Thursday, February 12, 2009
Watch Yourself Devolve on Darwin's Birthday
If you have time for a bit of fun today, check out this Flash program that can show you what some of your ancestors may have looked like. Devolve me!
Happy Birthday Darwin!
Darwin's Moth and Columbines: Bee Gardening and Evolution
There's a debate going on in the scientific community about pollination and evolution. In 2007, Justen Whitall and Scott Hodges did a study on different varieties of the columbine genus Aquilegia. There are many varieties of Aquilegia that grow wild in North America, and the interesting thing is the variety in the length of their spurs, which is where their nectaries are located. Those with the shortest spurs are pollinated by bees, the medium spurs are pollinated by long-tongued bees and hummingbirds, and those with the longest spurs are pollinated by hawk moths. Whitall and Hodges observed that the nectar spurs tended to evolve into longer lengths in order to attract the most efficient pollinators. If the bees' tongues weren't long enough to reach the pollen, then the flowers grew longer spurs to entice hummingbirds, who were more efficient at pollinating the plant. There's a good photo of the differing columbines here at Biologyblog.com.
There is another theory for the increasing length of columbine spurs that is based on the work of Charles Darwin. Now some of you may know the story of Darwin's moth. Actually, there are two famous stories about Darwin and moths. The first story is about the peppered moth with had a salt and pepper pigmentation that helped it camouflage itself against speckled tree bark. During the industrial revolution, the trees in the "black country" were covered in factory soot. The peppered moth evolved to become black to blend in with its changed surroundings. Nowadays the black moths are more likely to be picked off by birds because the trees are no longer covered with soot. You can see a photo of the peppered moth on this BBC website.
The other moth story involves a case of cryptozoology. In 1862 Darwin observed an orchid in Madagascar called the Angraecum sesquipedale that had a nectary almost a foot deep. He conjectured that its pollinator was probably a large moth with a proboscus as long as the nectary. The moth did indeed exist. It was discovered 41 years later, in 1902 and named Xanthopan mogani ssp. praedicta, otherwise known as Darwin's moth. There is an excellent article on this story on this web site.
Darwin's theory of a coevolutionary "race" between pollinators and flowers help scientists conjecture that columbine nectaries may be getting longer because the pollinators are evolving with longer tongues in order to become more efficient at gathering nectar and pollen. I'm not a scientist, but I don't see why the theories have to be mutually exclusive. In any case, the point of writing about this in the context of creating a bee garden is that in order to attract bees you have to 1) decide what kinds of bees you'd like to attract, 2) learn how long their tongues are and 3) compare the lengths of the nectaries of the flowers you would like to grow.
In an article on Nature.com, R. A. Ennos, points out that bees do not coil their tongues as moths do, therefore the evolution of their straw-like tongue is limited to their body size.
"The maximum tongue length of a bee is unlikely to be significantly greater than its body size, since the tongue must fit lengthwise beneath the body in flight. Thus in an ancestral, bee pollinated Aquilegia, co-evolution will lead to a spur length close to the size of the bee's body.
Spurs of enormous length could ultimately evolve under co-evolution with the hawkmoth because the maximum size of a hawkmoth tongue is staggering (up to 220 mm), a fact made possible by their ability to coil the proboscis neatly beneath the head when not in use."
If you fancy doing some scientific experiments of your own, why not try to grow several types of columbines that attract different pollinators? You may be speeding up natural selection by putting plants next to each other that have evolved in geographic isolation. Apparently columbines can create fertile hybrids. If you save some seeds, you could become an amateur plant breeder. Birds love the seeds too, by the way. You can make notes on which colours attract the most bees. Apparently bees see red as black, so they will see the Aquilegia formosa flowers as white centres with black edges. In an abstract for an article on bird-pollinated flowers Quentin Cronk and Isidora Ojeda say that black is a bee-deterrent color. If the Aquliegia formosa depends on both bees and hummingbirds, then it makes sense that the flower is both red and white. I would think that the black would serve as a kind of nectar guide in itself, giving the flower a high contrast edge to read.
