Mint

One of my daughters-in-law loves to buy potted plants at the nursery, and brings them home with good intentions of making a herb garden, but then forgets to water them. Last year she bought a mint plant in a tiny pot. It sat outside for a long time just looking sadder and sadder until I decided to take pity on the poor thing and bring it home.

And now look at it! It's taking over the world. Mmmmm.... love the minty aroma!

AAP at Newmarket Theatre

The AAP Collective art group has been busy in the entrance lobby of the local Newmarket Theatre..... that's the town of Newmarket in Ontario, Canada, not the well known horse racing centre of Newmarket in England, although I think there are other Newmarket's all over the world. Is there a Newmarket near you?
And what or who is the AAP Collective? It's a group of ten artists, some are experienced professionals, and others, like me, are complete amateurs, who meet once a week to experiment and create art using all sorts of techniques and learning from each other.
AAP? It can stand for many things..... Another Art Project; Artists Are People; but most of all... Art Ain't Pretty.
The art will be displayed in the theatre lobby until January, which gives us lots of public exposure, but I'm not sure that people go to an evening at the theatre expecting to buy a piece of original art.

Here we are hanging the pictures in the lobby. Everyone has an opinion regarding the arrangement and what should hang next to what, but eventually we left it for just two people to make the decisions and stood around to observe. And of course, to make the odd encouraging comment.....
That one's not straight!
The one on the left is too high!
The one on the right is too low!

And no art exhibition can be complete without a group picture of the artists!

What a Whopper!

One of the most hotly contested rivalries at Markham Fair is the 'biggest pumpkin' competition. This year the heaviest pumpkin was won with a giant weighing 193 pounds. That's it on the left in the photo, the green one with the blue ribbon
The heaviest squash, the huge yellowish white one with the red First Prize ribbon, weighed in at a whopping 637 pounds. That's 289 kg for those who prefer metric.

The grower, Carl Niemeyer, said he bought the pumpkin seeds on line from the provincial winner of the largest pumpkin in Manitoba. 
Growing the pumpkin was easy, but transporting it to the Fair presented a challenge. Twelve people lifted it onto a skid before loading it onto his pickup truck for delivery to the Fair.
The secret to growing a giant pumpkin? He put lots of chicken manure down in the spring, and as the vine grew, he pruned off all the smaller pumpkins so the granddaddy of them all could receive all the nutrition.
If you're interested, the giant pumpkin is for sale at a local farmer's market for $200.00.... that's Canadian dollars of course.  Pumpkin pie, anyone?

Lots more giant vegetables on show too. These are Savoy cabbage. My favourite. I wish I had taken a pic of the largest potato weighing over 3 pounds. You could make a lot of french fries with that!

I'm not doing very well with my resolution to blog every day in October, and we're only 6 days into the month. Oooops.

Garden Goodies

It's harvest season, and the gardens are starting to produce gorgeous veggies. There's always fierce competition between the local gardeners and farmers for the biggest, the best, the craziest, the most colourful, when it comes to vegetables and farm produce shown at the Fair.

 I love the colours and shapes of all these varieties of squash and pumpkin.

This is known as Indian Corn, but also named Flint Corn as the kernels are very hard. Often used as a decoration in the autumn. And I think it can be used as popcorn too.

October Resolution

I haven't been a very diligent blogger recently. I seem to have lost my blogging inspiration, and sadly, I find that quite a few of the usual bloggers that I like to read are missing too. So as it's a nice new month, I'm going to try to blog something every day, or perhaps it might be every other day if I run out of brain power, which is quite likely.
"Oh Yeah???? I'll believe it when I see it!"  I can hear you saying. Well, I may not succeed, but I'm going to try.
Yesterday's pictures featured the beautiful chickens at Markham Fair.
Today I'm showing you some of the prizewinning baking at the Fair. Scrumptious!

When OlderSon was little, he always entered an exhibit in the category "Chocolate Cake, Boys Only" and actually won the first prize red ribbon a couple of times. I don't think he makes chocolate cake any more now, but he is really accomplished at pumpkin pie!

Feathers

It's Fall Fair time here in Southern Ontario, and I always have to go to nearby Markham Fair. It's a tradition with me, even if the rest of the family don't go with me. The Fair is much the same every year, but I still have to go and see if anything is new.
One of my favourite buildings is the poultry and rabbit building, where I can admire these gorgeous creatures.

Yes, I like the chickens a lot. Lovely colours and shapes and textures and very noisy! My Dad kept chickens when I was a child, and I was put in charge of the new baby chicks that arrived in a big box every spring..... like these.

The chicks soon grew up, and gave us fresh eggs every day, and then when their egg laying days were done, they became Sunday dinner.

Newtonmore, Scotland

We stayed three nights in the delightful small town of Newtonmore in the Highlands. In the centre of the town, there's a small lake.... called a loch in Scotland. Loch Imrich. The loch is a kettle-hole formed by glacial action during one of the ice ages. For many winters the pond was used for the sport of curling, but now there's curling rink in the village.
We walked the trail around the edge of the loch.... a lovely place to spend a quiet hour.

Digitalis purpurea. Foxgloves can be either purple of white. The flowers are always growing on one side of the stem on the wild plant. If the flowers surround the stem, then that is a garden variety.

The leaves and flowers of foxglove contain the spiro-steroid, Digoxigenin, used in biochemistry and immunohistological diagnosis. The compounds digitoxin and digoxin are used to make the drug digitalis, used as a heart stimulant. When I was little, I put the flowers on my fingers, but the flowers were traditionally known as poisonous, and Mum made sure I always washed my hands thoroughly afterwards.

Iris pseudacorus, or otherwise known as Yellow Iris or Yellow Flag. Lots of them growing along the edges of the loch.

I think this is Caltha palustris, Marsh marigold, also known as Kingcup. This plant contains a toxin that the old time herbalists used to remove warts. I'm not sure about this identification.