Tuesday's Truths WK 185: Red + White = Pink (Honoring N'tl Pink Day)

IMAGE CREDIT

In an earlier entry today on Blogger, I wrote about the 84th session of #ClapBecauseWeCare, an event that began occurring shortly after Governor Cuomo shut down New York state.

As you may know, re-openings across the state have been gradual and in NYC, PHASE ONE began on June 1, 2020;  while PHASE TWO began yesterday.

These lockdowns and COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic concerns coupled with these new logistics of re-openings have had an impact on my content within this blog, as I've focused primarily on those issues.

I plan to change that and begin to return to other content, starting with today's holiday which is National Pink Day. As you may know, dear reader, I have post entries about the holiday here on Blogger in bygone years.

According to a wikiHow web-page, "Pink is a color beloved by many. It’s popular on clothing, bakery decorations, and flowers, but oftentimes pink dye cannot be found in stores. The truth is that pink is a tint of red and in nature is a combination of red and violet. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to make pink paint, icing, or more by combining red and white."

In last year's post, I included fauna and flora that have pink in their coloring. As a follow up to that post, I published an entry re the coloration of pink in nature.

Currently have some pink geraniums growing ui my garden as seen in the next photo-ops.

GERANIUMS IN MY GARDEN VIEW ONE

GERANIUMS IN MY GARDEN VIEW TWO 

And one of my Heuchera plants is exercising her bragging rights on this National Pink Day because she has pink flowers aa seen below.

OTHER HEUCHERA VARIETIES ARE FEATURED IN VOL 1

Other Heuchera varieties are featured in volume one of my three volume hard-cover book series, Words In Our Beak.

MY BOOK SERIES

Now, in honor of this holiday coinciding with Tuesday's Truths (this will be episode 185) and because the colors red and white are associated with pink, I'd like to point out aspects of nature who have red and/or white in their physical appearance (hence the image atop this entry).

Of course you won't mix their colors to get pink, but seeing red and white coloring in nature makes observing our natural world even more interesting than it  already is; as evidenced in the following pictures of nature with red and/or white in their coloring.

Thursday's Testimony: Confronting Shadows

Maybe because Groundhog Day 2019 has only recently passed, I've been a little obsessed with the topic of seeing/not seeing one's own shadow and am learning to confront mine as Carl Jung suggests everyone should do.

The Fifth Day of Christmas 2018

It's The Fifth Day of Christmas, the day (according to a song) when someones's true love gave to them five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. In honor of Christmas's Fifth Day, I've posted my photo of an ornament based on today's occasion.

On The Fifth Day of Christmas in 2016, here on Blogger, I included a copy of this same picture along with an interesting backstory today's celebration. If you'd like to read that blog entry, please click here. As you will see that post discussed the relationship of pheasants to today's holiday.

Today I find myself associating five golden rings with a bird type.

A 122nd Anniversary Takes Place today!

Besides this being Plush Animal Lover's Day, today marks the one hundred and twenty-second anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. According to a Wikipedia page, the statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

The image atop this post features a driftwood sculpture of her that can be found near to Long Beach's Boardwalk (on Long Island in NY).

Monday's Memory stems from PEANUTS...

.... this strip was published on this day of September 10th in 1982. But Charlie Brown is wrong, Summer is never over on September 10th! The official ending of the season for summer in my hemisphere takes place around September 22nd — twelve days after the tenth, CB!

Tuesday's Truths, the Ninety-Second Week: "Vous pouvez porter blanc toute l' année!"

CoCo Chanel's quote, "Vous pouvez porter blanc toute l' année," that's within the title of today's post may sound familiar to you, dear reader, as it was included in the title of a blog post that I published here on the Tuesday after Labor Day in 2011 (although at that time I was not running my Tuesday's Truths series).

Incidentally, the picture atop this entry was also featured in the aforementioned entry. When I wrote that entry, I referred to the white flowers which were growing in my rooftop garden including a variety of Echinacea, such as the one seen in the photos directly below....

...  as well as the flowers growing on my Autumn Clematis.

I'm not sure why I didn't mention (in the blog post which I've been referencing) the white flowers produced by my Tree Peony — AKA Paeonia suffruiticosa — whose flowers are featured in the images below...

