On a beautiful spring day, gardens are usually the best places to be, and plenty of people were proving that this past weekend at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario. We were notified that, because of the unseasonable warm stretch we enjoyed for the better part of a week, the ornamental cherry trees and …
Are you a fan of magenta, aka fuchsia? It’s a striking purplish/reddish pink, a strong colour that I suspect invokes strong feelings in many of us. But this year, Pantone® Color Systems has named it their Color of the Year. If you’re not a graphic designer, fashion designer or other kind of artist, you may …
“There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right temp. Even a bicycle goes too fast.” – Paul Scott Mowrer Life moves quickly. Before we know it, the week has flown by, then the weekend, then …
Tip of the iceberg. Skating on thin ice. As cold as ice. Ice in your veins. For the most part, the form of water or precipitation known as “ice” doesn’t connote good things. Some people, and some animals, feel differently. Bartenders, for example. Ice-cream manufacturers. And as famous marine biologist Sylvia Earle so eloquently put …
I started writing this post on Tuesday, which stretched into today due to the complexity of the subject, so the title was adapted for my own reality 😊 The colour blue is wildly popular around the world, but I have to confess that it’s not one of my favourites. I find it generally cold, and …
When my brother and I were children, my parents always kept a metal nutcracker in the house. Not the doll-like figure that graces households at Christmas in multitudes, but a twin-handled implement specially textured to be able to snugly hold a nut in its shell and then squeeze the handles to apply enough pressure to …
“Sometimes we gazed through a succession of arches, its course very like the aisles of a Gothic cathedral. The great artistic sculptors and builders of the Middle Ages might have here completed their studies with advantage.” Chapter 16, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne *** I was introduced to Jules …
A great book leads to a great movie and then an amazing travel experience Read More »
Hi everyone. I’m taking a break this week, as I had to have some minor surgery yesterday and am recovering. In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure or possible inspiration, the photo above is one that I took at the Bottomless Lakes in New Mexico recently. See you next week. All photo rights are reserved …
Tickled orange! I’m coining a new phrase to describe how I feel every September and October. Orange is one of my favourite colours, in small doses. That may sound contradictory, but a little orange goes a long way. A friend of mine loved the colour so much that she wore orange outfits frequently and painted …
Orange, the colour of autumn, pumpkins and Halloween Read More »
Having just read about a peculiar “Euro-Western” phenomenon called “plant blindness”, I wanted to write about how important it is for authors to pay attention to the world around us. Even when you’re creating your own fantasy world, the way that our environment functions can provide essential clues for populating your fictional world. Plant blindness …
Background material: seeing the world around us – Gardens Read More »
