House Plants.

Not long after I moved out of my parents house, my mother gave me some books. She had been doing some house cleaning and discovered she had multiple books on plant care (you'd be surprised how handy they are). Deciding no home was complete without one (or two) she gave me this...

Foliage Plants for Modern Living. Copyright 1974. A classic. (I also have a copy of Hanging Plants for Modern Living)

Apparently, it was Ben Franklin who said "Opposable thumbs, running shoes, and cookies for breakfast are the only things separating us from the animals." It would seem that foliage plants are the only things separating us modern humans from savages.



I have a lot of friends who have trouble with plants... they can be quite tricky to grow in certain spaces (most apartments and condos are relatively low light) and we tend to get suckered in at greenhouses by all the lovely blooming flowers they have, without knowing whether or not it will successfully grow in our own homes.
Enter Foliage Plants for Modern Living. It outlines certain rules of general plant care, defines the terms you are likely to see on the little plastic tabs that give you "instructions", and helps you identify why a plant might not be thriving. It also has descriptions of common household plants, complete with illustrations and specific care instructions. (Common meaning "plants that were common in households in the 70's". While certain plants like the Ficus are classics (think rubber tree plant), it is much less common now to keep an Asparagus Fern in a macramé hanging basket.)

While I have already talked about my love for my plants, here is a list of a few that are the easiest to grow; they require very little maintenance, aren't picky about lighting and could be a good addition to any space that needs a bit of "greening up".


Birdsnest Sansevieria. Typically, dark leaved plants do better in low light than ones with lighter leaves. These can get by with relatively little water, and pretty low light. Bright, indirect light is best (articfical is okay) but I have this one about 10 feet away from a north facing window. Sansevieria's spread by rhizomes (undergroud shoots) so you can start off with one little rosette, and eventually more will come up until they are growing in a clump.

Another type of Sansevieria that grows well indoors is the Snake Plant. Pretty much the difference is the height (mine are about a metre tall) and the shoots produce single leaves, rather than the rosettes. Earlier this summer one of mine flowered with greeny-white blossoms on a long stalk.

One of the most famous easy to grow plants is the spider plant... they do very well in partial shade/north light. Spider plants can also handle bright artifical light - they grow quite happily in classrooms with no windows. They produce baby plants by little "spiders" growing off cascading stems - these spiders can be cut off and placed in dirt to start new plants.

 Devil's Ivy. Grows perfectly well in total artifical light. This one is happy as can be in a glass of water in my bathroom. A climbing ivy, it will actually cling to walls with the little sucker-like pads it has on  the stems it puts out. I have actually had more luck growing this ivy in water than I have in soil... (a word on hydroponic growing... most plants like tap water! Distilled...  not so much. Tap water will leave deposits on the glass, so don't use anything you are too attached to. I find mason jars work well...)

The easiest of them all.  Swedish Ivy. Likes any light... indirect... shade... artifical... Also grows very well in water. So well, that it will put out roots wherever its stems encounter water or soil (so don't place next to any other plants or they will become attached!). Makes excellent cuttings to start new plants. Typically, swedish ivy would prefer to hang, but mine is doing okay getting bushy on a side table.

Stay tuned in the future for the "slightly advanced" group of easy to grow house plants!

Weddings II.

I love weddings. Which is a good thing, considering how many I have been going to lately! I recently had two in two weeks... And they could not have been more different!

The first was a stylish wedding for a friend who has been planning her wedding for, literally, years. (When she was four, she wanted to be a bride when she grew up).

All the details were accounted for... since the two of them love to play board games, the reception had a bit of a board game theme (in a classy way of course).

Instead of being at numbered tables, they had names like "Scrabble" and "Monopoly". (I was at the "Murder Mystery" table). There were other small touches to carry the theme... Scrabble boards as decoration (loved those!) and if you wanted the couple to kiss you had to correctly answer a trivia question about them.

The couple had also taken ballroom dancing lessons, which resulted in a stunning first dance! Full of intricate steps and spins, at one point, the bride was spun around by the groom on his hip... I can't do it justice with a mere wordy-description... Think Dancing With The Stars. It was glorious.

The most recent wedding couldn't have been more different in style, but it was just as gorgeous. The bride's family has a horse farm near Innisfail, and a beautiful big red barn was built on it expressly for the purpose of holding the wedding there.

If the weather had been poor, the entire event could have been held in the barn. As it was, the day was gorgeous - rim to rim, blue Alberta skies for most of the day, not a breath of wind, and it was hot. The ceremony was held outside, and included a Celtic "Loving Cup" ceremony, where the bride and groom share a wine glass and drink to their past, present and future with their "anam cara" or "soul friend" in Gaelic. 

