Every day we live, we get older, as we get older some will say we do less. There are exceptions and hopefully you will be one of them. An exception was Mary Delany who died in 1788. Mary’s gift is something children and adults do for crafts – collage and her story is written by Molly Peacock published by McClelland & Steward, Toronto, 2010. Mary lived a full life and became inspired at 68 years of age when a petal of geranium fell onto the dark surface of a table. At the same time – nearby was a bit of paper of a similar color, Mary was connected the two and collage was born. It helped Mary loved gardening and plants, for to imitate them she had to study the plants – one of her most famous collages is a pick rose called Cluster Damask Rose. The pink rose contains 71 pieces of paper – each a separate color from pink to red to form a beautiful blush of red. The rose is surrounded by leaves and buds of other roses. In the book, the author tries to connect some of the actions of making the collage to her personal life and some of it works, others it is a bit of a stretch. At the same time Mary was working on her collages she lived in interesting times for Mary lived in the UK at a time when Captain Cook was bringing back plants from about the world. Looking at plants, the issue of how to distinguish them from each other arose and Mary agreed with Carl Linnaeus sexual system or based on numbers of reproductive organs of plants – the stamens and pistils, One method to look at her art – much of it is in the British Museum of History is start with the sexual organs of the flowers and then look at the rest of the flower. Mary collection was 10 years of work, but what a lovely collection it is.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, a question is often asked can you teach an old dog new tricks, the answer is yes. When we are younger, we make many mistakes, as we get older we still make mistakes we hopefully learn more from them. One mistake we make when we are younger is to have lots of money in a short time. As we get older, we know it is possible and sometimes that works but long-term investments will accumulate wealth, providing there are at least 2 ways of capturing the growth. One process is capital gains (which there tends to be a cycle) and the other is the steady stream of income or dividends. Whether you learn it in your 20’s or 60’s for we are living longer, the point is to learn for older people can still learn many tricks.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.