THIS PEONY IS FEATURED IN VOLUME ONE

THIS PEONY IS FEATURED IN VOLUME ONE

THIS PEONY IS FEATURED IN VOLUME ONE

... perhaps I failed to do so because by the Tuesday after Labor Day in 2011 this particular shrub was long past its thriving days (which always occur in April through early May).

Some Facts Regarding Laughing Gulls (Wednesday's Wisdom)

In a recent entry here on Blogger, I mentioned that I had been to Long Beach and learned something new about the Ring-billed seagull: "they pant, like dogs which releases heat through evaporation of moisture along the bird's mouth, throat and lungs" and "because birds lack sweat glands, they do not sweat to cool off like we do. A bird will open its mouth and breath faster, which increases the airflow."

On that same day I noticed a Laughing Gull doing the same thing as evidenced in the photo atop this entry. This avian creature is new to me and marks the twelfth new bird whom I've seen in this Year of the Bird.

My last time seeing a bird who was new to me (who happened to be a gray/grey catbird) occurred on 5/29/2018, an encounter which I wrote here on Blogger at that time.

Be that as it may, since today is Wednesday, the day I set aside for my Wednesday's Wisdom series, I'll be using this opportunity to share some information about the Laughing Gull. After all, part of the definition of wisdom, "or sapience is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight."

And the gull seen here is certainly using his/her wisdom to cool down on a hot summer day, however there are a number of other interesting facts re this bird type.

A Seagull's Work Around to a Cooling Center

When the heat index is predicted to be dangerously high, New York City opens cooling centers in air-conditioned facilities to offer people relief from the heat, but since seagulls don't have access to such places, they have their own methods of getting relief from the heat, which is something I learned on a recent trip (this past Thursday) to Long Beach.

Monday's Musings: "NYC is the place to be if your'e a bird."

Yesterday, Sunday December the seventeenth, was a mostly overcast day in NYC. The temperatures remained in the thirty degree range, so I layered up before heading down to Pier Eleven (near to the Greenway by the Hudson River) to follow the wisdom of the Negro spiritual and "lay down my troubles down by the riverside."

There is nothing like a walk in the park to clear one's head and Riverside Park is one of the best places to do that in Manhattan. As I made my way across the pier, I came upon a lone Ring-billed seagull (seen in the image atop this entry) who also knew about this respite on the UWS.

Wednesday's Wisdom: "The Ground Effect" (Enables seagulls to glide low to the ground.)

It's been eightenteen days since I made my first beach trip for the 2017 year, and I am still in awe of what I witnessed re the seagulls who I encountered there (Long Beach on Long Island in NY).

In addition to learning of the differences between Herring Gulls and Ring-billed gulls, as well as seeing seagulls bathing in the Atlantic, I was reminded of just how low seagulls flew; as evidenced in the photographs atop this entry.

During my visits to both Long Beach and the beach at Robert Moses State Park in bygone years, I  had witnessed seagulls flying very low. At that time I researched what might be causing them to do this, and I learned that "there is in aerodynamics, a phenomenon called 'Ground Effect.' (The effect of added aerodynamic buoyancy produced by a cushion of air below a vehicle moving close to the ground.) It is where the air under a wing is being squeezed between the wing and the ground. The height of the ground effect depends on the size of the wing. So seagulls glide close to the surface because it is easier to glide there. Pelicans use ground effect, as do other sea birds."

I discussed these findings in a 2013 posting here on Blogger which you may reference by clicking here.

Meanwhile, more pictures of the low flying gulls, who I saw on October 7, 2017 can be found directly below.

Tuesday's Truths WK 62: Facts RE Herring & Ring-billed Gulls

It's week sixty of my Tuesday's Truths series; and as you may recall, dear reader, in this past Tuesday's posting (10-10), I mentioned that on the first Saturday of October, which was October seventh, I had finally been able to make a trip to Long Beach (which is on Long Island in New York).

Moreover, I have published a followup entry to that post (10-14), where I discussed some of the seagulls who I had seen bathing in the Atlantic Ocean on that beach day. In this aforementioned blog post, I promised to use my then forthcoming Tuesday's Truths entry to discuss a few other facts that I had learned re seagulls as a result of my recent trip to the beach, and so without further ado: The seagull seen in the picture atop this entry, where the creature is preening, is a shorebird whom I encountered on that October afternoon. I've done some research since that time and my understanding  from reading a number of seagull related/themed articles and web-pages; the variety pictured here is known as a Herring Gull.