Feeling a little Blue...

Evidently, it has been some time since I published my first blog post. How often to post is a common dilemma shared by bloggers. For me, I've found that both everything and nothing have prevented me from returning sooner to prattle and ponder with you. That along with my own debilitating notion that penning anything worth sharing comes only once in a blue moon for me! Nonetheless, today I have decided to share this! Enjoy!

Once in a blue moon...

Did you ever wonder where this common saying came from? Admittedly I was an adult when I first learned that a blue moon referred to something other than the oh so romantic hybrid rose genetically altered to appear in a most glorious shade of blue which I used to swoon over in the plant catalogs of my childhood. I did understand that the phrase spoke to those events which took place only on rare occasion (such as "my husband and I go on a date 'once in a blue moon'") but I did not know the origin of the saying until  one evening when our local meteorologist explained it on the evening news. For the purpose of this article I will use the online source EarthSky's simple explanation:
 
In recent decades, many people have begun using the name Blue Moon to describe the second full moon of a calendar month. The time between one full moon and the next is close to the length of a calendar month. So the only time one month can have two full moons is when the first full moon happens in the first few days of the month. This happens every 2-3 years, so these sorts of Blue Moons come about that often.
and:

A blue-colored moon is rare. But folklore has defined two different kinds of Blue Moons. A Blue Moon can be the second full moon in a month. Or it can be the third of four full moons in a season.

That said, after becoming enlightened as to the frequency of their occurrence, my romantic side couldn't resist the rare opportunity of celebrating the magic of a blue moon falling on the last day of the first decade of the new millennium. Here was a bit I shared with some mystical friends about my plans for that magical eve: 

Shore walker friends,   Dec.31st, 2009

O Happy Night so full of Hope and Possibility
O Night of the New Year's Eve Blue Moon...

Tonight to celebrate the changing of the decade Paul and the kids and I are  packing our hot chocolate and heading out to the north shore to toss any regrets we may carry in our hearts out to sea and whisper in the blue moonlight our deepest desires for ourselves, our family and our world and let them travel the shaft of moonlight out over snowy land and seascape beyond our edges to that ever-bright and ever-hopeful place of greatest beauty... that boundless place beyond the constructs of time and place and self...

Thinking of you all tonight and wishing you all a Happy New Year... Enjoy the spectacular sky...it quite literally took my breath away driving home a short time ago...Thinking of you Jenny and Sr.Moon and I'll raise my thermos cup to you all from a snowbank this eve...Jill 

Perhaps you will be inspired to discover some magic on the next blue moon to occur on July 2, 2015, or at least to find time to spend with ones you love in the meantime!

Bluing Bolete (another magic blue for me):

 

There is something so attractive about a bluing bolete. At first glance, the ones which recently appeared in my heavily treed yard following a warm, wet spell appeared to be hardy fungi. Broad capped, thick stalked and coloured a ruddy, burnished copper they lent the magnificent illusion of earthy strength. What then of my children's discovery that even the slightest touch of their fingertips or a brush by the end of their boot caused a deep bluing to occur on the mushrooms flesh? We bore witness to a staining so akin to a fast spreading bruise that we were left to wonder if fungi can suffer from anemia?

Rest assured, what we had witnessed was not a rapid deterioration of a stunning creature from strong to weak. It was rather the result of a series of chemical reactions so rapid yet complex in their nature that it makes one reconsider how we as human beings negotiate the concept of time, and one which instantaneously brought me back to my own discovery of bluing boletes with my mother during my childhood many years ago.

The blueing reaction is easily explained through biochemistry. A compound called variegatic acid remains colorless unless it is exposed to oxygen. The cell walls of Gyroporus cyanescens are easily broken, exposing the variegatic acid to the air. The oxygenase enzyme converts the variegatic acid to its quinone methide, which is blue. Interestingly, in many other boletes, in the absence of oxygen, variegatic acid is converted to variegatorubin, which is responsible to the red color found in many members of this group. The possible functions of the variegatic acid and its color shifts to blue or red are unknown. Anyone have any ideas? (Tom Volk) 

The chemical reaction which causes the bluing is demystified above by Tom Volk, yet he still leaves the reader with a remaining question- this speaks volumes to our enduring interest in understanding nature; no matter how much we discover about something, blessedly there still remains something to keep our fascination for  further discovery!

Other favourite blues of mine:
~ the ocean blue

~ blue dishes (transfer ware, earthen ware, pottery)

~ blueberries (homemade jam, pie, picking them in late July)

~ denim (jackets, jeans, purses, skirts)

~ twilight

~ forget-me-nots

~ blue beaded lily

~ blue flag iris in wet ditches in June

~ a paper I did for Dr. L.Watson on Jazz and Blues called Black and Blue in America

~ the intensity of sadness

~ the way clouds look on a blue sky in September

~ blue eyes of the ones I love

~ and like my beloved uncle Gerald, my favourite ornaments on a Christmas tree are the royal-est of blue.        

There, I feel strangely better now, hope you do too!