I'll Take Mine Fried

I made it in time to capture the fiery foliage of the Cemetery Japanese Maple.  It is entwined around a headstone, which is not visible in these photos.  November is their month for vivid colour - as long as it doesn't get too windy.  That's always a dilemma here in Grimsby with the wind off the escarpment or the Lake. I planned to capture the large tree in front of one of our heritage homes and the leaves are gone - they dropped in one day.    And around the corner from me is the largest Japanese Maple I've seen in Niagara, with the glorious red colour on the tree and in the driveway. From the den garden website: "In Japan, maple trees are known as kaede (楓/"frog's hands"), as well as momiji (紅葉), which means both "become crimson leaves" and "baby's hands". Momiji is commonly used as the term for autumn foliage in general in Japanese, but it is also used as a term for maple trees. These names come from the appearance of the leaves, which resemble the hands of a baby or a frog. The scientific term for Japanese maples is Acer palmatum."   "In Japan's Osaka prefecture, the red and orange maple leaves are a sight to see during the fall. As is the case in the rest of Japan, people go out in droves to see the beautiful fall scenery. However, in Osaka, locals also go out in droves to collect the leaves and turn them into a deep-fried delicacy! Fried maple leaves are a very popular snack in Osaka, and apparently have been for at least a thousand years. The city of Minoh, located in the north part of the prefecture, is particularly famous for their fried leaves. The maple leaves are dipped and fried in tempura butter, which give them their unique taste. The secret of Minoh's success with fried leaves really isn't much of a secret at all. Chefs there usually store their leaves in barrels of salt for one year, which makes their leaves particularly tasty!"

Justin Trudeau and the Queen

Isn't it so great to have a Prime Minister who makes headlines for saying funny, witty things.  Justin Trudeau's toast to Queen Elizabeth told her he was the 12th Canadian prime minister to serve during her reign and his father, Pierre Trudeau was the fourth.  Her Twitter response was: "Thank you for making me feel so old",  It isn't every day that the news headline is a light-hearted remark. I took these pictures last Saturday - the last of the grape leaves on the vines.  These had red, orange and yellow in such intense tones.  I drove by later in the week on Thursday and everything was gone - the leaves and the colours.  It is so remarkable how quickly the colours can disappear.

Sunset Sunrise

As the sun sets on summer our question of the day is:  Do Sunrises look different from sunsets?  Today we'll see fireworks as the sun sets on summer.  What about tomorrow? Natalie Wolchover writes: "You've woken up out of a coma. You yank the IV from your arm and stumble out of the hospital. The sun is perched on the horizon. Can you tell whether it's rising or setting? Contemplating this scenario while gazing sunward at dusk or dawn, we might feel as if we could sense the difference between the two times of day. But in real life, it's impossible to completely divorce our perceptions of the scene from our awareness of the hour. So, is there any objective way to distinguish an upward-trending sun from a downward one? According to atmospheric physicists David Lynch and William Livingston, the answer is "yes, and no." The first is in our heads. "At sunset, our eyes are daylight adapted and may even be a bit weary from the day's toil," Lynch and Livingston write. "As the light fades, we cannot adapt as fast as the sky darkens. Some hues may be lost or perceived in a manner peculiar to sunset. At sunrise, however, the night's darkness has left us with very acute night vision and every faint, minor change in the sky's color is evident." In short, you may perceive more colors at dawn than at dusk. [Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See]" To read on see: http://www.livescience.com/34065-sunrise-sunset.html

Burning Water

Today's image celebrates great sunsets over water.  It is amazing how the sunset colours look like fire dancing on the waves. Here we are in the Labour Day weekend, and we can enjoy a few of the facts about September. - Shakespeare did not mention September in any of his plays. - In 1752 in Britain, September had only 19 days as we changed from Julian to Gregorian calendar. - "My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something' - Groucho Marx.