Most hail I have ever seen fall at one time

The storm clouds were impressive last Sunday. My wife an I watched them roll over the city from the back porch of a condo in the north end of London. The biggest and baddest clouds seemed to be passing over south London, our home. (I took a quick picture as soon as we arrived home.)

When we returned home we discovered the ground around our home deep in hail stones. It was simply amazing. In some places the hail was five inches deep.

Many of our plants were destroyed. Our hostas took an especially hard beating. The next day my granddaughter thought the hostas had been attacked by caterpillars - very voracious caterpillars.

I picked up a few samples of the hail and took a quick picture. As you can see, some of the hail was larger in diametre than an American dime. I'm sure some of the hail, not much but some, was as large as a quarter.

Like I said, this was the worst hail storm that I have personally ever experienced.

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It has been a wet spring.

It has been a wet spring but a bit dry photographically. Heart has been acting up, or more accurately my ICD has been acting up. Three shocks in the past month goes a long way to killing my enthusiasm for getting out and shooting daily pictures.

But I see so many good photos on Google+ that I felt downright inspired. I strolled all the way to my front lawn and found this oh-so-wet hosta.

The London area is well known for its fine farmland and successful agriculture. Everyone is praying that the rain dials back the clouds and storms, letting the sun shine through. Summer is just days away and its time to get down to some serious growing.

The asparagus liked the rain but it is almost done. The strawberry patches are just about ready for picking. The berries should be bigger than usual but not as sweet. They will be puffed with water and their flavour diluted. My granddaughter won't care. She'll still love getting out into the pick-your-own fields and filling quart basket after quart basket with the red berries.

Fleetwood Cruize Weekend: come and gone

John heads off in his completely restored Morgan roadster.

Steve Plunkett has again hosted his Fleetwood Cruize event. Plunkett has a large estate in the far west end of London and holds what may be the largest outdoor car show in North America and possibly the world and its held in what may be thought of as his backyard.

The owner of the Morgan spent years restoring his roadster.

The money raised goes to charity and he raises a lot. Plunkett is one cool dude.

The show is just five or ten minutes from my west London home and in past years I have shown my Morgan Plus 4. Not this year.

My heart has been acting up and my ICD has been busy pacing it and shocking it into line. My Morgan is parked for the time being and may be sold.

But my neighbours still got to enjoy the sight of a Morgan, actually two, gracing our suburban streets. Some members of the Morgan Sports Car Club of Canada stopped by to say hello while in the neighbourhood.

Tell me again, Mr. Urban Planner, why shouldn't I like driving?

Graham Arboretum

According to the local paper, the Graham Arboretum has been a feature of Springbank Park since the 1920s but most folk in London are totally unaware of its existence. This isn't all that surprising as an arboretum is simply an assortment of trees and shrubs grown for exhibition or scientific study. Before the present feature, a small gazebo took centre stage here.

The Memory Wall, partially visible on the left, features granite tablets personalized with individual messages. Londoners are using the Memory Wall to honour or remember friends and loved ones with an engraved granite plaque.

Each plaque costs $1,500 with a portion of the money going toward the purchase of new trees. The arboretum was originally conceived by park superintendent Ernie Graham in 1926 and today the collection includes 300 trees encompassing 75 species: Red oak, Serbian spruce, weeping beech, purple beech, an entire magnolia grove . . .

London, ON: World class medical research centre

London, Ontario, likes to think of itself as a world class medical research centre. And you know, it might be true. There is so much puffery surrounding claims made by cities that one has a tenancy to pooh-pooh the claims and write them off as so much hollow bragging. But London has the facilities and the history to back-up their claims of world class status.

I personally have benefited from the solid medical treatment available in London, albeit on an experimental basis. I was the first person in Canada to have a failed mitral valve in the heart repaired robotically.

Think of my operation as open heart surgery but with the accent on "heart surgery" and not on "open." No cracking open the chest for me. All I have to show for my surgery is a small scar  hidden in the fold of skin below my right nipple. (I had to check in a mirror to be sure.) Oh, and I have a repaired mitral valve as well. It's been ten years and the repair is holding.

I also benefited from the research being done by Dr. John White in high powered MRIs. Thanks to Dr. White an error in my genetic code was discovered that explained a runaway heart episode, a V-tach event, that I suffered in the States while on vacation.

After Dr. White's discovery it was clear I was a prime candidate for another V-tack event and possibly sudden death. I now have an ICD and I'm on proper meds to minimize my heart rate problems. I won't live forever but I won't die as soon as I surely would have without the intervention of the London doctors.

Note the name on the building in today's photo: Lindros. On his retirement from hockey, the former NHL star Eric Lindros marked his exit from professional sports with a $5-million donation to London Health Sciences Centre. The gift was the largest known one-time charitable donation from a Canadian sport figure.

Lindros is a native of London, he was born at the London Health Sciences Centre facility. It was probably known as University Hospital at that time. Anyone who follows hockey knows that Lindros had more than his share of injuries suffered during play.

I was at the press conference where he announced his gift and he said one reason for the size of the gift to the hospital was that he credited the excellent health care he was given in London over the years with allowing him to play as long and as successfully as he did.

London's facilities are definitely world class. Don't believe me? Ask Della Reese. This is what Wikipedia says:

"In 1979, after taping a guest spot for The Tonight Show, she suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm, but made a full recovery after two operations by neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Drake at University Hospital in London, Ontario."

Yes, there's no question. London's has a world class medical centre.

Do wild flowers make a better lawn?

Spring daisies.

Herbicides, at least those for home lawns, are illegal in Ontario. The result has been more dandelions, more daisies and just generally more weeds. Personally, I don't think the result is so bad. My neighbour says we're just going to have to rethink lawns and what makes a good one. Perhaps, in the future, a good lawn will have lots of pretty wild flowers.

Hurry-up and wait, uh, weight

This gentleman was spotted taking a walk for his health in Springbank Park in London, Ontario. To pump-up the benefit, the chap is pumping a couple of small barbells.