"Red coloration appears to play a major role in both bee-deterrence and bird-attraction. Other mechanisms of bird-attraction include the production of abundant dilute nectar and the provision of secondary perches (for non-hovering birds)." http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/59/4/715
In the book British Wildflowers--In their Natural Haunts Vo 2-4" A. R Horwood has an excellent detailed description of how bees pollinate wild columbine. I wish there were more examples of this kind of writing for bee gardeners.
"The five petals are large and conspicuous, each one hollowed from the claw upwards, to form a hollow spur or horn-shaped cavity, 15-22 mm. long, with a cup-like mouth, admitting a humble bee's head, and the narrow tubular part is curved inwards and downwards above, containing the honey secreted by a fleshy thickening in the spur. Bees with a long proboscis hold on to the flower below, clutching hold of the base of the spur with their fore legs, and with their mid and hind legs they clasp the stamens and pistil, which project obliquely downwards in the middle. They introduce the head into the aperture of the spur where the outer wall touches the end of the proboscis following the curve of the spur. In younger flowers the hind part of the bee's body touches the anthers, closely surrounding the carpels covered outside with pollen, and in older flowers the same parts touch the carpels which have become elongate, and spread the stigmas farther apart. So cross-pollination follows.
The visitors are Bombus hortorum, B. terrestris, B. agrorum, Halictus. B. terrestris cannot reach the honey and bites a hole at the base of the spur in order to obtain it. Holes may frequently be seen and are due to this cause."
Horwood also explains that the flower derives its Latin name from the talons of an eagle, which finally makes sense to me! The columbines that are native to BC (Aquilegia formosa) were used medicinally by First Nations, but be advised the Aquilegia plant has poisonous parts. So go ahead, order some columbine seeds and grow a bee garden that would make Darwin proud!
There's a debate going on in the scientific community about pollination and evolution. In 2007, Justen Whitall and Scott Hodges did a study on different varieties of the columbine genus Aquilegia. There are many varieties of Aquilegia that grow wild in North America, and the interesting thing is the variety in the length of their spurs, which is where their nectaries are located. Those with the shortest spurs are pollinated by bees, the medium spurs are pollinated by long-tongued bees and hummingbirds, and those with the longest spurs are pollinated by hawk moths. Whitall and Hodges observed that the nectar spurs tended to evolve into longer lengths in order to attract the most efficient pollinators. If the bees' tongues weren't long enough to reach the pollen, then the flowers grew longer spurs to entice hummingbirds, who were more efficient at pollinating the plant. There's a good photo of the differing columbines here at Biologyblog.com.
There is another theory for the increasing length of columbine spurs that is based on the work of Charles Darwin. Now some of you may know the story of Darwin's moth. Actually, there are two famous stories about Darwin and moths. The first story is about the peppered moth with had a salt and pepper pigmentation that helped it camouflage itself against speckled tree bark. During the industrial revolution, the trees in the "black country" were covered in factory soot. The peppered moth evolved to become black to blend in with its changed surroundings. Nowadays the black moths are more likely to be picked off by birds because the trees are no longer covered with soot. You can see a photo of the peppered moth on this BBC website.
The other moth story involves a case of cryptozoology. In 1862 Darwin observed an orchid in Madagascar called the Angraecum sesquipedale that had a nectary almost a foot deep. He conjectured that its pollinator was probably a large moth with a proboscus as long as the nectary. The moth did indeed exist. It was discovered 41 years later, in 1902 and named Xanthopan mogani ssp. praedicta, otherwise known as Darwin's moth. There is an excellent article on this story on this web site.
Darwin's theory of a coevolutionary "race" between pollinators and flowers help scientists conjecture that columbine nectaries may be getting longer because the pollinators are evolving with longer tongues in order to become more efficient at gathering nectar and pollen. I'm not a scientist, but I don't see why the theories have to be mutually exclusive. In any case, the point of writing about this in the context of creating a bee garden is that in order to attract bees you have to 1) decide what kinds of bees you'd like to attract, 2) learn how long their tongues are and 3) compare the lengths of the nectaries of the flowers you would like to grow.
