Larry's Here!

Today's treat is that Marie's brother, Larry, has joined us for the rest of the hike.

We had quite a few miles of off road trail, and they were in pretty good shape. We are definitely happy about that. While we ate our snack, we watched several mother spiders hurrying around carrying egg cases.

There were a couple of nice vistas, usually at road corners.

We found this really large and old maple tree. The top was still alive.

Best find of the day for me was this plant gone to seed. I've almost certainly seen the plant before, but never the seed pods. It's Canadian Woodnettle, Laportea canadensis. It is one of the stinging nettles, although the strength of the stinging hairs varies a lot from plant to plant.

We spent the evening playing Quiddler. It's a very different game with more than 2 people, so this was fun.

Now I have to go get in the sleeping bag. It's actually quite chilly.

Conservation Trail, Vermont Hill Rd to Wagner Hill Rd. 9.0 miles.

See True Blue Gumby II

Philadelphia Flower Show - Eye Candy

  Another of the major commercial displays, by Schaffer Designs of Philadelphia, was called "Eye Candy." Their sign said we should share the electric energy of this floral sugar rush. It was a walk-through exhibit with a lot of "store windows." One was possibly the best single display of the show for complexity, but some of the others were not nearly as good.

The good one was "Cotton Candy." These three girls are dressed in plant material, with a lot of cotton as the medium.

Here's a close-up of the boots, purse, and ground cover. Also, check out their hair.

I thought the next best window was "Ice Cream." Here's the catch line- works pretty well for me after "hiking solves everything."

The ice cream cones were clever. This display was boy manekins with waffle cone shirts and flower-icecream heads.

The sprays of soft serve were really delicious looking. This is chocolate, and you can see a bit of vanilla behind it.

Another of the better ones was for cake- we usually see icing roses. Here the flowers are real.

And I'll incude the lollipops because they are literally electrice. There were 3 or 4 other window that were fine, but didn't seem as great to me.

Today's new fact is tied up in the game Marie and I love called Quiddler. I knew that you could make words like shrive, shriven, shrove, shrived... but I did not know if shrive was also a noun, so that you could have a person who is a shriver. The answer is yes. And, I won that hand.

They all come from Middle English- to shave, because a penitent often shaved his head as a symbol of shame. To be shriven is to be shaved or to take confession. A shriver is one who is penitent, a confessor.

The familiar phrase, "to get the short shrift," refers to being given only a short time for confession because the sentence has already been given and is usually harsh, such as death. Yikes! We usually don't give it that bad a context any more.

Oddly enough, "shrivel" comes from a completely different root- from Norwegian for wrinkled.

I am blogging early because Marie and I have to leave for Albany very soon, and I'll be on the train tonight. Tomorrow night I'll be blogging from home if all goes well.

See PFS- Ikebana See We Hiked