fungus and Haida Gwaii

Fungus or Fungi is actually called a kingdom – the fungus kingdom.
It’s weird stuff as it’s the sort of thing you don’t want growing on your body but in nature it provides some incredible visual delights, not to mention just how interesting they are as living organisms. Fungi provide a critical part of nature's continuous rebirth as fungi recycle dead organic matter into nutrients.

We have a big old Maple tree, growing in the very back of the property, where new fungus grows for us every year. I always trip out on how; in just a matter of days, these babies suddenly grow out of the side of the tree. There always huge, fleshy and so organic looking. I get a kick out of them because they're large enough to sit on if they didn’t break with the weight of me on them. I can see why gnomes, fairies, and pixies sit on them in our folklore.
Fungus is a visual delight to look at, from all perspectives.

---

The tops are smooth, in as much as a cedar-shingled roof is smooth.

The sides reach out like large hands and fingers inviting us to succumb to their comfort in sitting on them as described above.

From the bottom, they are a strange living organism of soft, fleshy airy little cells that cause my mind to wander.

The bottoms look like a sponge or a coral from under the sea. They provide an architecture even more abstract and bizarre than the sweet honeycomb.

All the above images are from the same fungus, taken on the same day at the same shooting.
You can click on them to enlarge them.

---

Sadly, their life is ephemeral. I guess if a fungus is growing on your toes or feet this short-lived character is a good thing. Those mushrooms that pop up after a evening rain and are gone by the noonday sun always blow me away and that’s not from consuming them, I just like looking at them. The funguses that grow on our grand old Maple tree live for about a month.

The best funguses I have ever seen where while walking in a remote forest of giant Alaska Sitka Spruce on the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwaii. My wife and I made this sojourn a few years ago. First, we drove 40 miles of logging roads, made of shot rock that could easily take out all four tires or putting a gapping hole in your oil pan. Often on these roads you come onto giant logging trucks with tires the size of pickup trucks which quickly forced you to the side of the road or perish as they are not able to stop for you. We then walked for several hours through what was paradise, leaving me to feel at times that we were the first people to ever see or walk there. Mushrooms, growing the size of small tress dotted the moss covered forest floor. Once the beauty of mushrooms has enticed our scrutiny of the forest floor, we couldn't help but notice Lichens as well. All over the forest floor and up the trees grew Lichens grew; they are a symbiotic union between fungus and algae. Funguses were growing from the side of trees that were so large that whole cities of fairies or pixies could live there. All of this under the canopy of 50-metre tall trees, laden in a blankets of moss, reaching down to the forest floor. It was incredible, a spirit quest and I certainly had an epiphany on this walk. We walked through this forest for hours until we came out on a snow capped mountain fjord or inlet on the Pacific Ocean, the west side of the Haida Gwaii. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life to stand there amongst these 3 to 4 metre (sometimes even larger) wide trees, some of which stood before Captain James Cook even sailed up these western coastal waters more than a two hundred years ago.

So, when I look at these fungus now growing in my own domain I think back on that marvelous journey and am once again grateful for the privilege. That said, had we of not taken that voyage to Haida Gwaii, these fungus growing on our grand old Maple tree are beautiful enough on their own.I hope you like my images.

GP

Ps – on a funny note: I thought I really was in paradise until we turned a bend and standing there in front of us was a huge black bear. Fortunately, the bear was stuffed with berries, revealed in the scat he left for us so he couldn’t be bothered with having to kill a meal; us. Not to mention the Mountain Lions that roam these woods. It of been paradise if I didn’t have to be on guard for them.

what many discard I treasure

Sometimes nature kicks out a freak even in flowers. If you like, a crippled flower; not unlike myself with an atrophied left leg. When these flowers pop up in my garden, I give them special attention so that they can live a full and happy life. There are times that I am completely surprised by the results as I was this year. One of our very young and recent plantings came up with the wackiest of blooms.
This recently planted Hydrangea set up three blooms all of which were anything like a complete and healthy looking Hydrangea flowers. I had given this plant a lot of love, water, fertilizer and many acid baths to change the colour from a normal white to a bluish colour.