In an article on Nature.com, R. A. Ennos, points out that bees do not coil their tongues as moths do, therefore the evolution of their straw-like tongue is limited to their body size.
"The maximum tongue length of a bee is unlikely to be significantly greater than its body size, since the tongue must fit lengthwise beneath the body in flight. Thus in an ancestral, bee pollinated Aquilegia, co-evolution will lead to a spur length close to the size of the bee's body.
Spurs of enormous length could ultimately evolve under co-evolution with the hawkmoth because the maximum size of a hawkmoth tongue is staggering (up to 220 mm), a fact made possible by their ability to coil the proboscis neatly beneath the head when not in use."
If you fancy doing some scientific experiments of your own, why not try to grow several types of columbines that attract different pollinators? You may be speeding up natural selection by putting plants next to each other that have evolved in geographic isolation. Apparently columbines can create fertile hybrids. If you save some seeds, you could become an amateur plant breeder. Birds love the seeds too, by the way. You can make notes on which colours attract the most bees. Apparently bees see red as black, so they will see the Aquilegia formosa flowers as white centres with black edges. In an abstract for an article on bird-pollinated flowers Quentin Cronk and Isidora Ojeda say that black is a bee-deterrent color. If the Aquliegia formosa depends on both bees and hummingbirds, then it makes sense that the flower is both red and white. I would think that the black would serve as a kind of nectar guide in itself, giving the flower a high contrast edge to read.
"Red coloration appears to play a major role in both bee-deterrence and bird-attraction. Other mechanisms of bird-attraction include the production of abundant dilute nectar and the provision of secondary perches (for non-hovering birds)." http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/59/4/715
In the book British Wildflowers--In their Natural Haunts Vo 2-4" A. R Horwood has an excellent detailed description of how bees pollinate wild columbine. I wish there were more examples of this kind of writing for bee gardeners.
"The five petals are large and conspicuous, each one hollowed from the claw upwards, to form a hollow spur or horn-shaped cavity, 15-22 mm. long, with a cup-like mouth, admitting a humble bee's head, and the narrow tubular part is curved inwards and downwards above, containing the honey secreted by a fleshy thickening in the spur. Bees with a long proboscis hold on to the flower below, clutching hold of the base of the spur with their fore legs, and with their mid and hind legs they clasp the stamens and pistil, which project obliquely downwards in the middle. They introduce the head into the aperture of the spur where the outer wall touches the end of the proboscis following the curve of the spur. In younger flowers the hind part of the bee's body touches the anthers, closely surrounding the carpels covered outside with pollen, and in older flowers the same parts touch the carpels which have become elongate, and spread the stigmas farther apart. So cross-pollination follows.
The visitors are Bombus hortorum, B. terrestris, B. agrorum, Halictus. B. terrestris cannot reach the honey and bites a hole at the base of the spur in order to obtain it. Holes may frequently be seen and are due to this cause."
Horwood also explains that the flower derives its Latin name from the talons of an eagle, which finally makes sense to me! The columbines that are native to BC (Aquilegia formosa) were used medicinally by First Nations, but be advised the Aquilegia plant has poisonous parts. So go ahead, order some columbine seeds and grow a bee garden that would make Darwin proud!
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Pull of the Moon
The moon woke me up today. It must be full. Sometimes it's like the moon comes right into your room and flicks on the hormones. Humans see a man in the moon. Does that mean bees see a bee in the moon? Not that they are nocturnal creatures, but they do spend a great deal of their time in the dark. They are affected by the moon as much as any creature is, which is to say in a mysterious way that we probably know nothing about. The lunar calendar acknowledges the development of the seasons in a more direct way than the Gregorian calendar, which is based on that old drama queen, the sun. Ancient civilizations and indigenous people used round calendars to mark time, acknowledging its cyclical nature. Many people had names for the moon in each month that describes a phenological marker.
