Queen Anne’s blood, on every carrot… Nah, not a decent hook for a horror story.

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Location Taken: Thousand Islands region, Ontario
Time Taken: July 2012

I’ve always loved Queen Anne’s Lace flowers for one reason and one reason only: the single purple-red flower in the middle of the umbel. It’s both a really nice point of interest in the flower and my favorite color.

There’s a small tale that goes with the name. It’s called “lace” because, well, it looks like lace, and the small red flower is a drop of blood left by Queen Anne when she was making the lace. Why Queen Anne got associated with the flower, I’m not sure.

Queen Anne’s Lace plants are also known as Wild Carrot because, well, they’re the species carrot was domesticated from. The roots are as edible as carrots when young, but turn too woody to eat before too long, so long ago farmers started selecting for roots that weren’t as woody, then for sweeter ones, and eventually more modern carrots started to appear.

At first, carrots weren’t orange. They were red or yellow, but rarely the color in between. The orange color was developed in the Netherlands during the time the House of Orange ruled the country. The House of Orange and the color Orange actually is just a coincidence (the house got its name from a place in France, the color from a corruption of the name of it from the area in Southeast Asia the fruit of the same name came from), but that didn’t stop them from naming Orange as the national color, which incited the standard fervor for the color amongst the locals.

The orange color actually turns out to be a large part of why the vegetable is so healthy for you. The orange is produced by Beta Carotene, in large quantities, which helps the human body produce Vitamin A, which helps keep our eyes working right. So a small vanity project based on a coincidence of names lead to stronger eyesight for a significant amount of humanity. Gotta love the quirks of history.

  

Brace yourself, We’re Fjording it!

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Location Taken: Bonne Bay, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012

Fjord.

Fjord is such a fun word. It’s VERY Scandinavian. Admittedly, Norway is one of the fjord hot spots. Well, if you can call anything in Norway “hot”.

Fjords are formed by glaciers. They’re in the spots where the glacier meets the sea. The glacier digs out a wide U-shaped valley, including digging deep into the sand and sediment found at most coastal areas.

Fjord valleys have steep sides and deep waters. They make great fishing villages, but are tough to get to over land. There’s a bunch of small villages scattered along this fjord, and fishing is the way of life here.

Fjords do come in a few varieties, depending on the rock they’re digging through. This one has some softer rock on one side, so it wore down faster than the other. There’s another fjord in this area, Western Brook Pond, with very steep cliffs from the hard rock that glacier dug through. It’s hard and steep enough they haven’t managed to get a road in to it, despite it being a big tourist spot for Gros Morne National Park, complete with daily boat tours. Boat tours, mind you, because there really isn’t room for trails next to the cliffs.

Fjords are really pretty. I like fjords. Partly because they’re a sign that I’m in a northernly area with the cold weather I like. But mainly because they’re really pretty.

Fjord.

  

Purple Fish, Schooling Together, where are you heading?

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Time Drawn: April 2010

I took a Chinese Painting class one semester at the local community college. It’s a really good community college, with excellent teachers. It’s top quality, just with a focus in profession-specific and introductory classes rather than the more in-depth academics you find at non-community colleges. I learned a lot in the handful of classes I took there, and I keep thinking about taking a few more if I get enough spare money. Maybe some entrepreneurial classes…

The Chinese Painting class focused on the Spontaneous form of this traditional art (Xie Yi in Chinese), rather than the Fine Line (Gong Bi in Chinese). Xie Yi focuses on the feeling of the subject and a lot of the techniques are about painting something in a few lines, emphasizing strength of line. Gong Bi takes a lot longer, since it uses lots of detail and lines. It has a more descriptive look rather than Xie Yi’s simple-lines method.

I probably would have preferred Gong Bi over Xie Yi, but then, I didn’t even know there were different schools of Chinese Painting before taking the class. I still use the paints and brushes I was introduced to in that class, but my style is certainly closer to Gong Bi these days. I still do some pieces with the fluid style I learned, but I’m too fond of detail to keep with it too long.

I still really like this method of drawing fish, though.

  

I love how these buds have seven seperation-lines. Prime numbers in nature are awesome.

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Location Taken: Baddeck, Nova Scotia
Time Taken: July 2012

I’m not sure what plant this is. It’s in the budding phase, not the flowering, and it’s really difficult to identify on leaves alone.

Still, even without flowers, this is a beautiful plant.

Yesterday, I talked about getting the focus slightly off. Today is an example of getting the focus perfect. The main bud-stalk is crisp and clear, showing detail down to the minute hairs on the stalk. The background blurs, which in turn brings even more focus to the stalk, especially as the stalk tip is right in front of the furthest-back part of the photo.

This stalk was only a few inches tall. In order to get it perfectly in focus, I had to adjust my camera to a setting that only has perfect focus for a centimeter or two. And I don’t use a tripod, so I have to hold my hands steady lest I incur even more blur from the slightest shift.

All so I can show off the true beauty of a plant lots of people walked right past without noticing.