autumn crocus, scarlet poppy, Turk's cap lily, Anemone coronaria, the narcissus, the gladiolus, and the iris. France notes that flowers were less specifically defined in that era, and lily could be a word referring to any showy variety. The verse could also just mean flowers in general, rather than a specific variety. "In the field" implies that these are the wildflowers growing in the fields, rather than the cultivated ones growing in gardens. Harrington notes that some have read this verse as originally referring to beasts rather than flowers.  Some of these flowers have lily in the common name such as gladiolus - sword lily, iris - flag lily.  But it remains as indistinct today as in the past. We revel in the lilies of Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field from this past summer.

Summer School

Summer school used to mean failing a course and having to take it in the summer so one could get to the next grade. Now one can take regular credit courses (new credit, re-take a course to upgrade mark) and remedial credit courses (earned a final mark of at least 35% but below 50%).  I would have been happy to go to summer school - school was fun for me.  So it seems ironic that those who went to summer school in decades past were those who didn't like school.   Summer school for the Toronto District School Board ends today with report card pick-up.  So now what to do with August? There's the Helsinki summer school from August 4th to August 20th.  One can go to Shanghai China, the Imperial College in London, or Berkeley.  So many options to choose from.

Show Lilies

Yesterday was Brian's second favourite day of the year - it was the Ontario Regional Lily Society Flower Show and Competition. It is held at the Royal Botanical Gardens.  He had picked a few stems in my garden, especially a gigantic pink Amarossi which was taller than 7 feet with many flower buds.  It opened perfectly for the show so became one of the Award winners.  A flaw on a petal made it lose the Best in Show award. You can see one of Brian's hybrids in the garden in Grimsby and how tall it is - I claim the Grimsby soil is extraordinary, and these lilies are good proof. Another surprise at the Show was the handbook on growing lilies - Let's Grow Lilies!   I'd forgotten the cover has my photograph on it - taken in Brian's Lilycrest Garden hybridizing field. And finally, the show has beautiful floral design competitions.  Here's a favourite - the handbag/purse competition.  Everything is made of  floral and leaf material.

How Big is Rain?

The Lily field is waiting for rain. It is experiencing drought conditions this week.  Farmers are watering their tender fruit trees, we're watering our lawns and gardens,  what might there be that's of interest today on the rain topic? I went to Today I Found Out to 'feed my brain'.  The first question is about raindrops.  A thunderstorm is forecast, so what might I learn? Harry K asks the question 'Why are raindrops always so small?  Would it be possible to have a single raindrop that contains gallons of water?'  That is an interesting question with an even more interesting answer:  raindrops are more than water.  The vapour in a cloud has to have something to condense around such as dust, smoke, salt, etc.  These are called condensation nuclei.  Rain is usually 1 - 2 mm in size when it reaches us. There had been a consensus in the past that raindrops wouldn't get bigger than 2.5 mms, but Hawaii recorded 8.8 mm in 1986, and scientists have found 5 mm drops buffeting about in the clouds rather than falling to the earth.  The record is 1 cm in the clouds over Brazil - they were the products of large ash particles from burning fires. Who would have expected there to be such interesting information about the ubiquitous raindrop?

Roses and Roses and Roses near Lilycrest!

What a crop!  We think of wheat, corn, and soy beans.  We don't think of roses.  Here they are on the same road as Brian's Lilycrest gardens hybridizing field.  This is 5th Street Louth in St. Catharines, close to the QEW.  There is perfume in the air. It is that time of year when  the seasonal fungus commonly called Dog Barf Fungus or Dog Vomit Fungus sprouts to life.  Here is more about the fungus.

Winter Retreat to Lilycrest Gardens

Winter's cold winds are gusting across the Grimsby landscape so it is a good time to retreat to the landscape of summer's beautiful Lilies.  These are in Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field, in St. Catharines on Fifth Street, close to the QEW.

Lilycrest Gardens

Just a few more lily images from Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field.  The first one is a Marathon lily - one of the first to bloom in June.  It has small down-facing flowers, and is one of the delicate little lilies to bloom.  It is quite a contrast with the lilies that follow in the season.  In July, during the peak blooming there are beautiful bold colours, huge flowers and some of the plants reach up to five feet tall with 10 or more flowers on them.