Here is a list of names for the February Moon from some native American tribes from AmericanIndian.net:
Algonquin: Ice River is Gone Moon
Abenaki: Makes Branches Fall In Pieces Moon
Northern Arapaho: Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon
Assiniboine: Long Dry Moon
Cheroke: Bony Moon (lack of food means people make bone soup)
Eastern Comanche: Sleet Moon
Cree: Eagle Moon
Haidi: Goose Moon
Hopi: Month of Purification and Renewal
Inuit: Avunnivik
Kalapuya: Atchiulartadsh--Out of Food
Kiowa: Little Bud Moon
Lakota: Moon when the trees crack because of the cold.
Mohawk: Enniska-- Lateness Moon
Muscokee/Creek: Wind Month
Omaha: Moon When Geese Come Home
Passamaquoddy: When the Spruce Tips Fall
Pima: The Gray Month (when trees are bare and vegetation is scarce)
Potawatomi: Rabbit Conception Month
Shawnee: Crow Moon
Central Shoshoni: Coyote Moon
Sioux: Racoon Moon/ Moon of the Dark Red Calves
Tewa Pueblo: Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind
Tlingit: Black Bear Moon
Winnebago: Fish Running Moon
Wishram: Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Moon
Yuchi: Wind Moon
Zuni: No Snow in Trails Moon
As you can see, these names are poetic and poignant. We have lost so much of this sensitivity to the seasons and the natural world that comes from truly living off the land. It must has been a hard life, especially in months like February in some of the colder parts on North America. The people would have really depended on each other in February, standing shoulder to shoulder around the fire, eating bone soup, giving each other the strength and courage to go on.
One of my favorite all time haiku books is Haiku Anthologie Canadienne: Canadian Anthology edited by Dorothy Howard and André Duhaime. It contains poems by a variety of Canadian artists in French, English, and sometimes Japanese too. It contains a lovely moon poem by Irene G. McGuire:
power failure moon rise
panne d'electricité lever de lune
Here, the loss of electricity suddenly draws the writer's eye to the natural source of light, bringing her close to nature and the beauty of a winter moon. Take time to go out and look at the moon tonight.
3 degrees Celsius, mostly cloudy, Pressure: 101.44 kPa
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Bee's Underbelly and The Dark Side of the Hive
Aganetha Dyck: Collaborations at the Burnaby Art Gallery
I highly recommend that you make a special trip out to Deer lake Park to see Aganetha Dyck's work at the Burnaby Art Gallery. I attended her artist talk today, which was truly inspiring. I first fell for Aganetha's work many years ago when she did an artist talk in Regina at a CARFAC conference. Here was an artist I could relate to: a sculptor who shrunk sweaters and canned buttons in mason jars. Her work with bees was enchanting. I was lucky enough to work with Aganetha at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. She was showing a work called The Extended Wedding Party and I was asked to work with her to create a performance inspired by the work. With the help of Raymon Montalbetti and some fine performers, we created a piece called Cleaning the Hive.
Aganetha's son Richard is a media artist. When she saw the scans he did of a horse's mane it reminded her of a landscape. She asked Richard if he could scan her bees. The photos in the Collaborations show are the result of these scans. It was a tricky process, working on a warm day, carefully edging the scanner into the hives without squashing any bees. The result was photos that show a side of bees that we rarely see: their bellies. Young female worker bees create wax flakes with glands in their undercarriage. Because the bees are moving while they are scanned, their bodies appear stretched, sometimes into lines and squiggles that represent their movements. One gets a feeling of the oppressive atmosphere inside the darkness of the hive. Some of the photos have so much depth, they remind me of lenticular images. The bees leave traces of wax on the surface of the scanning bed, and Aganetha says the scanner gets so mucked up she is tempted to put it in the washing machine.
Other works on the first floor of the show include drawings and pieces of fabric that are left in the hive for the bees to work on. The fabric and paper are pinned in the hive with miniature clothespins. The hive box is above the queen excluder and above the comb filled with honey because the artist does not want larvae or honey in the work. If the comb does fill with honey, she leaves the object outside to be robbed by the bees in front of the hive or she takes it home and lets the wasps rob the honey in her back yard. Once the bees have worked the fabric, Aganetha embroiders into the patterns they have left behind.