These images convey the bloom it presented me. Though an abstraction of the normal Hydrangea flower, I was still very pleased by how it rewarded me.
If this flower, as handicapped as it is, can still provide such beauty, screaming that life has meaning and more so when loved, how could it be different for any other living thing?
Love is a powerful and nourishing force on everything it touches. The rewards in flowers may not be as stunning or showy as in healthy examples but the rewards are there none the same. In the realm of compassion sometimes, the reward is even more gratifying. Love is such a powerful thing on all that it touches. This must be "good stewardship" were love touches even the earth we walk on.

Therefore, I haven't shown you my big healthy Hydrangea shrubs, rather this stilted and abstracted bloom that I find equally as interesting if not more when looking at it in the abstract. The fact that my affection for it enabled it to reproduce makes it that much more special.

My beautiful crippled Hydrangea Bloom

This Hydrangea only had the five big blooms with this amazing center.

GP

happy and seeking company

Westham 0 - 0 Arsenal o9-24-05

My views on the game.

Not to be too simplistic but Arsenal sucked. They made the Hammers look good and good on the Hammers for rising to the occasion.
I think there were some poor calls and I thought the Hammers where getting some good shoves in using Man-U’s approach from last year. They have Teddy Sheringham but Arsenal has Dennis Bergkamp DB10, sadly injured.


I once did a painting about being on the top called “Sisyphus’ Descendants” << http://www.gerardpas.com/lrahm/gallery/sisypdet.html >>. The point is we’re not up there in that lofty place now. Be certain it is damn lonely up there, and is it was Roman’s Chelsea Army are stifling up the air there now – like a bad ABBA song “geld, geld, geld...”

Therefore, we have company for the time being in the middle of the table. Remember what I always say “Money is the root of all evil the only thing you can do with it is share the misery and buy art from depressives :)” I can just see that little pink smirk smile to the Left side of Roman Abramovich’s face now. What with the price of gas at the pump, oil at record highs, the number one team in England and Russia – things are looking good and if that is being at the top it’s damn lonely up there. What an oxymoron – a social society climbing as a team would make the summit more agreeable and Roman the Russian sits there alone alone while Veterans starve. I hope Stalin is rolling in his grave, which that prick deserved, rolling in his grave that is – “Gulag” is not a word describing the sound of imbibing.

Lonely at the top, boo f’n hoo -- I’m crying like John Terry or Rio Ferdinand.

My point about how money can’t buy you happiness just find you company when in misery.

Boo

Hoo

As for Arsenal, my head was spinning as though I was coming down from a high (the top - lol). My head was swirling and I started pumping back the Bitters like a weightlifters workout. It was like bad sex nobody could finish.
What was with that force field around the net? Did you see how Van Persie’s ball just bent away from it? Ouch, ouch, out come the Advil’s so that I can take my beer stained kit to the dry cleaners.

Am I going to bail? Nope!
If I had money like Roman, I’d buy a personal license plate that read “A12SEnal4LIFE”.

Go Gunners – more gunplay please, much more gun play.
As intials are short for gunplay.

GP

aster what?

Someone called me an "ASTERHOLE" today.
I replied, "You'd know one, ASTERWIPE"!

---

Me being a piece luv'n person what else could I have said?click image to enlarge
Just ask all the rest of those that dislike me.

---

I guess it is all a matter of perspective. The difference between seeing the world as an ASTERHOLE or a ASTERWIPE.

:)~

asters - new york asters faster

Aster flowers

Fall presents a whole new array of colours in the garden. It’s so much more earthy than springs vivid colours. There is no “autumnal” painting palette in Canada that wouldn’t include earth colours such as Yellow Ochre or Indian Red what with the burnished oranges, glowing reds, buttery yellows, overtones of copper or bronze.

