Widow's Endorphins: Haunted Garden: Witches of Eew Ick

Widow's Endorphins: Haunted Garden: Witches of Eew Ick: My neighbourhood haunt, the park next door, is haunted!  Monstrous creatures lurk everywhere, even near the rose trellis. Captured by ...

My neighbourhood haunt, the park next door, is haunted!  Monstrous creatures lurk everywhere, even near the rose trellis. Captured by my camera, Jabba the Hutt's offspring disguised as a rosebud!

Need a bit of a walk to shake that one off...

Even on a sunlit afternoon, the tall trees cast dark shadows.  As I move in closer, I see that the  leaves are covered with something strange...

Teeth!!!!

On every leaf...all the way up the tree...

Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  I contacted Mark Stewart, the Knowledge Resources Manager of  the Toronto Botanical Garden.  He studied the photographs, and emailed back:

"Those do look like teeth!...I'd say they are leaf galls.  Galls on plants are abnormal growths of plant tissue as a result of some sort of external influence.  It is the plant's attempt to cordon off and contain the work of another organism.  Galls can be formed by invading insects (like aphids), bacteria, or fungi.  Different species of invaders tend to target different species and will actually introduce chemical to the plant's tissues to control its growth and form galls".

It's what Stewart had to say next, that really spooked me.  "The galls serve as microhabitats for the larvae of insects which develop inside them and then emerge.  They are like nurseries for the insect's young, providing both food and shelter while they develop".  Did he say, "emerge"?!!  All of those insects, emerging out of those toothy galls, like a swarm of Hitchcock's birds!

I'm heading back to the rose garden...

Doesn't this shadow look just like a cute little squirrel, hiding behind the backlit white rose?  Cute to you and me, but if you're a rose, you know that a squirrel will devour you and your buds!  To a rose, that little squirrel shadow is as creepy as Count Orlok's shadow climbing the wall in Nosferatu... 

  

The park's roses and trees are haunted with shadowy creatures, monsters, and plants with teeth that serve as incubators for swarming insects (they could hatch Halloween night!!!).  Maybe I'll just stand over by the tall grasses...

Or maybe not...

The White Walkers in Game of Thrones, are the scariest creatures of all.  They're no longer "beyond the wall" - they're in the park next door!

Happy Halloween!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated

Except photographs from these productions:

Jabba the Hutt first appeared in George Lucas' Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), grossing out everyone, and helping the box office gross enormously.  Jabba the Hutt later appeared in Star Wars: A New Hope (1997),  Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999), and the television series Star Wars:  The Clone Wars (2008-2015). 

Everyone's favourite rock-musical-horror-comedy film, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), produced by David Geffen, and directed by Frank Oz, featured puppets designed by Lyle Conway.  There were six Audrey II puppets, one for each stage of growth of the plant.  The last one, weighed one ton, and needed 60 technicians to operate it.

The 1922 silent movie, Nosferatu is as much a story of blood sucking plagiarism, as it is about a Count who drinks human blood.  The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Stoker's heirs won a law suit, and all the copies of the film had to be destroyed. 

The White Walkers in Game of Thrones are the artistic creation of Martin Rezard.  The French-born artist, sculptor and prosthetics genius has worked on both Harry Potter and The Hobbit films.

Widow's Endorphins: Autumn's Paint Palette

Widow's Endorphins: Autumn's Paint Palette: Toronto is often thought of as a grey city of concrete and snert (our own special word for snow and dirt).  You don't have t...

Autumn's Paint Palette

Toronto is often thought of as a grey city of concrete and snirt (our own special word for snow and dirt).  You don't have to watch Game of Thrones to know that Winter is coming.  Nature knows it, and as a last hurrah, throws a vibrantly coloured paint party.  The leaves of trees are brushed with Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, and Phthalo Green.

Think of October, and the colour orange comes to mind.  After all, it is the month of Halloween pumpkins, and there are all those brilliant orange coloured Autumn leaves.  Nature's paint palette for October is so much more than just orange.  Just look at the magenta, olive green, periwinkle blue and pale pink of the hydrangea blossom (above), and those little crabapples are well, apple red.

   

Nature's paint palette provides inspiration for artists and designers to create fabric, clothing, jewelry - everything from teacups to laptops.  There are beautiful variations of colour, and colour patterns within a flower.  I love the yellow ochre centres of the violet purple flowers (above), balanced with the dusty periwinkle blue of the buds.  The magenta coloured dahlia's centre is an almost black shade of plum.  The vibrant pink of the chrysanthemums is complemented by the cool minty green of their leaves.
 

