Footnotes to a Conversation, September 16, 2024

“There are flowers everywhere for those who want to see them.” — Henri Matisse

Dahlias

The dahlia border at Butchart Gardens dazzles the eye with the size, colour, and variety of dahlia blossoms. Some of my favorites are the really large ones where the petals twists in unexpected directions.

Dahlias originated in the mountainous regions of Central America and are Mexico’s national flower. Plant material was sent back to Madrid’s Royal Botanic Gardens in 1789 and seeds and tubers were widely available to botanists and plant enthusiasts across Europe by the early 1800s. The first varieties were single, open flowers, but horticulturalists soon realized that dahlias readily hybridized if grown from seed. Hence the proliferation of new varieties over the years, from pompom (named after the pompoms on a French sailor’s hat) to cactus and waterlily.

Agatha Christie loved dahlias and had a whole border dedicated to them at her holiday home in Devon. The names of dahlia cultivars help Miss Marple to identify the murderer in the short story, The Four Suspects. [National Trust]

It’s Not Cheap

The word ‘cheap’ originally meant to bargain or barter. It later evolved into meaning something that was inexpensive, ‘a good cheap’. The original meaning still exists in place names such as Chepstow, Cheapside, and Chipping Norton, identifying the towns as marketplaces. Similarly, the word ‘chap’ was an Old English term meaning a merchant or trader and later the customer who bargained with them. It generalized to become a bloke or man on the street. [September 6, Word Perfect, Susie Dent]

Meditations for Mortals

There are always more books to reserve at the library or add to my growing To Read list. My latest addition is Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The 28 short chapters in his book, that is intended as a “month-long retreat for the mind”, contain advice that I’m prepared to take to heart (and all I’ve read is the book review):

“On day five, for example, Burkeman takes on the relatively low-stakes problem of reading itself, and the pressure of a teetering bedside pile of unread books. Stop treating your to-read list as a slowly filling bucket that must be emptied as often as possible, he advises. Think of it more as ‘a stream that flows past you, from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by’.”

“On day 13, we learn how many hugely successful and prodigious authors, from Dickens to Trollope, worked for no more than four hours a day. Burkeman writes: ‘The truly valuable skill is the one the three-to-four-hour rule helps to instil: not the capacity to push yourself harder, but the capacity to stop and recuperate, despite the discomfort of knowing that the work remains unfinished.’” [The Guardian]

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.