Les Bluets

A fellow blogger wrote about picking her own blueberries and making a pie. I jogged my jiggly joggily brain to recall what my friend, Nick, recently told me about his experience with blueberries. 

I love blueberry pie.

As a boy, Nick lived pretty far north in the province of Quebec. It’s an area noted for its wild blueberries, but I never knew just how abundant they are until he told me about his experience.

His father would make a big deal about picking blueberries to supplement family income, and Nick was conscripted to labour in the natural and untended fields. The blueberries grew wild, but Nick's dad knew where to find them, and he actually bought his first car for the purpose of collecting and hauling blueberries. If I recall correctly, Nick said they paid a thousand dollars for the car.

It was Nick’s description of the picking that impressed me most. He reported that the blueberries were so abundant in season that he could walk through the blueberry fields with buckets and his side, and the pails would simply fill up with blueberries as they brushed against the plants.

On my own, I recalled that people from that general region of Quebec are sometimes nicknamed, Les Bluets, or at least that was my memory told me, so I googled to be sure: 

In Quebec, "les bluets" refers to wild blueberries, which are a significant part of the province's agricultural landscape, particularly in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. While "bleuet" can also refer to a cornflower in standard French, in Quebec, it's strongly associated with the wild blueberry. (Google AI)

Beyond the AI descriptor, Google provided more detail.

Wild Blueberries: Quebec is a major producer of wild blueberries, with the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region being the heart of this industry, accounting for 77% of wild blueberry production. The term "les bluets" is often used to refer to these blueberries, both in a literal sense and as a symbol of the region. 

People of Quebec:

The term "les bluets" can also refer to the people of Quebec, particularly those who identify strongly with their French-Canadian heritage and the province's unique culture. This usage is often associated with a sense of pride and belonging to the Québécois nation. 

Cultural Significance:

The wild blueberry is a symbol of Quebec's natural resources and the connection of its people to the land. The term "les bluets" evokes a sense of place and cultural identity, particularly in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. 

Linguistic Context:

While "les bluets" is a French term, it is also used within the context of Quebec French (often referred to as "joual"), which has its own unique vocabulary and pronunciation.

Random Recent Photos

Today, with little else going on in this torrid weather, I am just going to drop a few photos from the past week or two.

For the past few years, we have been delighted by volunteer petunias growing here and there in the backyard. They grow right out of the mulch because there is landscaping cloth over the soil. In this photo by Sue, with appropriate, text added, the volunteer plant is to the bottom left. There are others elsewhere, but I think this one fits in nicely with the other pots. 

We photograph each other on walks. The next three photos were taken in the park, the first of Sue by a property that backs onto the park where the lady has a spectacular garden, mostly of big, beautiful flowerpots. The two of me are from a garden within the park.

The spotlight effect was done in camera as one of the Apple portrait options. 

AC lost in the flowers.

Guess who doesn’t want to bend too far.

There is a chipmunk living in our backyard, close to the daylilies by the fence. It was our first close encounter and s/he didn’t seem overawed by the gigantic two-legs  

Finally, for today, this a storefront on main street, the Carleton Place Gallery.

It's been hot, but I think this is the last day of this particular episode although there is not exactly a deepfreeze on the way. Maybe I will get some fresh photos or blog fodder in the coming days.

Beating the Heat and Meeting the Queen in Her Lace Finery

We are in the middle of a heat wave, but it did cool down more than usual overnight Sunday. In addition, we also got out earlier than usual yesterday morning. We had already been getting out earlier lately, but we walked well before 8 yesterday.

We also took ourselves out of our neighbourhood over to the back bridges where we found Queen Anne and her lace (Daucus carota) was blooming widely and wildly.

It was profuse behind the unfortunate, dilapidating, historic machine shop. (Nothing but phone pics today,)

We could see it later by the river as we looked first to the trail bridge and also back toward the old shop by Gillies Bridge.

And there was more of the Queen’s finery to see looking toward the old McArthur Mill.

After the walk, it was still delightfully cool, so we picked up coffee and took it to the park. Since Sue's photo prompt combined ‘red and leisure’, she decided that AC sitting leisurely on a park bench with red hat, red shirt and red coffee cup would fit the bill nicely. The clothes weren't staged for the photo; I just frequently wear red. The cup, however, was staged because the cups they gave us were a special blue for Tim Hortons camp funding week, so we begged for a traditional red cup, which remained empty for the photo.

Sunday Morning Macros

Are you tiring of my macros? If so, I don't blame you, but after my Saturday evening effort, I made a few more photos on Sunday morning.

It was hot again! and we would eschew our walkie again! so I stepped out for a few minutes and grabbed some quick photos, such as this daylily. They just began to bloom yesterday.

And ... another echinacea photo.

This is my first rudbeckia, yellow/orange coneflower, photo from my own garden in a long time and maybe forever. We did have some failures quite awhile ago, and I didn't replace those plants, but we are trying again this year and in a different spot. I hope they endure this time because I appreciate them greatly.

Sue has flower pots located here and there. I showed you a photo of the one situated by the sidewalk not too long ago, but this is just a section of that same pot. It's a really nice, colourful display, although my shot isn't perfectly focussed.

Here's a bit of another pot. It has struggled a bit, so Sue has recently moved it to a sunnier spot. We hope for the best.