As if getting ready for the cold Winter, nature's predominant palette for Fall is warm.  From the golden yellow of morning light, to the deep oranges of the sunset, the days are painted in yellow, orange and red.  Colour experts say that yellow is associated with  joie de vivre, orange with energy and stress reduction, and red with really high energy.  Paint party!

   

Ever wonder why leaves turn red?  It's the anthocyanins, which also colour cranberries, apples, concord grapes, cherries and plums.  Anthocyanins, and the yellow and orange producing carotenoids, are in leaves all the time, we just can't see them.  From Spring through Summer, chlorophyll, which gives leaves their green colour, is constantly being produced, and the green colour covers over the yellow and red. Then, as the days grow shorter, chlorophyll production stops.  The yellows, oranges and reds start to show through.  What an understatement! 

Warm, sunny days and crisp cool nights are best for vibrant red leaves.  In maple trees, glucose in the leaves, turns red with sunlight and cool temperatures. 

On a cold, windy October day, nature gives Torontonians one last brush stroke of blush pink and coral, before giving us an all-white Winter canvas, of Titanium White and Zinc White.  Winter is coming...Oh, snirt!

Photographs copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Inc.

Paint palette:  Google Images

Widow's Endorphins: Awesome October Roses

Widow's Endorphins: Awesome October Roses: American poet Walt Whitman wrote, "Keep your face always towards the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you."  He cou...

Awesome October Roses

American poet Walt Whitman wrote, "Keep your face always towards the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you."  He could have been describing the flower spirit of this vibrantly coloured Campfire rose, the last of these roses to bloom on my balcony this year.  They bloomed in three flushes, which is another way of saying they bloomed three times from June to October. They've been a pleasure to photograph in the amber light of morning, the intense sunlight of the noon sun, the softer light of an overcast day, or early evening.  Campfire roses, named for Canadian painter, Tom Thomson's painting, Campfire were portrayed in Campfires and S'more Roses (see blog archives for July 2015).  

This truly has been an awesome October for photographing roses.  The colours are vibrant.  We've had a beautiful Indian Summer, something else that Whitman wrote about.  "It is only here in large portions of Canada that wondrous second wind, the Indian Summer, attains its amplitude and heavenly perfection - the temperatures;  the sunny haze;  the mellow, rich, delicate, almost flavoured air:  Enough to live - enough to merely be."

Perhaps he was being a gracious guest in our country, because anyone who's been to Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, New York or any one of a dozen other North Eastern states in the Fall, knows that nature artfully uses her whole colour palette there too.

Sadly, none of my balcony roses has ever survived a Toronto Winter.  So, every June, I choose two or three new rose bushes (poor me, pass the Kleenex box).  I shop with photographs in mind. Roses which, like the Campfire roses, are multi-coloured, or roses which evolve through stages of colour, such as the Chicago Peace rose, are the most interesting to photograph over time.

There's perfection too, in a simple pink blossom.  This one (above) is on a park trellis, and returns year after year - surviving even the worst ice storms, and hurricanes.  The bridal white rose (below) was photographed in early October, although it is as dewy as a June rose blossom.  Even roses of a singular colour, will have rosebuds of another colour, making them even more photogenic.  

An anonymous writer once said, "Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to Spring."  My sentiments exactly!

   

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Inc.

Widow's Endorphins: In Memoriam

Widow's Endorphins: In Memoriam: "The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude" -Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) In memory of my husban...

In Memoriam

"The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude"

-Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)

In memory of my husband, who died one year ago, Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.  I am eternally grateful for his love, life lessons, and for having shared our lives together.

Photographs copyright of: Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated  

Widow's Endorphins: Thanksgiving

Widow's Endorphins: Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving:  an expression of gratitude, especially to God. "For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelte...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving:  an expression of gratitude, especially to God.

"For each new morning with its light,

For rest and shelter

of the night,

For health and food,

for love and friends,

For everything thy goodness sends"

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

  

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, that will be enough"

-Meister Eckhart, Dominican Theologian and Preacher (1260-1328)

I am thankful for life itself, and a spirit that stays strong and joyful in good times and in bad.  I am thankful for family and friends, both old and new who listen and share, comfort, lend a hand and make me laugh.  I am especially thankful to those no longer here, who's lives made a difference in mine.  Much love to everyone this Thanksgiving.

Thank you Darren, for the beautiful Autumn bouquet!
Photographs copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated