The water is green from glacial rock flour
Not everything is made green on principal. Some things are only green, by a trick of the eye.
Take the lake, for example. It’s Peyto Lake, in Banff National Park. It LOOKS a unearthly bluey-green, but if you look at the center-left of the photo, you can see the truth… a dirty glacier feeding the lake with a mix of melted runoff and ground rock.
What’s green here isn’t green at all, but light reflected off the powdery rock flour floating in the water. Green and blue are the shortest light waves.
How Green is Your Rock Flour?
What’s got me thinking about reflected green is my garden. I spotted a lovely, grungy-looking lady the other day wearing a t-shirt that said “Grow Your Own!” with an abundant garden scene. Our first organic veggie garden is taking over the backyard with cucumbers, pumpkins, radishes, and beans, with tomatoes and carrots on the way. I adore my garden, such as it is.
Too bad I don’t eat any of it. Green beans, ok. But I can’t stand cukes and the taste of carrots– blech. Maybe the t-shirt should have read “Grow your own! (and eat it too, you picky little snot!”). The question is “how” but why does my garden grow?
Meeting the Melting Icecaps, in person.
The glaciers around the Columbia Icefields are receding. The guides tell you it’s cyclical (which it is), but we are helping things along. They don’t say flat out “Look at the SIZE of that outer moraine! HUGE! You idiots! YOU and your SUVs did that!”
No… they are more coy than that. After all people are on vacation, here. Give them a break!
Meanwhile, back at the scenic outlook, the pushy glaciers, the alien lakes, and mountain after mountain are doing their best to appear impenetrable. It seems to work. My mind wasn’t on ecocity on my trip through Alberta and B.C…. It was on nature and my own experience with it. The rushing water and the haste of the beautiful warm season took my mind away.
Warm and lovely… another trick of the eye.
Erm … grow veggies you actually like?
I can’t stand carrots either, but I find when made into soup they’re fine: the sweetness comes through and the manky-old-onion flavour is gone.
How come “spring onions” always get called “scallions?” I think we should call all the other onions, as you put it disg., “Manky Old Onions.” That, actually, would be an excellent varietal. It certainly would explain a certain smell that comes from a certain someone after eating them.