My Garden

January - snow

2012-01-20T22:25:00.000-08:00

We have snow!!! Of course we all freeze in place for a day! But by the next morning the radio broadcasts are telling us that all the schools, and everything else, is business as usual. All the photographers go crazy with trying to get the best exposure for the snow while it lasts. I have a bizillion photos of birds and kids. :)) I love the contrasts of the colors against the black and white.
By tomorrow, the snow will be gone. It is raining and sure to wash it all away in a day.

Reviewing trip to SW US in March 2011

2012-01-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

This is the Tonto monument in Arizona, the cliff dwellers habitat. The photos on this post are from our trip to the South West US last March. I have many more of them the best of which will eventually appear on web page. Some of them will be added to my Megashot page as the spirit moves me to do.

We had a light covering of snow, that soon melted. We are promised more for tomorrow. Other places around us are getting much more of the white stuff.

I have spent the a few hours after lunch cooking a double batch of ratatouille, and a big bowl of cole slaw. Today, for lunch we finished the Curried Shrimp bisque which was delicious.
       Curried Shrimp Bisque

3   Tbsp. butter              1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1   Tbsp. curry powder        1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 tspn paprika              1 garlic clove finely chopped
1   Tbsp tomato pase          3 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup light cream                  or vegetable stock
3   Tbsp. Flour                  Salt and pepper to taste
200 grams cooked shrimp (1/2 lb.)
2 green onions, finely chopped
2 oz. brandy (.5 oz per serving)

Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat.
Add the onion, celery and garlic; and cook until tender,
3 to 4 minutes.
Mix in the flour, curry, paprika and tomato paste and
blend well. While stirring gradually add the stock.
Bring to a gentle simmer and cook 15 minutes.
Add the shrimp, saving a few to garnish the top.
I blenderize it and put it back in the pot.
Add the cream (I use 2% milk) Cook 3 to 4 minutes more.
Divide the brandy among 4 heated bowls. Pour in the soup.
Sprinkle with green onions and saved shrimp, and serve.
Makes 4 servings.

Note: I had some fish stock with chunks of salmon to use
and about 1/3 of the stock was chicken and the other third
was vegetable.
I used OLD BAY SEASONING (1 tbsp) instead of paprika and
salt and pepper. I used extra tomato paste, also.
It turned out very well.
Note 2: Irene left me a big can of the OLD BAY SEASONING
that she bought when they were down East on their long trip

I have been reading Magnus Magnusson's 'Scotland - The Story of a Nation'. It doesn't exactly move along. You have to really want to know this history of Scotland to get through this 700 page volume. It has its moments though.

January gardening

2012-01-12T18:42:00.000-08:00

A walk in the park from a few days ago.

While on my walk I stopped to snap the flock of geese that were feeding on the school grounds. Of course, Leroy and his little friends who were also out for their walk had other ideas about the geese.

The geese

The school grounds in a panorama with the little Sony

I guess this is the last rose of the year.

And the first snowdrop of the year... both on the same day.

On two days this week I spent two hours in the garden. It was wonderful to be out. I have been cutting back the perennials and doing a bit of clean up. I cut back some of the Virginia creeper and some of the mountain ash. I cleaned most of the leaves off of the moss garden and the dry stream. And off the alpines and the thyme circle in the front garden. The vegetable garden, grass and some of the perennials have had lime spread on them. Then I added a 1.75 kg box of bone meal, mostly on where the bulbs are to be soon coming up. I spent a bit of time digging up some of the blue bells that are spreading like crazy at the back. These are a campanula bulb and are rather nice in small bunches. These plants are sprouting up leaves and so are easy enough to dig out. Trouble is, I am not sure if all of them are the bluebells. I have noticed that some of the dutch iris are up. I expect to see the Saxatillis species tulips, that grow in the same area in the back garden woodland strip, coming up soon too. I can keep the bluebells under control a bit if I do not let them go to seed, and do more digging them out when I find out which ones they are for sure.

The weather this Fall and Winter has been almost balmy. It has been freezing lightly over night and this week the days have been sunny and up 10 degrees.

January - Happy New Year!

2012-01-06T23:55:00.000-08:00

this is a photo of the Fraser River, at a photostop over looking this great deep chasm. We stopped here, just before Lilloet, on our way home from Barkersville last August. We took the Duffy Lake Road back. It is a very challenging drive, with many switch backs with 20 km hairpin turns and very steep grades. Our brakes were smokin'.

this is something from 2006, shot with my Canon S3IS at the Tillamook Aviation Museum.