I retreated indoors and awaited the men's Wimbledon finals. It was a pretty good contest but not elite. The two players, Sinner and Alcaraz, apparently put on a show for the ages just a few ago on the red clay of Paris, but Alcaraz wasn't quite in top form on the green grass of Wimbledon. It was still completive, however, unlike the ladies final the previous day.

Meanwhile, this Monday is going to be another very hot day, but it’s not too torrid now, at 7 o’clock, so I think we’ll head out for a short walk very soon, for we’ve been missing it for a few days. You have a good one.

Front Garden Macros

The common orange daylilies, Hemerocallis fulva, are blooming profusely and have been for about a week. You might call them by one of the names below.

Hemerocallis fulva, the orange day-lily,[3] tawny daylily, corn lily, tiger daylily, fulvous daylily, ditch lily or Fourth of July lily (also railroad daylily, roadside daylily, outhouse lily, track lily, and wash-house lily),[citation needed] is a species of daylily native to Asia. It is very widely grown as an ornamental plant in temperate climates for its showy flowers and ease of cultivation. It is not a true lily in the genus Lilium, but gets its common name from the superficial similarity of its flowers to Lilium and from the fact that each flower lasts only one day. Wikipedia

I've taken some phone photos, but, frankly, I don't feel like posting them.

Those fulva plants are out back, mostly out of sight by the back fence and behind the bushes, but yesterday the cultivars out front began to bloom.— just a few. Once again, I took phone photos during the hot day, but I didn't like then either. However, I did get an okay shot with my Canon plus macro lens last evening.

We've had three different varieties of daylilies in that tough patch by the driveway where not much else wants to grow. They've been there for about 15 years now, and all three cultivars look similar, and I don't know which is which.

I had actually prodded myself to go out last evening after seeing this echinacea macro from earlier in the week. For some reason I seem to favour echinacea photos before they bloom biggly. Please excuse the use of the scientific term.

There are about 20 echinacea plants out there, all really from self-seeding, and some are on the lawn, outside the actual garden. We've perhaps let them go too far, but at this point, we are not very serious gardeners, so we shan't over-worry.

Blather, blather: you do go on AC. Cut it short.

So here are two more photos from last evening. The sun was down, or almost, so they don't have the light of the previous photo, but I like them anyway.

Daisy Time Again

Aside from that recently posted walk to the woods, I haven't usually been taking my camera on our strolls. I do have a phone after all, and Sue has hers, and she gives it quite a workout. However, I stuck my macro lens on again when we went out on Wednesday.

The pink echinacea coneflowers are in bloom in our garden and looking very pretty, so I took a few photos before we walked around to the park. There, I found yellow rudbeckia coneflowers, and I squeezed off a few more photos. Neither my pink or yellow coneflower shots really did it for me, so I am not going to post them.

But as I have discovered recently, there is something about daisies. There are two rather nice clumps in the park, so I took some photos, and I quite liked how they turned out. For those in the photographic know, I settled on an aperture of f5.6 and found that it seems to be a good compromise for handheld macro photos. I don't mind the subtle texture behind the flowers in this first photo. In fact, I rather like it.

There are two insects or partial insects in this photo. I notices neither, but one is tiny

and the other is half out of the frame.

The water droplets appealed to me in this next photo, but I also like the three flowers in the composition, three components often being a good compositional number.

Wonder of wonder, I did see the insect in this ↓ photo and captured it quite deliberately. Hurray me!

This ↓ is the same photo as that ↑ but just cropped differently into a square format. Do you have a preference?

After the walk, we watched more of the Wimbledon tennis coverage. In the hot weather, this a good time for AC to be in the AC. Speaking of heat, you know how Alexa gives us weather warnings. Usually, it's something like a heat warning until 10pm. Yesterday, on the 10th of the month, the warning was until July 17. Today it will be a humid 31C/86F. Let me emphasize humid — that's the killer, that is.

Into the Woods

We've been taking our little constitutionals earlier these days in an effort to beat the heat. Sometimes we succeed on beating it; sometimes we don’t.

One morning we drove up the the patch of woods on the northern edge of town. That's me walking the access trail beside the woods, which are off to the left and also way ahead in front of me.

There were all sorts of wildflowers in bloom along that ↑ path. I had brought my macro lens and took many photos. Macros are not easy to do without a tripod, but one does one's best. There is a choice to be made. I could open the aperture to blur the background, or I could stop down the aperture to get the subject in sharper focus but also see more of the distracting background. I went for the smooth bokeh in this photo, so most of the flower was not sharp. Pretty colour though.

There were daisies aplenty, so that is what I shot mostly, or at least made the best photos. I did a little better with the focus on this ↓ one, perhaps because the flower is flatter, with less depth.

I am happier with this ↓ photo because there is some colour in the background: Just a bit, but I think it helps.

Finally, I spied a daisy whose stem extended all of the way out of the gloomy background so that the flower could catch the sunlight. I closed the aperture a bit in order to get the stem in focus too. By George! it worked. I really like this one with the stem snaking in and out of the light.

Eventually, we got into the woodsy part. There were no flowers to speak of, but, by golly, there were insects, and by gum there was heat. So, there wasn’t much of us for long. 😄

We turned toward home, saying to ourselves that the woods will probably be lovely in autumn.