Something involving rainbows

 

 I have a strange obsession with rainbows.  This I blame on my childhood, where the house we lived in was situated in prime rainbow-viewing territory. It was not unusual on a rainy day to be able to look out the window and see a full double bow illuminated end to end. Think about what that can do to the imagination of an impressionistic child.  My father thought the real-estate value of the house should have been increased just for the rainbow view.  I find myself wondering if other people would agree with him...

 

 As I grew into an adult the fascination for rainbows stayed with me. I remember once while living in Calgary (in my 20's) dashing outside my house and running as fast as I could to a nearby park in the rain, just so I could stand underneath one of the most beautiful and vivid array of colours I had ever seen. I had never been so close to the base of a rainbow before. If there had been a pot of gold I definitely would have found it! 

 

 This preoccupation with rainbows has become my chocolate of picture-taking.  It is so sweet and delicious, I just can't resist! A couple of months ago I was minding my own business, playing around on my computer in my apartment while a torrential downpour raged outside, when suddenly something caught my eye: sunlight, glorious setting sun-light, the kind of sunlight that makes the whole earth glow with the brilliance of its dazzling presence.  My eyes widened in horrible realization. The thought that went immediately through my head was "There is an incredible rainbow happening outside somewhere, and I'M MISSING IT!!!". I dashed throughout my house like a whirlwind, grabbing a jacket, shoes and my camera - quickly throwing on a pair of pants - and then vaulted out of my house in a full sprint.  This is a curious re-enactment to my experience in Calgary years earlier, now that I think about it.  I ran to the park nearby my apartment with the prayer on my breath that I was not too late.  I had to see the rainbow!!!
 

As I rounded the bend:

 I am curious, is there anyone reading this who would say that they share a similar fascination for rainbows? Or am I'm just a little over zealous for the colourful and completely wondrous interaction of water and light in the sky?  :-D

 

Something at the museum

Advertising is an amazing thing. There is the potential for something to exist your entire life right in front of you, but it's not until they put a bright flashy sign on it that you actually see it.  Take, for example, the Trail Museum. I grew up near Trail.  Lived there all my life. I could tell you all sorts of crazy facts about the area, like it is populated by Italians and their descendents, that its primary industry is smelting metals like lead, copper and zinc, and that the city was not subject to the Great Depression due to its vigorous growth in the 1930's. One thing that I have shockingly never known, however, was the fact that Trail had a museum. And it is open to the public. And it is free.

So you can imagine my surprise when I am driving down the highway into the heart of Downtown Trail and WHAM!  There it is on the side of the road in bright red and white letters "Museum Open FREE Admission." It was a revelation. Trail has a museum!!! Advertising has expanded my world.

Knowledge of a thing is worth nothing, however, if one is not able to make use of it, so last week I took advantage of a free afternoon to test out my free museum admission.  It was amazing. I learned things. I found crazy old mechanical calculators with so many buttons that I couldn't figure out how they worked and had to call over the museum attendant to give me a demonstration.  I found an old phonograph which plays cylindrical shaped records before they invented the disk shape ones.  I found out that there is actually a creek flowing through downtown Trail and the highway was built on top of it.  CRAZY!!!

And you know what the best thing about the museum experience was for me?
This sign:

 

Honestly, don't mind if I do!

Something botanical (part 2)

 

If you have read part 1 of this saga then you know that my elite skills with house plants means that they usually end up dead.  Method of death: they would all eventually contract these little pesky flies that eventually overwhelmed and killed the plant.  Death by insect, what a way to go.

After a couple of failed attempts at being a responsible plant baron I gave up and bought no more house plants. I didn't want to be responsible for their cruel and untimely deaths. But then, one March for my housewarming party, two friends gave me plants as gifts. One was a leafy thing that was supposed to have yellow leaves year round, and the other was an enigmatic stalk-like plant growing out a giant bean called a lucky bean plant. I was terrified.  It was one thing to kill my own botanical experiments, it was another thing entirely for a person to entrust me with the life of another living thing, expecting that I had the capabilities to make it thrive. If I didn't keep the plants alive would that signal the end our friendship?

Terrified of the looming and very real threat of catastrophe, I did my research this time on how to raise house plants. I found out that my previous failures were not because I didn't love my plants enough - rather it was because I loved them too much. I had overwatered them, causing little mites in the soil to multiply out of control ultimately killing the plants. I learned that plants need moments of drought as much as they need water. They need air in the soil as much as they need moisture.  I needed to let the dirt dry out between waterings.  I resolved to apply my new knowledge with wisdom to ensure the survival of the house plant species.