This is a shot from our moving Bentley, on the New Year's day run with the VCCC. I was using my little Sony and laughed to see it capture this wonderful flare on a random shot out of the car window. This photo lead me to an enjoyable couple of hours reading about auras. I checked out the color of my aura and think it was blue... the first time. :-)) Now this lady seems to have violet and even a few sprinkles of silver (which seems to be the major fairy dust) I have to work on getting some of that stuff! I probably should be adding hot links ... but .... hey... who has the time to follow them?

these wild flower shots were taken at the tourist information building at Wells, B.C., just before our visit to Barkerville, B.C. in August. I was moved to look them up because I was pursuing an idea of making the front grass strip of my garden into a wild flower meadow. This strip of grass is now called the crocus field and has crocus bulbs blooming in the Spring. Imagine, if, in August, it could look like this. And so, I went to find some wild flower seeds that I might use to over seed this grass. I found a very interesting site ... that I actually have been aware of for some time... West Coast Seeds And then, while looking at the wild flower blends, I came upon a Butterfly Garden blend. One thing lead to another, of course, and hours later I was prompted by Pat, that it might be time to make the supper. On the topic of the butterfly garden... I had saved a pod of seeds from the milkweed which is the flower that the monarch butterfly larvae feed. I have planted the seeds. I hope they grow. But, the plants are available from nurseries, too. The monarch butterflies recently suffered a reduction in numbers when there was a killing frost in their Mexican over wintering home. There is someone on our Island who breeds Monarchs and releases them. I am not seeing them ... I guess I don't have any milkweed plants for them.
As you can see, over the past week, I have been all over the map, with my hobbies and interests. In addition to the above I now have my copy of the Amen Solution. My brother, Dan, mentioned this book to me, with regard to weight loss. I was down to Russel books to pick it up, after they had ordered the paperback version in for me. The on-line only had the expensive hard cover copy. Its an interesting book. Dr. Amen is probably making a fortune on his books and solutions for weight loss. I won't link it. If you want it, you will find it. One of the foods mentioned in the book... after a very quick scan ... was stevia. I googled this and find that it is a herb, called sweet leaf. The seeds are available but hard to germinate, and it is annual. The made up portions are actually less expensive than the seeds. This is a herb that the Japanese and South Americans have used for years. I believe a derivative of it is used by the Coca Cola company in a specific brand of their sodas now.... but I could not be bothered to follow up on that, as all Cola products and Pepsi taste like dirt, to me. I seldom drink pop or soda or soft drinks of any kind. Was interesting to see them using stevia as a sweete4ner, though.
On a completely different tangent, as I returned home from my walk today, I noticed an empty beer can thrown on my front garden. As I picked it up, I noticed a snowdrop in bud in the front garden! This is January? right?

The last post.... of 2011

2011-12-31T22:01:00.000-08:00

Playing with the 50mm lens and the tulip boquet. Nancy brought a lovely boquet of tulips over Wednesday to our dinner party. Lovely, thanks so much. I think the dinner went well enough.

More playing with the 50mm lens and the foot of my new teddy bear. Loaded it to Megashot on JB

This is something from 2006 shot in RAW on my old Canon Powershot A50. Tweaked in Photoshop, RAW converter. I kinda like how it turned out. I tweaked it some more to get the background less dull and blurry. Shall loaded to my megashot for the Deserts Community.

This is a panorama from my new little Sony, downsized, of course... pretty much right out of the camera.

I walked a couple of days ago, into the Park, with the intention of using my new little Sony, with the Carl Zeiss lens. It seems to have pretty good color and sharpness. I am learning how to set the functions on it, slowly. Its a very fun new toy, and so light and easy to carry.
Our weather has been very mild. We have had some rain and a bit of gusting wind, but that is to be expected this time of year. The garden does not need much attention, now. I should get out and add lime to the veggie garden and the grass. Should put fertilizer spikes in for the fruit trees too.

Christmas in the Park and garden

2011-12-27T17:31:00.000-08:00

About the middle of the month I went to Walmart and purchased a Sony DSC W560 very compact digital. It does sweep panoramas and stitches them in the camera. I am just learning to use it, and have not found the time to do a panorama yet. This is my new teddy bear shot at night. This little camera has a Carl Zeiss lens. I can set some high ISO with it. Mostly, I wanted the panorama, but I think I am going to like some of the functions that allow me to shoot in different situations. I need more time with this little goodie.

This little tree along the walking trail in Panama Hills park has been decorated for Christmas the last few years.

The little holly tree is slowly growing. It must be about 18 feet tall now. It is loaded with berries this year. In the front the tree has finally lost its leaves. I have a bit of raking to do yet.

In the house the Tibochina shrub has decided to go into bloom. The second photo seems to have a ghosting effect where the flower seems to be superimposed on its shadow... I have no idea what happened here. I think I was using my 50 mm lens on the Canon Rebel. The 50 mm would have had the UV filter on it for protection. Whatever caused this.. I like it. Would be nice to figure out how to duplicate it. The African violets are blooming and only one orchid is now left in bloom.

I was working with the RAW converter on these photos from our trip down the Oregon coast and to the Grand Canyon. At this time I was using my old Canon Powershot A50 that shoots in RAW format. That RAW converter is really interesting to use.

We have been busy with house guests and the usual Christmas calls and cooking. Although, we had a quiet Christmas day with the two of us for the Christmas duck dinner. Tomorrow I make dinner for 6 . . it should be fun. I think I have everything ready and can stop being antsy and enjoy it all.
We were to Art and Marlens's new home. Its really very nice. They are still unpacking and had their family and us over to brunch. Was good to see Leslie and David, and the newest grandchild, Hannes. Lily is her usual delightful self. I can just imagine her grandmother being much the same sort of charming child.

