Alberta Flooding – Unplugging from the Web – Flowers Help to Heal

It’s called ‘The Web’ because once you’re in it, you are stuck.
– Terry Hall –

I’m going to take some time off – see if I can find a new Happy Place.  I know it exists somewhere here in my mind, but I’m not having much luck finding it right now.

So, I’m going to unplug for a while. I hope you will come back to visit my blog when I return!

Before I go, here are the photos I took the last time I was at the cabin. It is quite remarkable what is blooming out there. All 305 homes were destroyed, yet the flowers are cheerfully acting like nothing happened!

A yellow Columbine or Aquilegia.

A pink Rose. It is a hardy bush rose, but I don’t know it is called. I wish I had one in my yard!

A white Shasta Daisy. These grow like weeds at my place.

An orange Daylily. I have these in my yard, but they never look this good!

A white Mallow or Sidalcea. I’m really guessing on whether that is what this is.  It has leaves like a cranesbill geranium, but flower buds like a little hollyhock.

An orange Heliopsis helianthoides ‘Asahi’ – commonly called a False Sunflower. I’m guessing that is what this flower is called…

I hope I’ll be able to return to Hidden Valley next year to see what is blooming – but I don’t expect the Siksika Nation will allow us to enter once our buildings have been demolished and removed, and our lease has expired.

Before I go, please  tell me if you have ever taken a blog holiday. How long did you leave your blog to fend for itself? Did you find what you were looking for while you were gone?

What is a Blue Moon?

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.
-Tom Hanks-

Every two or three years, there are two full moons in one month. The second full moon is called a Blue Moon. A Blue Moon can also occur when the moon is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Confused? So am I.

The term  ‘blue moon’ has nothing to do with colour.  It is more likely that the word ‘blue’ actually came from the word belewe, which meant ‘to betray’.

Last night, according to the news, there was a Blue Moon.  It was still there this morning (only in a different location in the sky, of course.)  I took photos at 9:20 PM and 6:20 AM (9 hours apart) which means the moon had traveled 20592 miles (33147 km) while I had been mostly sleeping!

Did you know: a day on the Moon is about 27.3 days long or maybe 29.5 days – I found several different numbers for this rotational period.  The Moon’s rotation and other complicated things explain why we always  see the same side of the Moon.

How often have you looked at the moon and were sure you could see a face? Oddly enough, I don’t see one in this photo, do you?

You moon the wrong person at an office party and suddenly you’re not ‘professional’ any more.
– Jeff Foxworthy –

Alberta Flooding – Golf Carts and Corn Stalks

Our eyes are side by side – we just naturally look at life in a horizontal perspective!

In the aftermath of the Flood at Hidden Valley, Alberta, a few things that were once vertically aligned are now in a horizontal position. This golf cart near the 4th green has become a little greenhouse for what looks like a sunflower plant!

I turned the camera and took a vertical shot of the 4th fairway. It is now a lush forest of new poplar saplings and – a few more sunflower plants.

I continued walking along the 4th, past the Half Way house, then to the 6th green and bunkers. In addition to much more beach area, I found a corn plant.

This vertical photo shows the lush green growth of the grass – and a few more of the many corn plants in that area!

The Car Guy and I think that bird feed must have been scattered by the flood waters. The wet, nutrient rich silt encouraged the seeds to germinate and grow very quickly.  If these plants manage to set seed, then Hidden Valley could become a non-typical source of food for the birds for many years to come.

There are many other plants blooming in the Valley right now – I’ll post some photos in a few days.

All of our homes may have been destroyed, but the plant life is thriving. In a few years, it will be hard to tell that our Community was ever there.

Alberta Flooding – Foreshadow of a Flood

Sometimes clouds, not fluffy ones like these, but dark, rain filled ones – settle in over the Rocky Mountains and dump buckets of water. If they do this when these mountains are still covered with their winter coats of snow, then disaster will follow.

Frozen little mountain streams turn into torrents which then fill the rivers they feed. As the rivers flow east, they merge – creating even more powerful forces. By the time the Bow River got to where this picture was taken at the Community of Hidden Valley, it was flowing faster and higher than it ever had in our lifetimes. This photo foreshadows  what was to come.

Edward VIII replaced his fly buttons with a zip, a revolutionary move; and his Fair Isle pullovers, shorts and Windsor knots were considered by some to foreshadow the end of Empire.
– Angus McGill –

To see other photos from this Challenge: Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow