[Leica] Very green Wales

[lrzeitlin at aol.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

I?m sorry I missed the discussion about the overly saturated green in Tina?s 
slides. We were traveling and I didn?t catch up on LUG posts until I 
returned. 
The green in the images is correct. At least as correct as Kodachrome 
permits. 
Wales, particularly our home area of Anglesey for a number of years, is the 
greenest place I have ever been. A branch of the Gulf Stream washes the 
Irish Sea between Wales and Ireland and contributes to the warmth and 
humidity of the region. Palm trees grow in Bangor. Snow is a rarity except 
on the highest reaches of the Snowdonia Mountains. The down side is the 
rain. Bad for people but the botany loves it.
Here is an excerpt from a short book about our several years at the Univ. of 
Wales (Bangor).
        "The Welsh Giant Vegetable Fair was held last week. During World War 
II Welsh coal miners were encouraged to grow vegetables in their yards to 
ease the food shortage. After the war, the miners kept their gardens and, as 
so many gardeners do, started competing with each other to see who could 
grow the best crops. Things are now out of hand. At our town fair there were 
onions as big as footballs, a 19 and a half pound radish, two foot long 
string beans, 69 pound cabbages and a 343 pound pumpkin. The grand prize was 
won by a man who brought in a dozen three and a half foot long leeks. He 
said his secret was using beer as a fertilizer.
        The leek, by the way, is the national emblem of Wales. No one knows 
quite why. One legend has it that St. David, the patron saint of Wales, 
advised Welsh soldiers to wear leeks in their caps when battling the Saxons 
to easily distinguish friend from foe. The story gets a bit confused because 
the word for daffodil and leek are the same in old Welsh. This suggests that 
the soldiers may have worn yellow flowers in their caps instead of green 
relatives of garlic, unless, of course the Saxons were from Transylvania. 
This confusion explains why both leek and daffodil have been adopted as 
national emblems.
        My wife is constantly amazed at the intense color of flowers in 
Wales. They are far brighter than at home. At one point she suspected that 
they were dyed, but our neighbor, a dedicated gardener, says not so. One 
thing for sure, they certainly don't have a chance to bleach in the sun. 
Here it is December, at a Labradorian latitude, and some flowers are still 
blooming. Green thumbitis must be contagious. We just planted fifty 
daffodils and jonquil bulbs. Such is our faith in the growing power of the 
Welsh climate that we expect them to burst into brilliant bloom long before 
Easter.?

Incidentally I am writing this on my new very portable laptop, an 11? 
Macbook Air running OS 10.10.3 (Yosemite). Everything is different. It is 
not your father?s Macbook. It is a wonderful laptop except for Photo, 
Apple?s replacement for iPhoto. That sucks and I have not figured out a way 
to get a decent replacement for the Mac Air.
Larry Z