These Orchids are Stunning

Our weekly flowers from Nightjar have arrived, and they are glorious and a bit other-worldly.

This week I have garden flowers to share, our first Boat Orchid or Cymbidium bloomed! They are beautiful, but depending on the perspective they are also really weird-looking flowers. We have many more varieties and all of them have flowering stems developing that will bloom over the next few weeks, so I’ll probably share more of these soon.

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

The Art of Book Design: Uncle Wiggily’s Rheumatism

Howard R. Garis. Uncle Wiggily’s Rheumatism. New York, A. L. Burt company, 1920

It’s Children’s Book Saturday and I love the cover of this book. Uncle Wiggily is a very dapper looking rabbit with sparkling pink eyes that shine. I took the time to read a bit of this book and the stories are just as charming. Uncle Wiggily is a rabbit who has adventures and he and the other characters in the book are sweetly portrayed for a young audience.

Unfortunately, the artwork inside the book is a bit disappointing. The animals are more realistically drawn and lose some of the charm of the cover. The colours are also dull and uninspired. There are also only 4 illustrations in the book. I had hoped for more from an edition of this date. If you’d like to see the artwork, I’ve included it below the fold. There are apparently more Uncle Wiggily books out there and you may see another title down the road.

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved (click for full size)

Jack is not a duck, nor is he Jesus, but he was walking on water today. Jack loves water. He loves the big water of the North Atlantic and the little water of ponds and puddles near home.  It seems he’s even attracted to water when it’s in its solid state. On our way around the trail this morning, Jack insisted on walking on the pond.

“Don’t worry, Mummy. The ice is strong, and I’ll pay attention to it. There are heaps of interesting smells here.”

It did look solid enough, but I thought I should test it, so I slowly made my way out to Jack, bouncing on the balls of my feet and making the occasional stomp. The ice was surprisingly robust at the edges of the pond, and it was also full of divots and craters. I have no idea what causes water to freeze in this manner, but it was interesting. It felt a bit like being on the surface of the moon. I mentioned this to Jack, and soon we were playing Star Trek Away Mission and laughing like little kids. It was a good day.

 

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack wanted to check on things in the woods on the east side of town, so off we went to the Vansittart Trail. We don’t come here often for a few reasons. The first reason is bugs. There are a lot of mosquitos and ticks around these parts, but it was a few degrees below zero today so I thought that was safe. I was partly right. There wasn’t an insect in sight, but the trail is not maintained in winter when it is also seldom used (that’s the other reason we don’t come here often), and our walk was anything but safe.  The path was covered with ice and we had to wend our way between the trees to keep upright. The closer we got to the pond, the more snow we found, which actually made walking a bit easier. It was nice to see that the water was entirely frozen over, and there was no evidence of flooding here at all.

Jack seemed satisfied with the state of things and told me the fairies and little ones here were in deep winter sleep. Nonetheless, he wanted to check out their communication centre (who knew fairies even had those?) and so we veered off the path towards the meadow, and this is where Jack stopped – at a hollowed-out stump. He says this is an important spot for the woodland people and told me on the quiet that the fairies use it to send smudge signals, I have a general idea of what that is, but when I asked for more information, Jack wandered away as usual. I love that boy, but I wish he was a bit less recalcitrant.

Jack’s Walk

Modern Warfare by Chase Meuller

This morning Jack and I came across a pile of papers scattered on the sidewalk near my house. This isn’t unusual. We live near a high school, and I often find littered test papers and assignments on my lawn, but this pile was pristine and on examination looked lost, not tossed. There were a few job applications and several pieces of art, including the one above. Luckily, the young man’s name and phone number were on the applications, so I phoned him to let him know what I’d found. He hadn’t known he’d lost the papers and was quite glad to hear from me. He was very polite and thankful, and we made arrangements for him to stop by tomorrow to pick up his things. This piece of art appealed to me, and I asked him if I could post it. He’s given me his verbal approval, and so I present to you the artist, Chase Mueller.