The work upstairs includes signs made of metal with words made from backlit honeycomb. Aganetha said she wanted to name and acknowledge all her collaborators and the people and bees involved in the process of creating the work. On the facing wall, there is a beautiful poem by Di Brandt, printed in braille as well as French and English text. Aganetha's husband and studio assistant made a series of boards that each contain a part of the poem in braille that were put into the hives. Some of the pieces contain fragments of drawings by the artist. Aganetha invited members of the CNIB to read the pieces with their fingers and they laughed at the text because the dots that bees lay down to begin a comb are the same size as braille dots and they made the text nonsensical.
The works in this show are lush, whimsical, mysterious, and beautifully crafted. Once again I urge you to see the show, but I warn you--you may become hooked on honeybees!
From the gallery website:
"Free Family Sunday Program: February 22, 1:00 - 3:30pm, (Every half hour). Join us for a free hands-on studio activity for the whole family. This interactive experience will combine the current Aganetha Dyck exhibition with your participation in drawing bees and honeycombs. No registration is required."
Burnaby Art Gallery
6344 Deer Lake Ave., Burnaby.
Info Line: 604. 604-297-4422.
www.burnabyartgallery.ca
Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.,
Saturday & Sunday 12 – 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays. FREE ADMISSION
I highly recommend that you make a special trip out to Deer lake Park to see Aganetha Dyck's work at the Burnaby Art Gallery. I attended her artist talk today, which was truly inspiring. I first fell for Aganetha's work many years ago when she did an artist talk in Regina at a CARFAC conference. Here was an artist I could relate to: a sculptor who shrunk sweaters and canned buttons in mason jars. Her work with bees was enchanting. I was lucky enough to work with Aganetha at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. She was showing a work called The Extended Wedding Party and I was asked to work with her to create a performance inspired by the work. With the help of Raymon Montalbetti and some fine performers, we created a piece called Cleaning the Hive.
Aganetha's son Richard is a media artist. When she saw the scans he did of a horse's mane it reminded her of a landscape. She asked Richard if he could scan her bees. The photos in the Collaborations show are the result of these scans. It was a tricky process, working on a warm day, carefully edging the scanner into the hives without squashing any bees. The result was photos that show a side of bees that we rarely see: their bellies. Young female worker bees create wax flakes with glands in their undercarriage. Because the bees are moving while they are scanned, their bodies appear stretched, sometimes into lines and squiggles that represent their movements. One gets a feeling of the oppressive atmosphere inside the darkness of the hive. Some of the photos have so much depth, they remind me of lenticular images. The bees leave traces of wax on the surface of the scanning bed, and Aganetha says the scanner gets so mucked up she is tempted to put it in the washing machine.
Other works on the first floor of the show include drawings and pieces of fabric that are left in the hive for the bees to work on. The fabric and paper are pinned in the hive with miniature clothespins. The hive box is above the queen excluder and above the comb filled with honey because the artist does not want larvae or honey in the work. If the comb does fill with honey, she leaves the object outside to be robbed by the bees in front of the hive or she takes it home and lets the wasps rob the honey in her back yard. Once the bees have worked the fabric, Aganetha embroiders into the patterns they have left behind.
The work upstairs includes signs made of metal with words made from backlit honeycomb. Aganetha said she wanted to name and acknowledge all her collaborators and the people and bees involved in the process of creating the work. On the facing wall, there is a beautiful poem by Di Brandt, printed in braille as well as French and English text. Aganetha's husband and studio assistant made a series of boards that each contain a part of the poem in braille that were put into the hives. Some of the pieces contain fragments of drawings by the artist. Aganetha invited members of the CNIB to read the pieces with their fingers and they laughed at the text because the dots that bees lay down to begin a comb are the same size as braille dots and they made the text nonsensical.
The works in this show are lush, whimsical, mysterious, and beautifully crafted. Once again I urge you to see the show, but I warn you--you may become hooked on honeybees!
From the gallery website:
"Free Family Sunday Program: February 22, 1:00 - 3:30pm, (Every half hour). Join us for a free hands-on studio activity for the whole family. This interactive experience will combine the current Aganetha Dyck exhibition with your participation in drawing bees and honeycombs. No registration is required."
Burnaby Art Gallery
6344 Deer Lake Ave., Burnaby.
Info Line: 604. 604-297-4422.
www.burnabyartgallery.ca
Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.,
Saturday & Sunday 12 – 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays. FREE ADMISSION
Vancouver Songlines
Nikamon Ohci Askiy
(Songs Because of the Land)
Cheryl l'Hirondelle is one of my favourite artists. She is a singer and a media artist currently based in Vancouver. (Lucky for us!) Her mother is from the Cree nation and the Cree world view informs her work. Yesterday I went to the launch of her CD and DVD at the Celebration Hall in Mountainview Cemetery. We were treated to a walk-through the web site projected on a screen, and Cheryl and her band sang the songs on the CD. It started out as a grey spring day, but the sun came out as Cheryl began to talk to us. She was introduced by Glenn Alteen, who curated the project. The director of the Push festival also gave his round of thanks before Cheryl got on stage and gave her thanks to all the people involved, explaining that the value of gratitude was very important to her. Cease Wyss performed the opening song on behalf of the Skwxumesh Nation. Cease explained that the graveyard was one special place of peace in the heart of the city where people of all cultures come to honour the ancestors. Special guests included the "Jury from Surrey," a group of about seven elementary school students who were attending the show in order to give their feedback on the event within the context of the rest of the Push Festival.
Cheryl's project has a performance component and an interactive web component. For her performance, Cheryl walked and sang her way around an area of Vancouver. She wanted to sing to homeless people, to give them something for free, the gift of her voice. Through the project she was also able to give them some much-needed money. She also wanted to create songlines, mapping the city with her voice. As Cheryl sang her way around Vancouver she recorded some of her conversations and the ambient sounds. You can access these sounds through the website and even add your own found sounds. The songs she sang were created in the process of walking through her old neighbourhood, near Kits beach. She walked and sang into her cell phone so she would remember the songs. She drew inspiration from the land and from Hildegarde Westecamp's sound walks around Vancouver.
One of my favorite songs is The Great Giveway. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. If you go to Cheryl's Myspace page you can hear the song, which is about letting go of everything you don't need in order to find peace and healing. When Cheryl sings, it is straight from the heart with great depth of emotion. It takes a brave soul to make oneself so vulnerable. During the event we were all given a free copy of the CD and DVD. Thank you Cheryl!
Cheryl's Bio from Myspace:
"Cheryl L' Hirondelle is one unique and much sought after multi-disciplinary artist and musician from this land now known as Canada. A mixed-blood (Metis/Cree-non status/treaty, French, German, Polish) originally from Alberta, her creative practice investigates the junction of a Cree worldview in contemporary time and space with projects that spans a wide array of disciplines including: music, performance art, storytelling, spoken word, theatre, audio art, installation, public art and new media."
Currently 6 degrees Celsius and cloudy.
(Songs Because of the Land)
Cheryl l'Hirondelle is one of my favourite artists. She is a singer and a media artist currently based in Vancouver. (Lucky for us!) Her mother is from the Cree nation and the Cree world view informs her work. Yesterday I went to the launch of her CD and DVD at the Celebration Hall in Mountainview Cemetery. We were treated to a walk-through the web site projected on a screen, and Cheryl and her band sang the songs on the CD. It started out as a grey spring day, but the sun came out as Cheryl began to talk to us. She was introduced by Glenn Alteen, who curated the project. The director of the Push festival also gave his round of thanks before Cheryl got on stage and gave her thanks to all the people involved, explaining that the value of gratitude was very important to her. Cease Wyss performed the opening song on behalf of the Skwxumesh Nation. Cease explained that the graveyard was one special place of peace in the heart of the city where people of all cultures come to honour the ancestors. Special guests included the "Jury from Surrey," a group of about seven elementary school students who were attending the show in order to give their feedback on the event within the context of the rest of the Push Festival.
