Free science, and applied-science, events in Toronto
The Science and Technology Department of North York Central Library compiles a monthly calendar of free science and applied-science events in Toronto: that is, of events which fall into the subjects in the department's collections. Here is the September calendar.
Applied science (the "technology" of the department's name) includes health, gardening, pets and food. So the calendar includes events such as: Sept. 1-3, high-energy dog/handler performance teams; Sept. 7-9, a vegetarian food festival; Sept. 16, gardening ideas from nature; and Sept. 28, a health talk on headaches.
5 thoughts on “Free science, and applied-science, events in Toronto”
Could you please identify the tool presented in your blog post? Is it a syringe entering a clam shell? A fancy pen planted within a thick pita bread? An arrow shot within an arrow (symbolic)? As a disciple of applied science, I cannot restrain my inquisitive impulses and must know. Please put me out of my theoretical misery.
I take it to be a trowel, “a pointed, scoop-shaped metal blade and a handle. It is used for breaking up earth, digging small holes, especially for planting and weeding, mixing in fertilizer or other additives, and transferring plants to pots,” according to the article on trowels in Wikipedia.
Given that one of the key uses of a trowel is to dig small holes, allow me to dig myself in a little deeper by asking whether this “trowel” (as depicted in the above picture) is representative of a particular trowel “style.” Is this a late-Roman period trowel, a Tang Dynasty trowel, or merely an Edwardian Age trowel? Personally, I suspect the blue dye is an indication of French royalty, and must have belonged to Louis the XIV or someone in his entourage.
Sigh. I’m quite unsure. I must throw in the trowel…
There was certainly a lot of transferring of plants to pots in the time of Louis XIV. In the garden at Trianon, “no dead leaf is ever seen nor any shrub that is not in flower… for which,” according, in 1694, to Andre Le Notre, garden designer, “it is necessary to change more than 2,000,000 pots” (quoted in the 17th century section of the article on France in The Oxford Companion to the Garden (2006)). But Louis XIV is remembered for having declared “L’etat, c’est moi,” not “Le jardin, c’est moi,” so I bet his entourage was busier with trowels than he was.
Most interestingly, in a little known (and rare) addendum to Alphonse de Lamartine’s “Odes politiques” (1830) – only five copies of the work are known to exist, with three of the five owned by none other than Richard Branson (of Virgin fame, an incomparable Lamartine fan), one owned by a Florida dentist named Hugh Pugh, and the final copy held by the Universidad Católica del Gran Corazón del Apóstol Juan in Valladolid, Spain – it is stated that (and I apologize for my casual translation from the original French), “Louis XIV / in his radiant youth / did not abstain from the cultivations of both mind and soil / forever establishing the truth that / a sharp mind and a sharp trowel / are essential for power and success.”
I would thus believe he did have a personal hand in keeping the gardens at Trianon clean and orderly. Perhaps he was misheard and did not state “l’état, c’est moi,” but rather “l’étang, c’est moi.” And what a pond it is!