Since that discovery, I have not killed a  plant. I have been worried several times.  They keep losing leaves for mysterious reasons.  Several of them have turned about as ugly as a potato plant, but the most important thing is they continue to live!!!  Only, I still identify myself as a failure as a raiser of house plants. Every time I get a new plant, it immediately loses its flowers, and they never come back. Even the plant that was supposed to have the yellow leaves year round turned green.  I can keep plants alive now, but I cannot make them happy. And that has made me sad.

So the reason I have told this incredibly way too long epic tale of plant raising is so that you can sympathize with me, and thus appropriately join me in celebrating exuberantly at this picture!

 

This is a geranium plant I got at a Mother's day event at my church (even though I am not a mother, I guess being female is enough to qualify me for a geranium plant).  True to form, immediately after receiving this plant, it lost all its flowers. Then its leaves started dying. Determined not to be a plant murderer again I learned that geraniums are actually desert plants and prefer receiving even less water than other plants, and that if I want it to flower it again I should locked it in a cool, dry and dark place for a couple of months and just ignore it. How is that for parenting advice? 

So that is what I did. I shut it up in a closet and ignored it for almost three months.  Then, with trepidation I brought it out and gave it some water. Leaves came! But poor thing, after being starved and ignored, it then suffered physical abuse.  Twice wind blew through the window, pitching the plant into the sink, scattering its dirt throughout my kitchen.  It lay there in my dish water looking pathetic and destroyed.  Resolutely I put the plant back on the window sill, begging it to forgive me for my negligence in ensuring its safety.

The plant forgave me. God bless geraniums: a plant that doesn't mind being horribly abused and still decides to flower!

Something botanical (part 1)

Some people are blessed with a green thumb. I am not one of those people. The first plant I ever had was a charming little pink and green leafy thing that had polka dots.

Having never seen a plant with polka dots before I decided at the ripe age of 19 that I needed to venture into the botanical world of house plants.  At first the polka-dot plant thrived. It was doing so well that I decided it needed a bigger pot, and so I put the plant in the biggest pot I could find - a huge plastic white thing that might have been more appropriate for a tree now that I think about it. I didn't know at that point that plants can experience shock and post-traumatic stress disorder at being transplanted into a pot that is way bigger than they are accustomed to.  Plants are people too. Within a month my polka dot plant was dead. I was devastated.  What did this say about me as a person: killer of houseplants?

My next major house plant project was raising potato plants.  Yes, you read that right, potato plants.  Seeking to vindicate myself after my previous failure I decided one day to plant an old sprouting potato inside a pot to see what happened. Maybe if I was lucky I would get potatoes out of it!  The potato started off well: it was so cute and tiny inside the pot, like a kitten or a puppy or a baby gopher. Like a baby animal it was easy to coddle and exclaim over it how adorable it was.  However, like a baby animal the plant grew; and just as adult animals rarely retain the charm that their childlike selves had, the potato plant lost all charm it had  by being tiny and quickly became one of the ugliest houseplants you can imagine. It looked like a weed in a pot, all scraggly and bent over, a half-naked weed.  People would come over and wince and try to politely avert their eyes from the hideous eyesore it was. I stubbornly loved that plant, like a mother who refused to acknowledge that her child could have any faults.  I continued to coddle the plant watering it regularly, encouraging it to grow and yield me baby potatoes.  But then tragedy struck - my plant got bugs. Little flies that resembled fruit flies got into the soil of my plant and within a month that plant was too dead.

I was not ready to admit that maybe house plants were not my destiny. Having found two baby potatoes in the pot I tried planting them to continue the legacy of ugly houseplants.  But eventually, like their predecessor, they too got flies and died.  By then I was beginning to seriously doubt my abilities as a human being, and as a woman. I couldn't even keep a plant alive, how could I hope to ever raise an animal, or a baby?  Would people judge me if they knew how my plants ended up?  It wasn't over a lack of love, of that I was certain!  Desiring so much to be a good plant mother, I watered my plants almost every single day.  I spoke to them, breathed on them, named them.  Why were they contracting mysterious ailments and dying?  Was I cursed?

Are you as conflicted as I was about the situation? Go to part 2!