Cheryl's project has a performance component and an interactive web component. For her performance, Cheryl walked and sang her way around an area of Vancouver. She wanted to sing to homeless people, to give them something for free, the gift of her voice. Through the project she was also able to give them some much-needed money. She also wanted to create songlines, mapping the city with her voice. As Cheryl sang her way around Vancouver she recorded some of her conversations and the ambient sounds. You can access these sounds through the website and even add your own found sounds. The songs she sang were created in the process of walking through her old neighbourhood, near Kits beach. She walked and sang into her cell phone so she would remember the songs. She drew inspiration from the land and from Hildegarde Westecamp's sound walks around Vancouver.
One of my favorite songs is The Great Giveway. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. If you go to Cheryl's Myspace page you can hear the song, which is about letting go of everything you don't need in order to find peace and healing. When Cheryl sings, it is straight from the heart with great depth of emotion. It takes a brave soul to make oneself so vulnerable. During the event we were all given a free copy of the CD and DVD. Thank you Cheryl!
Cheryl's Bio from Myspace:
"Cheryl L' Hirondelle is one unique and much sought after multi-disciplinary artist and musician from this land now known as Canada. A mixed-blood (Metis/Cree-non status/treaty, French, German, Polish) originally from Alberta, her creative practice investigates the junction of a Cree worldview in contemporary time and space with projects that spans a wide array of disciplines including: music, performance art, storytelling, spoken word, theatre, audio art, installation, public art and new media."
Currently 6 degrees Celsius and cloudy.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Valentine's Reverie
To make peace it takes
a sunflower and one bee,
One sunflower, and a bee,
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If sunflowers and bees are few.
LDW (after Emily Dickinson)
This year, why not create a poem for peace on Valentine's Day, wrap it around a flower and give it to someone in your neighborhood. Valentine's Day is not just for sweethearts any more, it's for celebrating peace and kindness towards someone even if they're not your girlfriend. This Valentine's idea is brought to you by a Dutch performance artist named Federico Hewson. It is the Valentine Peace Project and you are invited to participate here. Isn't it a lovely idea?! The artist describes what will happen on the big day:
"5,000 beautiful fair trade roses will be coming to the Oude Kerk and carnations and roses will go to North Amsterdam, the Pijp, Antwerp and The Hague. In North Amsterdam students will create a Poezie Tuin. The roses from the church will be shared in the city with writings created at the event and thoughts and musings of love, peace and global community submitted to the website from the Netherlands, the US, London, New Zealand and from students in America and Holland. This is about celebrating and re-visioning this day to celebrate love, and greater peace in our cities, in our hearts and in our connecting globe.
I invite you to participate of course if you live in these cities but also there will be a template on the site soon wherein you can copy and paste your own expression, poems you like from the site, quotes or favorite poems or statements to share as a scroll or wrapped around a flower."
Das Poopin Bees
I took a Ginkgo walk around Van Dusen Gardens yesterday and the bees were up and out of their hive! My first clue was splotches of yellow goop in the snow. Yes, it's bee poo and it's all over the snow around the hives. So if you go up to the gardens to see the hives, now you know that after a long winter's huddle in the hive, the bees are desperate for the loo when the weather warms up. Too bad the batteries in my camera died or I would have taken lots of poop pictures. Well, maybe it's for the better. I'll never forget that day last summer when I was bee-watching in a my garden and a bee hung her hind end over the edge of a leaf and made a plop. I giggled.The pussywillows are out and they are a very important source of nectar and pollen for building up the brood at this time of the year. If you have a chance, take a look at this document from UBC Botanical Garden's Botany John site which celebrates the life of John Davidson. There is an excellent paper about nectar and pollen sources from native plants in B.C. I was heartened to read his belief that "wildflowers constitute the foundation of success for the beekeeper." He believed that willows were the most important plants for beekeeper and that the bees could store 8-16 pounds of honey from this single source. So if you go out bee-watching in early spring, look for bees landing on pussy willow catkins.
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