March 4th

March 4th is the only day of the year, that when spoken aloud in English, is a declaration of intention to go forward.  March forth!  How cool is that?  Ever since I was a little girl in Grade One, and heard my teacher say the date out loud, it has been my personal New Year's Day (I'm a little slow to get rolling on the year).

This is the time of year when my creative energy wakes up.  Whether it is the longer daylight hours, or the little signs of Spring all around, my creativity comes out to play!  There's a wild unruliness that takes over every one of my creative projects.  There's always a moment when I say, "what have I done?!!"  It's important to keep going...keep going forward...

Beware comparing yourself to others.  We all progress at our own pace, in our own way.  My friends are amazing photographers, and they inspire me to do better.

Unlike painting a carpet on the livingroom floor, digital photography is far less messy, and mistakes can be deleted.  It's fun to play with colour and light on the computer.  I have painted all the walls in my home, so changing backgrounds is as simple as carrying a vase from the dining room, to the living room or bedroom...or, changing the colour on the computer (if only painting walls and ceilings were that easy!)   

 

The reflected light from fresh fallen snow on the balcony is another great background!  Can't do this in July!      

Happy March 4th...Onward and upward!

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

Cherry Blossoms, Little Richard and Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream

Imagine Little Richard screaming across the stage, A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom!  That's the perfect description of the arrival of Spring in Toronto.  Winter drags on for months, then - kaboom - an explosion of Spring colour, as everything bursts into bloom all at once. 

Little Richard's 1955 release, Tutti-Frutti takes its name from tutti i frutti, Italian for "all fruits".  With Spring in full bloom here in Toronto, ice cream shops are reopening their doors, and tutti-frutti ice cream is an ever popular choice.

These photographs remind me of cherries, lemon peel, grated orange, lime - and dollops of whipped cream!  Searching through recipes, tutti-frutti ice cream is often made with dried and fresh cherries, raisins, candied citrus, papaya and pineapple.  There are as many variations as there are ice cream shops around the world.

If you have an ice cream churner (who doesn't???), this is a great recipe for homemade Tutti-Frutti ice cream, using fresh stone fruits and berries:

500 ml (2 Cups) peaches, apricots, and/or cherries chopped into small pieces
175 ml (3/4 Cup) sugar
350ml (12 oz) evaporated milk
250 ml (1 Cup) whipping cream (35% MF)
15 ml (1 Tbsp) lemon juice
45 ml (3 Tbsp) orange juice
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) almond extract
500 ml (2 C) mashed raspberries, and/or strawberries

If you haven't already, remove all the pits from the peaches, apricots, and cherries (otherwise, you'll find out the hard way why they're called stone fruits).  Also, remove the skins from peaches, and apricots by blanching them in boiling water, and peeling the skins off.

Puree all of the ingredients, except for the berries.  Chill.  Churn in the ice cream machine.  Pour into a large bowl, and stir in the mashed berries.  If you like soft ice cream, get a spoon NOW!  If you plan to scoop the ice cream into cones, then it has to harden in the freezer.

What's with the derogatory word "wop", all through Little Richard's Tutti-Frutti?  The word has been around since the early 1900's in America.  Many think it stands for "without papers", or "without passports", and described illegal Italian immigrants to the US.  Impossible, since not having immigration papers wasn't an issue until the World War I era.  Actually, the word originates from the Sicilian, guappo, which means a swaggering thug.  That in turn, came from the ancient Romans, who described a worthless man as vappa, meaning sour wine.

As far as I've been able to determine, lyrically speaking, wop is just a sound, like sha-boom.  Don't read anything into the lyrics.  Little Richard described the wop-bop-a-loo-bop line as the drum beat sound inside his head.  Boom!

With the exception of the song title, nothing in the song Tutti-Frutti has anything to do with Italian ice cream.  The original lyrics - which might not be approved by today's censors, let alone censors back in the mid 1950s - had to do with gay sex.

Little Richard's original song was "cleaned up" by a woman he referred to in a Rolling Stone interview, as, "some chick".  Dorothy LaBostrie used to like going to the neighbourhood drug store to buy ice cream.  One day she and her girlfriend, went into the drug store and discovered a new flavour, Tutti-Frutti.  "Right away I thought, 'Boy, that's a great idea of a song'.  So I kept it in the back of my mind until I got to the studio that day."  Years later, all through the 1980's, that "chick" made ten to twenty thousand US dollars a year in royalties from the song.  Aw rooty is slang for, all right!

A musical genre that works with Italian ice cream (besides authentic Italian music) is Doo-wop (sometimes called Do-wop).  It wasn't created by Italian-Americans, but they certainly made it their own.  Think of urban street corner and subway acappella groups in the late '50s and early '60s.  Just Google, Denise by Randy and the Rainbows, or, A Teenager in Love, by Dion and the Belmonts, Hushabye, by The Mystics, Juke Box Saturday Night, By Nino and the Ebb Tides, or the Capris hit, There's a Moon Out Tonight, to get a sense of the Italian influence on the genre.

