Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: explore2014August24

The last few days here have been cold and wet, but today, the sun is finally out (well, I should say "was" out, as the sky has now clouded over). The highest the temperature got yesterday was 12°C, but most of the day it was a few degrees cooler. I don't like the heat, so cooler temperatures suit me better, but - this is summer, lol! The flower in my photo is a small, native, wild Sunflower, photographed at Griffith Woods. Taken when I was on a botany walk on 12 August 2014. I believe it is Nuttall's Sunflower / Helianthus nuttallii.

On 14 April 2014, I spent a wonderful, fun day with my youngest daughter, driving the backroads SE of Calgary. Some of the roads were familiar to me, but others were new territory, which gave us a chance to discover some different abandoned barns. One of the places we were hoping to be able to find was the Superman (Kent) farmhouse and barn from the 1978 "Superman: The Movie", starring Christopher Reeve. We had both seen photos on the Internet that other people had taken, and knew that we would do our best to find this location. I was up till the early hours of that morning, Googling information about this place, it was so fascinating. I'll add a previously posted photo showing both this farmhouse and the beautiful barn that was also seen in the 1978 movie. This is where young Superman arrived in his "crystal space capsule" as a young child - it crashed into the gravel road where my daughter and I were standing - and grew up with his adoptive parents till he was a young man. I should add that this is private property (naturally) and this photo was respectfully taken from the road. It's amazing how many movies have been filmed around Calgary - quite fascinating. Apparently, a family member of the now owner of the property says that the family "does have plans to restore this property in it’s present state." www.bigdoer.com/2383/exploring-history/superman-1978-kent... youtu.be/kI4xzWFDnkQ

You can't help but think of the movie, "The Sound of Music" when you see this unusual flower. The song "Edelweiss", which is about the flower, is from Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1959 musical The Sound of Music, which takes place in Salzburg, Austria, before World War II. I've only seen this plant in two places in Calgary, neither wild. One plant was in someone's garden, and the plant in this photo was photographed in front of someone's gravestone in St. Mary's Cemetery. "The plant is unequally distributed and prefers rocky limestone places at about 1800–3000 m altitude. It is non toxic, and has been used traditionally in folk medicine as a remedy against abdominal and respiratory diseases. The dense hair appears to be an adaptation to high altitudes, protecting the plant from cold, aridity and ultraviolet radiation. As a scarce short-lived flower found in remote mountain areas, the plant has been used as a symbol for alpinism, for rugged beauty and purity associated with the Alps, and as a national symbol especially of Austria and of Switzerland. Leaves and flowers are covered with white hairs and appear woolly (tomentose). Flowering stalks of Edelweiss can grow to a size of 3–20 cm (in cultivation, up to 40 cm). Each bloom consists of five to six small yellow clustered spikelet-florets (5 mm) surrounded by fuzzy white "petals" (technically, bracts) in a double star formation. The flowers bloom between July and September." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leontopodium_alpinum