The groom wore his father's wedding suit from 30 years ago, as well as the bride's late grandfather's genuine deerskin cowboy boots. Both touches of "something borrowed" worked very well with the country theme!

There was a grand opening of the barn before the reception, and the inside looked phenomenal; you would hardly know you were partying in a barn! The decorating scheme was almost a contradiction of burlap and lace that created a lovely country chic feel. 

A friend of the groom's is a singer-songwriter, and he played us a couple songs to get the mood going for the reception. (You can check Ethan out here.) What followed was a fantastic dance... I don't think I've ever been to a wedding where such a large percentage of the guests spent so much time on the dance floor... Two-stepping to country, twisting to oldies, rocking out to classics and grooving flailing to club music.

While my wedding attending for this year has come to an end, there are already several weddings on the table for next year. I am looking forward to seeing how each couple personalizes their day!

Car Dance.

The other day, my brother and I were driving out to the family cabin on the way to Innisfail for a wedding. Just south of Ferintosh on Highway 21, we passed a driver who was rocking out to some serious tunes. Head banging away, he was feeling the music in a way that his passenger obviously wasn't (staring sullenly out the front window).

We shared a good laugh, and decided we would do an experiment. The next few times a car drives by, we will pretend to car dance in an absolutely absurd and over-the-top way, just to see if the other cars' occupants notice.

Just as a black Ford Mustang appeared over the next hill, we started groovin' like our lives depended on it. (I don't know what was even playing- it didn't matter.)

Not only did the driver of the Mustang notice, he had his window rolled down, and pumped his entire arm out the window! Slapping the steering wheel with the other hand, he sped past us, bopping away, shouting "Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaaa!" down the highway.

Well.

We almost had to pull over we were laughing so hard. Subsequent trials with other cars yielded no results - this was clearly a one time thing.

It makes you wonder just how much we miss when we go through life without stopping to look around and notice the little things. There is so much enjoyment to be had from the most mundane things (like a good car dance) if we only stop and notice it.

(For those of you who are not initiated into the ways of the car dance... I give you this instructional video...)

Fireweed.

(FYI there will be plenty more mountain-themed posts in the future, but this is the last for now... Other things to talk about!)

On the way to Golden, we cut across Alberta, taking the scenic route to the mountains along the David Thompson highway, rather than the boring QE2 to the Trans-Canada. The David Thompson (Highway 11) passes through the foothills, along side Abraham Lake and the Kootney Plains before joining Icefields Parkway (in Banff National Park) at Saskatchewan Crossing.

Just west of the Kootney Plains, we encountered this sight...

Along the north side of the road, the forest had been recently burned. Some trees were spared, but most of the trunks were charred and the trees were dead - maybe the recent pine beetle outbreak made them susceptible.

In any case, I was very excited to see the ecological principle of succession in action!

Fireweed is a staple of the Alberta landscape; it grows pretty much anywhere. It is often considered an agressive weed because it grows so well and spreads so quickly, but it plays an important role in nature. Fireweed is one of the first plants to grow in areas that have recently been damaged by fires.

Fire is a natural disaster that will often remove all species from the community. Many plants and animals are unable to recolonize an area after a fire because the resources they need to survive are no longer avaliable (food, shelter, etc). When new plants and animals colonize an area like this, it is called secondary succession. (Primary succession is when there was nothing there before - a whole new area is avaliable, such as a lava flow or newly exposed rock after a landslide.)

Fireweed spreads via seeds that look very simliar to dandelion fluffs; each comes attached to it's own little fluffy parachute. This means they are able to reach all parts of an environment very quickly, and will remain there until conditions are favorable for sprouting - such as a freshly burnt forest. This plant is also not very picky in the type of soil it grows in, meaning it can take advantage of newly open areas very quickly. (The first organisms to colonize after such an event are called pioneer species.)

Pioneer species are important because they change the conditions of the environment they colonize. Certain trees cannot grow in the open - small shrubs and bushes are needed to protect the seedlings until they are larger. Certain animals prefer grassy fields to tall trees to seek protection in. Seeing fields of magenta fireweed growing in this burned out forest is a striking reminder of how fires are a healthy part of nature, and are necessary for keeping the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountain forests alive.

Elk Island National Park.

A dear friend of mine, Jamie, is in the midst of creating a documentary series showcasing some of the fantastic and diverse animal life we have here in Alberta. The other day, I went with her to Elk Island National Park, to do some filming for a web-isode on buffalo. (Her website is due up in about a week - I'll let you know when you can see the fruits of our labor!)

