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.

Waifs and Strays Society

I saw a shadow on the wall and the shape made me think of a 'waif' - a child with dishevelled hair, big wide-open eyes and a heart-shaped chin. In the 1800's, homeless people and children were known as 'waifs and strays' - the definition has a few possibilities: 1. a person, especially a child, who has no home or friends. 2. something found, especially a stray animal, whose owner is not known. 3. a very thin, often small person, usually a young woman. 4. a stray item or article: to gather waifs of gossip. 5. Nautical. waft. It likely is the Miserables poster that made the look so familiar.  And also Annie.  The start of waif look in modelling can be attributed to Twiggy in the 1960's. "Twiggy’s large doe eyes, long mascara-coated lashes and waif-like frame defined the era.  Her leggy androgynous look became the ideal mannequin for mod fashion and is still referenced today on the runway and in editorials." So one might expect to see techniques for creating 'those huge eyes'.  Of course, Google has an answer for that question.  There are a few answers - varying between 8 and 11 ways to make your eyes look bigger. Here's how. Define your brows. ...  Add dimension to your crease. ...  Add shimmer at the inner corner of the eye. ...  Use light, neutral colors on the lid. ...  Line the inner rim of the lower lid with a flesh-toned pencil. ...  Apply mascara to lower lashes. ...  Curl your eyelashes. ...  Apply mascara to top lashes. Apply false eyelashes

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."

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.

Catalogue Countdown

The Eaton's catalogue was a mail-order catalogue published from 1884 to 1976.  Each summer, sometime in August the catalogues would arrive from Simpson's-Sears and Eaton's and my friend Janet and I would go through every page, deciding which items we liked best.  So our August was a very busy month of decision-making.  By the 50's and 60's they weren't selling houses and barns in the catalogue - that was earlier decades.   The Travelchannel.com site says that there is no shortage of fun things to do in August - fro the PGA Championship and US Open to the world's biggest food fight, and the world's longest yard sale.  I forgot that this is the month for the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert, NV.  As the site says:  "Aug 28 - Sept 5 The Man burns in 38 days!" What will you do in August in the Golden Horseshoe area?

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?

Lilycrest Gardens Begin

Lilycrest Gardens, Brian Bergman's lily hybridizing field is full of hope and potential.  The lilies have arisen from their winter dormancy and there are a few early bloomers - martagons and species.   Our first picture is the noteworthy plant this year - it seems to glow with its brown foliage and green markings.  Brian is checking it regularly to see if it maintains  the foliage colour.  It stands out in the field of thousands of lilies, so this would be a hybridizing achievement. Our collage together shows  our first blooms, along with the many variations in foliage.

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.

From September to December

Wikipedia tells me that September begins on the same day of the week as December each year as there are 91 days between them, which is a multiple of seven. Events to consider this month include International Bacon Day - coming this Saturday - we can have our brunch in style. Today's images come from Brian's Lilycrest Garden hybridizing field, with the delicate shades of trumpet lilies that bloom mid to late July.

Lilycrest Gardens - The Hybridizer's Harvest

Lilycrest Gardens is my brother, Brian Bergman's lily hybridizing field on 5th Street near the QEW in St. Catharines. It is transitioning from its glorious floral display into its crop of hybridized lily seeds.  Here is one of the pretty crosses from previous years.

Lilycrest In Bloom

Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field is showing great colour and beautiful blossoms.  But yesterday I was there to pick  beans.  Brian had a little extra space and planted potatoes, beans, tomatoes and zucchini. Just like the lilies blooming profusely, the beans are producing profusely.  Zucchini seem to be like balloons and just expand.  The area's soil is very fertile with Bakker's nursery stock fields all around.  This year's crop is small trees rather than roses - I wonder where the blooming roses are this year.

Lilycrest Gardens - Full Bloom Week

My brother is a lily grower and hybridizer.  He has a field on 5th Street in St. Catharines, and it is in its prime right now with lilies in bloom.  You can see him loading the van with lilies to go to the National Show.  The past two days was the Ontario Regional Lily Show in Burlington at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Lilycrest Gardens brings to mind the "lilies of the field" in the Sermon on the Mount: 'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin...' Brian's field grows Lilium lilies - and the Madonna Lily is a special flower of Christian symbolism.  However, it is unlikely to be the lily referred to. It doesn't grow in Israel. Tulips, poppies, daisies and other wildflowers have been suggested as candidates for “lilies of the field". And the likely candidate is the flower Anemone coronaria, the Crown Anemone.  It grows in every part of Israel. There are many possibilities to choose from as there are hundreds of flowers with Lily in the common name and dozens that grew in Israel.  The reference remains interesting and mysterious, with no definitive answer.

Blue Lilies - Can there ever be?

I gather the genes aren't in a Lilium lily for there to be blue flowers.  I did this one in Photoshop to see what a blue lily might be like.  This lily was at Lilycrest Gardens, my brother, Brian Bergman's hybridizing field in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Enjoying Lilies

I get to enjoy lilies long past their blooming period.  I found some new software from Topaz Labs and had some fun with Lilycrest Garden pictures. Here they are with the newly available program Impressions.

Lilycrest Gardens - Hybridizing Success

This is one of Brian Bergman's new hybrids.  Seeing as he's my brother, I am lucky to visit the field all the time, and see what's up.  The labels tell the story of what to keep and what will be deleted from the field.  A small group of seedlings will result in beautiful and blah.  One needs to label the beautiful to keep and get rid of the ones that didn't turn out. This is a small flower and plant with a big decorative impact.  It's my kind of garden lily.   

Lilycrest Gardens - Lilies and Lilies

There's such a variety of lilies - size, colour, form, texture and shape.  My brother's lily hybridizing field, Lilycrest Gardens, is in St. Catharines Ontario.  He has more than 100,000 plants, so I can see all the varieties in profusion, which this first image illustrates - masses and masses of flowers.  By using textures I can disguise the paths and soil that would be distracting from the flowers.  When we're in the field, we really don't see the backgrounds as we are so drawn to the flowers and their intense colours. 

Another Lily

I posted this yesterday on the marilyncornwell photography blog.  It's a lily portrait from my brother, Brian Bergman's Lilycrest Garden field.  There are so many distractions in this field of distinctive blooms that I like to use textures to focus the image on the flowers.

A Little bit of Lilycrest Gardens

Here's another image from the hybridizing field, Lilycrest Gardens, in St. Catharines, Ontario. July 2014.  What great contrast in the colours.

Lilycrest Gardens - Prime Time

My brother, Brian Bergman, has a hybridizing field in St. Catharines where he grows his hybridized lilies.  I was in the field last week, and took these pictures.

Roses Galore in Niagara

Bakker's grows a lot of nursery stock in the Niagara region and particularly in St. Catharines.   The Third Street pop-up nursery had Bakker rose bushes for $10 a few weeks ago, so I have four new roses.

They have a splendid show on 5th Street where my brother, Brian Bergman's Lilycrest Garden hybridizing field is.

Here's the show a week ago - a little like Holland and those rows of tulips...