There's a lot to be said for a full multi-sensory experience...sights, sounds, tastes, fragrances.  If you're going to venture out to photograph this Spring's lovely blossoms, bring music with you, and perhaps pick up some ice cream cones on the way!

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

Hyacinths

The sweet perfume of hyacinths is once again wafting through Toronto markets.  We have a 16th Century German doctor, whose name sounds like lion heart raw wolf, to thank for these beautiful and intoxicatingly fragrant flowers.

Leonart Rauwolf (which means rough wolf) was a physician, botantist, and published travel writer whose claim to fame was a three year journey from Germany to Iraq, via the Mediterranean.  In 1573, he left his Augsburg, home in Germany's Bavaria region, and travelled to Marseilles, in the South of France.  From there, he travelled to Tripoli, Lebanon, and then on to Allepo, Syria, where he stayed until the following year, when he journeyed to what was then Mesopotamia.  Today, we would say Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq.  He followed much the same route back home, with a side trip to Jerusalem.  

   

Dr. Rauwolf returned to Germany with more than six hundred plants!  That's a lot of luggage on a trip!  Hyacinth plants were among his collection.  The plant was not unknown, it is found in ancient Greek myth, however, it had disappeared, and the botanist reintroduced it to Europe.

The plants with waxy, curled, bell-shaped flowers didn't look the way they do today.  Hyacinths of old had only a few flowers on a stem.  Commercial growers in the Netherlands and the UK have produced compact, multiple florets on hyacinths.  Hyacinth is available in deep pink, baby pink, yellow, cream, and white.  The most popular are the light blue, lavender, and deep purple varieties.

The unforgettable fragrance of hyacinth is indescribable.  It is a sweet, floral scent with the light freshness of a Spring rain...yet, it is powerful enough to fill every room in a house with fragrance.  As the days pass, the fragrance becomes slightly bitter, and it's time for a fresh bouquet!  Hyacinth combines well with tulips and pussywillows, which are unscented.   

Hyacinth is from the Greek Hyakinthos, a young man the gods Apollo and Zephyrus were training in manhood.  In this Greek tragedy, Zephyrus, the god of the West Wind becomes jealous watching the sun god, Apollo teaching Hyakinthos how to throw a discus.  He blows the discus off course, and it strikes Hyakinthos in the head, killing him.  Blood flows, and out of the blood, a hyacinth flower grows.  Who says Greek tragedies aren't pretty? 

In researching Dr. Rauwolf's travels, I came upon a wonderful description he wrote of something which was new to him: coffee drinking!  "A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost black as ink and very good in illness especially of the stomach.  This they drink in the morning early in the open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of china cups, as hot as they can, sipping it a little at a time". 

Wake up and smell the coffee...and the hyacinths!

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

Hello Spring!

It's the first day of Spring.  The Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere started at 6:28:40am. The exact moment many around the world ushered in Nowruz, the Persian New Year.  This is a time for rejuvenation and fresh starts. Wishing everyone a glorious season, and an extraordinary year! 

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

Thank You Fifteen Thousand Times!

WE did it!  Widow's Endorphins just reached 15-thousand views!  Thank you, dear blog readers for your support these past two years.  Looking forward to photographing more of the flowers which bring me such joy!

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

Quiet Observation

Our ancestors lived in quiet observation of the world around them.  Letters to family in Europe describe the extremes of Canada's Winters and Summers, the exotic animals and plant life.  My Grandfather, who was born before the turn of the Century before this one, kept a weather diary, with his daily entries of rainfall, snowfall, bird sightings, planting and harvesting.

People have been observing nature for as long as we've been on the planet.  In the 1800's it became trendy!  Naturalists as well as ordinary men and women observed their world, and described it in words and illustrations.  Those who could afford travel, or who received sponsorship from a prestigious society, would travel to the far corners of the earth, and amass collections of rare plants, butterflies or seashells.  Today, their detailed drawings and notations are reproduced on chic home decor items. 

Categorizing specimens into family groups, and subgroups begins with observation.  In describing a flower, one considers whether it is part of a tree or shrub, whether it grows from a seed, or a bulb. The shape of the blossom, whether they grow on a single stem, or in a cluster, and whether they grow upright, or cascade downwards, are all important in distinguishing one flower from another.  Petals have different shapes, compositions, and textures.  Colour and pattern are very important distinguishing features.  The size and shape of the leaves, and whether the leaves are fine, or waxy, long or broad, are also important in classifying a flower.

Take a quiet moment to observe these images of Rabbit's Foot Pussywillow branches intertwined with a mixed bouquet of tulips...  

 

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