Most of the neat Plains Bison behavior moments were caught on video camera, but I managed to sneak a few shots in of my own...

There are two subspecies of Bison in Elk Island... Plains Bison are kept on the north side of the park, while Wood Bison are kept on the south side.

We spent all our time with the Plains Bison, because it was more convenient... clearly we will need to go back another day!




Plains Bison have one of my favorite latin names...
Bison bison bison (to distinguish them from the Wood Bison, which is Bison bison athabascae).

Also right up there are Gorilla gorilla, Naja naja (Indian Cobra) and Bufo bufo (European Toad).




Since Jamie and I were filming, we were the only people brave enough foolish enough to get out of the car in a field surrounded by bison. My job was to attempt to hold the camera still and attempt to keep an eye on the bison at the same time. We were very careful to not approach them, and stay very close to the car just in case. While the bison may look big and slow, they are quite dangerous and unpredictable. In fact, more people have been injured by the bison in Yellowstone National Park than bears.

Don't be decieved by their cute antics! This could be a lethal killing machine! (Awww look! He's scratching!)

Moon.

I love the moon. While it often gets a bad rap in scary movies, I've never found it ominous in real life. I mean, sometimes it impedes my star gazing, but that's not so bad.

I do find the moon tricky to take pictures of. For one, it moves much faster than the stars (ever tried looking at it through a telescope? As soon as you find it, zip! it's gone). It also has a great deal of surface detail to capture. And it's actually really bright.

I hadn't tried taking pictures of the moon since I got my new zoom lens, and since there was a full moon the weekend before I went to Golden I figured I'd try it out while there was still lots to look at. I set my tripod up on the bike path on the main road next to my house (I'm sure the motorists thought I was very creepy), attached the hood to limit the light pollution from the street light I was standing under, zoomed as far as I could, tried to focus, and started testing out exposure times.

One of the first things I learned was that the moon does not need 20 seconds like stars do. I kept dialing back the time until I could make out craters and maria (the dark patches). Anywhere between 1/60 of a second and 1/320 of a second provided pretty good results. I had to crop some of the pictures to get the moon to the size I wanted it to be, but I was pretty happy with the final product.

1/60 second exposure

 (The large round crater near the bottom is called Tycho, for the Danish astronomer. FYI...)

1/320 second exposure - cropped

When you look at the moon this closely, it becomes really apparent that our lunar companion has a lot of dark patches. These lunar maria are the results of lava flows from the moon's ancient past, but were given the Latin name for sea, because that's what people originally thought they were. Less reflective than the neighboring surface rock, they appear dark.

You've heard the song about the "Man in the Moon" right? Well, that's because some people think they can see a face in these dark patches on the moon. I've taken the liberty of connecting the dots on what I think they are refering too...

1/200 of a second

And apparently the Man in the Moon is Peter Griffin. Or possibly Quagmire. Either way, I may be starting to find the moon a bit creepy. (Giggidy giggidy?)

I learned in a random side note in a History class I took at University from a prof who also taught History of Astronomy (he was a cool dude) that the Chinese had a different idea of the image presented in the moon... Apparently to them it is a rabbit with some kind of cooking pot...

Peter Rabbit? Maybe.

I can't decide if that is better or worse than Peter Griffin in the Moon.

Maybe....

Skull in the Moon.

Okay... Now that I can't un-see.

Alpine Flowers.

I took a lot of pictures of flowers while I was in the Rockies this past week. Partly because I like taking pictures of flowers, partly because they were everywhere, and partly because I didn't know what half of them were and wanted to be able to identify them when I got home. Summer was a bit delayed this year, so I was lucky that most of the June-July flowers were still out in August!

(My "trusty" plant book is Wild Flowers of Alberta, by R.G.H. Cormack. Reprinted in 1977. Inherited from who knows where. The pictures are a bit dodgy, so if I've misidentified anything, it's probably my fault, but I'll blame the book.)

Alpine Valley Plants: While these are not really technically "alpine" because I never saw them while I was on any mountains, red paintbrush is everywhere along the highways. I took this first shot along Icefields Parkway. (forcing Ken to pull over, because I was "worried we wouldn't see anymore". Well, there might have been about a 2km stretch with none...Cleary I don't go to the mountains in the summer much.) The thistle I found at Cedar Lake near Golden. There is also a ridiculous amount of Common Fireweed and Canadian Thistle and Ox-Eye Daisies all over the place.