Good Luck with the job search, Chase.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s a triple gravity sort of day for me and my brain can’t seem to organize itself to write. Rather than leave you with nothing, I thought I’d share this poem by one of my favourite authors, James Joyce.

****************

Flood

Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love’s full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.

 

James Joyce – 1882-1941

 

 

Tree Tuesday

There is one last grove of California Giant Red Sequoia trees in private hands and like all forests in the Sierra Nevada area, it is at risk of damage from environmental pressures, including a heightened risk of fire. The grove is highly important and contains some of the oldest and largest trees on the planet. Nearly 500 of the trees are over 6 feet in diameter

Now, a California conservation group is beseeching the public to step up and fund the purchase of a huge grove of the towering trees. “It’s an awe-inspiring place,” says Jessica Inwood, Parks Program Manager for the Save the Redwoods League. “It’s the last, largest giant sequoia property left in private ownership.” One sequoia on the property, the Stagg Tree, is believed to be the fifth-largest tree in the world.

Though the sequoias do not burn as frequently as other trees in Californias, the league intends to reduce tree overgrowth in order to mitigate the damage of future fires. “With fire frequency and intensity predicted to increase due to climate change and with significant fuels accumulation in the forest, the ecosystem is vulnerable to severe fire damage,” Inwood says.

The fires are nothing new, but the warm conditions that foster them are becoming more frequent, and the vast fires that result are difficult to combat. “Drought in a warmer climate is a big threat,” says Roger Bales, director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California Merced. “Also high-intensity wildfire, which is more likely with a warmer climate.”

The 530 acres, known as Alder Creek, currently belong to the Rouch Family, and they have signed a purchase agreement to sell the land and the trees to the Save The Redwoods League for $15 million. Now the group needs the public’s help in funding the purchase.

Story via:  Atlas Obscura from September 2019.

I will add as a happy update that thanks to people from around the world, the Save The Redwoods League has met its fundraising goals and Alder Creek is now protected. If you’d like to know more about this non-profit organization and the vital work they do, they can be found here.

 

 

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

! Jack and I are on the lam. We wanted to see how much flooding there was over the weekend and when we arrived, we found both trails closed – due to flooding. Jack was the first to cross the barrier, and he quickly trotted off toward the river.

“Hey, Bubba. Come back here. You can’t go there, the sign says it’s closed.” I called out, adding “Hey, wait up.”

“Silly Mummy,” he replied, “Dog’s can’t read.”

First, that’s an outright lie. Most dogs read very well, and many are multi-lingual, but they don’t want people to know because they’re afraid someone will make it a job for them to do.

Secondly, he wasn’t waiting up for me. By the time I’d adjusted my scarf to protect my camera from the mizzle, Jack was already in the water and out far enough to be in the current, which frightened me, so I called him to come to shore.

“Don’t worry Mummy, the water isn’t too fast for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, You’re super-dog. Now come here,” but as I got closer to the river, I saw that Jack’s assessment of this situation was accurate. The current wasn’t very energetic, and the banks were only mildly flooded. We’d seen much worse earlier in the month, after the first January thaw. I told Jack he could stay in for a few minutes and stood at the edge of the water, watching him swim upstream and away, then relax and float back downstream for a bit. His sister taught him this “surfing” method at the beach, but Jack doesn’t have the drive that Lucy did, and he soon tires of the upstream work part of the equation, and sure enough, he came into shore after only a few minutes.

“I don’t know how you can swim in such cold water. I don’t know why you’d want to either.” I told him.

“Mummy, it’s invigorating and much healthier for you than that heated therapy pool that you use.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Bubbs. That river water doesn’t look too clean to me.” I said as he shook the water out of his coat and onto mine.

He harumphed and padded off down the path farther away from the car. I almost called him back but decided that the mizzle wasn’t that bad, and the fish police weren’t too likely to be waiting for us back at the car, and I was right on both counts. The walk may have even been a bit sweeter than usual because of the rebelliousness of crossing that barrier, to which I say,

“Take that Mr. Conservation Officer. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster.”