A cluster of Asters

I’m sorry, I forget what genus of Aster these are but I also like New York Asters – jeez, that sounds like some serious NYC family name like the Carnage or Rockafeeler families. My favourite name in this American royalty genus is Angell – what’s not to like about having the last name of an Angell: Mr. Gabriel Angell. I’d of liked my last name to have been Pax, but I got Mr. No or Mr. Wong Step, Mr Step Forttwo, Mr. I. Dunno - Pas in French.

Asters growing in our garden.

I bought a new car last week, well new to me. Vroom, vroom it’s a sweet ride. I love it cause it classy, comfortable and very, very fast. Did I mention that I liked it because it's fast, if I haven’t it takes you to the speed you want to be at very quickly, nice on those long drives to New York to see the Asters in my friend’s gardens.
It has an advanced 2.5-liter, 20-valve, V-5 engine that produces a lot of horse-power, with impressive torque for quick acceleration. A nice toy! All this to get me to the Asters faster and arrive there without a sore back.

The one with the most toys in the end still dies!

Arsenal play Westham tomorrow at 5:30 GMT – go gunners!

GP

sweet autumn clematis

Sweet Autumn Clematis (clematis terniflora or clematis paniculata)

Well it’s autumn. Up here in the “land of long winters” and “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (SAD isn’t it) we are starting to think of frost in the weeks to come -- first soft then the killing frost. It is no wonder that so many of us suffer from SAD, when you have to start thinking of frost in September. As far as I’m concerned SAD feels and is described similar to pure Depression – it all sucks, depression that is even if you can cure SAD with a light bulb.Right now, we are enjoying the end of summer and doing it with elegant and fragrant delight through our Sweet Autumn Clematis (clematis terniflora or clematis paniculata). I propagated this one last year and this is its first season of blooms. It grows out about 10 metres before it blooms in late August-Sept. The fragrance, particularity at night, is subtle, sweet and enjoyable. The blooms though simple in terms of other varieties of Clematis are dense and thus stunning by magnitude. We grow this one on our deck as it quickly covers and then supplies a wonderful scent, on those fall afternoons of sitting in autumns yellow sunlight.

As ours is still young it still needs a year or so for the root system to mature, it has quadrupled in size just since last year. By next year, if nature permits it should quadruple itself again and I’m hoping it will look more like this one below. It is a nice way to bring in fall – pure simplicity without a lot of show but rewarding nonetheless.
Another small way of crawling further out of that rut of the blues or depression.
GP

lotus flower

Lotus flower leaf

Even without its magnificent blooms, I still find the Lotus leaf a beautiful marvel floating on or above the water. The Lotus flower symbolizes so much about what is good in life. The Lotus flower is the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously, as it emerges from the depths of the muddy swamp. To some it symbolizes the manifestation of the universal Buddha Nature or Christ Consciousness inherent equally in all life; spiritual enlightenment. I am more of a skeptic about such terms as universal consciousness and spiritual enlightenment but I love it for what it is. Growing from the mud at the bottom of ponds and streams, the exquisite Lotus flower rises above the water and is usually white or pink with 15 or more oval, spreading petals, and a peculiar, flat seedcase at its center.
These Lotus leafs grow in a friends “Curing Pond” as indicated by her tile work around the pond. It truly makes me feel better, when I sit there next to it with her and marvel at the wonders of nature even these simple leafs. The pond seems to work and her friendship is a like a healing balm, which I am fortunate to have. I say this because sometimes we take things for granted like friendship. For example: the East Indian lotus, N. nucifera, found in southern Asia, was introduced into Egypt about 2,500 years ago but is no longer found in the Nile region: how could this of happened.

The Curing Pond by Jamelie Hassan

virburnum

Virburnum or Snowball shrub seeds

Viburnum or Snowball shrub is from the same family as Cranberry. Its berries are reputed to produce excellent jam and jelly. For me it conveys the fullness of summer with its beautiful berries. The berries stay for a long time and we use them to attract migrating birds in the late fall early winter. The fullness of summer is upon us and the harvest will soon begin. I like this time of year as it also provides a pause from garden work between the seasons. Yes, it is time to smell the roses.

GP

nasturtium

a nutritious and beautiful garnish