Common Red Paintbrush





Bull Thistle



Mount 7 Plants: These next plants I found in a meadow at the top of Mount 7 (elevation 1942m). Mount 7 looks over Golden from the east, and you can drive up to almost the top, where there is a paraglider launch site. The field is very grassy, and chock full of Alpine Fireweed (shorter and redder than the common kind) and Ox-eye Daisies. In between, there are lots of little (less weedy) alpine plants. I was able to identify most of them, but there are a few that I have no idea what they are (which probably means they are not local). If anyone knows, please let me know!

(Thanks friends for the help identifying the plants! Think they're all accurate...)



Kudos to Kerstin for identifying this as
Northern Gentian! Good to have a horticulture
teacher for a friend!



Best guess is that these are some kind of dianthus...
Which is definetly not native, so who knows where
they came from - thanks Lindsay!





 









Mountain Goldenrod (foreground)



Thanks to Shawn who was able to
identify this as Round-Leaved Alumroot!







 





Bladder Campion






Common Nodding Onion



Tiny bumblebee (size of my pinky fingernail)
in an Ox-eye Daisy





Alpine Harebell













Bunchberry

 



Alpine Fireweed

 

Kicking Horse Mountain (Terminator Ridge): The summit of Kicking Horse Mountain is a lot higher up than the launch site on Mount 7 (elevation around 2,300m), and the ridges are a much harsher environment for a plant to grow in (much less a flowering plant! All those delicate parts...) As a result, the plants that do grow there tend to be hardy, slow growing, and smaller. Flowers are smaller and more scattered, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the amount and variety that I saw! There was some overlap in species between Terminator Ridge and CPR Ridge, but I only wanted to post pictures of each type once. 

We hiked the back side of Terminator Ridge, which was relatively sheltered (by Terminator Peak), and had lots of protected patches where tiny plants could grow (including ridiculous amounts of Saxifrage... it was everywhere!). I was able to identify all these plants, and I'm almost positive I got them all right!

Alpine Arnica



Purple Beard Tongue (?)







Common Stonecrop



Daisy Fleabane



Common Saxifrage





Alpine Phacelia



Mountain Sorrel



Wild Strawberry



 

Kicking Horse Mountain (CPR Ridge): CPR Ridge is much narrower, and doesn't have the shelter of a peak like Terminator Ridge. The plants I found there were much lower to the ground than the ones on the other ridge. Mostly there was lots of Mountain Heather. Mainly white, but some yellow (I didn't manage to take a decent picture of that).



White Mountain Heather





Golden Fleabane













I think the little white ones are Pygmy Flowers



Purple Beard Tongue and Pygmy Flowers??



(I would like to apologize for the dodgy-ness of some of these pictures... tiny plants on rock faces are sometimes hard to get to, and I am not a mountain goat.
I would also like to apologize for the ugliness of this post... moving these pictures around was a huge pain in the behind, so I kinda gave up on spacing them out nicely! I kept on accidentally deleting them, which involves lots of creative cursing and isn't good when you have to re-look up what they are! Sigh....)

Fringe.

Ahh. The Fringe. Edmonton's annual theatre festival (this 30th edition is known as "Fringeopolis") is a time of plays around the Whyte Ave area, street performers, midways, and my favorite... Mini Donuts.


Mmmmmm.

This year I managed to make it to only two shows (due to all the wedding activities and a quick mid-weektrip to Golden). I have several friends in the theatre community, and I try to make it out to at least some of their shows, but it's not always possible.

Last week, I saw the fabulous production of BoyGroove. If you have ever enjoyed the music of a boy band, you would love this show. It followed the highs and lows of a fictional boy band with deadly accuracy, hip-swiveling choreography, pop-y tunes and belly-shaking laughs. A fantastic, worthwhile show! (And held over until this weekend! Check it out!)

Last night, I went and saw my friend Stef's play, No Choking Matter, which was a funny, campy romp about the Heimlich Maneuver (who would have thought J-thrusts could be so funny?). It was full of snappy one liners, awkward characters, and even a shirt-ripping scene. I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the fact that it was disgustingly hot in the theatre. (In addition to being a very talented actress, Stef is also an awesome baker. Check out her food blog here!)

I always like to head to Whyte Ave early, try to find a decent parking spot, pick up my tickets at the box office, and wander around enjoying the atmosphere before the show start.

The midway at the Fringe has always seemed a bit sad to me. It's tucked away at the back, away from the stages and children's performers that might attract riders. The rides are a bit sad looking, and the carnies who tend them can be downright frightening. I actually heard one carnie refer to his ride as "this motherf*cker"... Pretty sure that's not going to help draw in the family crowd...



Empty Ferris Wheel