Putting the garden to bed for the winter

2011-12-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

These photos are from December 3. The top one is a geranium leaf in its autumn colors. I need to propagate this plant. It is a blue geranium and has this lovely autumn color. The second photo is the moss garden. I have all the leaves picked off it and it is growing nicely. The last photo is the vegetable garden. I have been raking the leaves in the front garden off of the hedges and small rock plants, putting them on the grass path and running over them with the lawn mower. I put the mulched leaves on the vegetable garden and have added some fertilizer to the mix. I should have some good leaf mold to dig into the garden in the spring. You can see my few swiss chard plants that I hope will be producing good greens early in the spring. I have no other winter vegetables this year.
I got so much done today. I finished the house cleaning. Tom and Diane popped in for a visit and we had denver omelettes for lunch followed by tea and shortbread. Was good to see them, if only for a couple of hours.
Later I raked the front leaves again. This time I put the mulched leaves on the woodland garden area. I clipped back some of the front perennials and the garden looks cleaner. We have been having a very nice autumn, with only a few nights with light frost. I hope the winter continues the same way.
Yesterday I spent a few hours looking back over my photos from a trip down the Oregon Coast and south, in February of 2006. I was shooting with my old Canon Powershot A50 in RAW mode. I have not really taken the time to look at these photos before because I could not easily see them. Now I can more easily take each one to the RAW converter in Photoshop. There are a few keepers. Its great fun playing in the RAW converter, too.
I have a few more photos of Dan's stuff to tweak for Bruce. I am loading them to a Megashot gallery. The day I was shooting was overcast and not very good for shooting. Ah well, I got snaps of the way it all really looks and I guess that is what they want to see. Used my dslr and the S3 IS. Was good practice for me.
Last week I picked up a little Sony DSC W560 for $128.00 at Walmart. This little camera does panoramas stitched in the camera. Dan and Irene got a Nikon last week end that does a 360 panorama... more money. Its going to be Irene's carry around camera. I have yet to get my Sony operating... have been too busy with other stuff ... and so it goes. 'tis the season!

December - a very busy month

2011-12-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

On Friday, the 9th, we walked on to the Coho to go to Port Angeles and on to visit Dan and Irene. They have been back home for about a month, after their four month trip in their Airstream motorhome. This is the inner harbour as we left at about 4:00 pm.

This photo was taken with flash and looked terrible, until I took it to the RAW converter in photoshop.

Bruce asked Pat for a few photos of Dan's stuff. So, I had a good excuse to spend a lot of time practicing with my dslr-- that is fairly new to me. I am loading them to a gallery on my Megashot account that is for Pat's car stuff. I cannot seem to make the galleries password protected yet. Oh well, not many people go to that account. I just send them the link to the gallery or photostream and it saves all the download time in their email. I can send them individual photos or even prints if they want them. Irene was speaking of making her photos into hard copy albums. She is very creative and I am sure these photo albums, when she starts making them, will be treasures for them to keep. She will be welcome to any of mine she wants. Thanks Dan and Irene for a lovely week end.

On Thursday, before we left, I raked and mowed the leaves in the front; to get a lawn mower bag of mulched leaves that I put onto woodland area. The vegetable garden has a good cover of leaf mulch for the winter with fertilizer added to it.

Last night we were out to the Casino. The dining area does not have an extensive menu. I had an ok cheff's salad. After all the fine dining on the week end, I seem to have gained one pound. I shall have to fast for days, if I am going to lose those three pounds this month! We actually came home with about a hundred more dollars than we took into the casino, so that was rewarding. :)

We had Wayne the handyman guy fix the peeling paint in the small bathroom. Pat put up the new shower rod and stuff yesterday. So, that is finished. Next thing on my agenda is to do a good cleaning of the house and get some baking done for Christmas.

The light garden

2011-12-05T22:49:00.000-08:00

This phalenopsis has been in bloom for at least a month. It is too tall to fit on the light garden shelf and so sits beside the light garden. Maybe this is why it is lasting so long... it might be cooler when it is not directly under the lights.

This one has opened into two fairly simple little flowers.

This is the miniature cattalaya "Pixie". It has 3 blooms this time. Very showy,. I am not getting good color under these lights. I am shooting in RAW and the right white balance. The African Violets were just too messy to add, but most of them are in bloom too.

One of the cactus. It's color turned out not too bad. All of the backgrounds are messy too.
More practice!
On Saturday, we were out to the 6 mile pub with the Model T group. The truck parade went right past the pub. They were late and were going very fast. I didn't get any photos of them that are worth saving. I should have taken my camera with me on Sunday when we were out to lunch at the Cedar Hill Golf Club. There were some nice views out over the Golf Course.
It is not winter, yet, but we have been having a rather nice bit of late Autumn weather. There were a couple of over night freezes when I brought the humming bird feeder in and put out the feeder with the warm food. We seem to have at least two Anna's humming birds that are visiting most of the day. The front tree still has at least a third of its leaves attached. So, it seems I will still be raking leaves at Christmas time.
I am trying to do a walk every day. So, between Megashot, walking, cooking, gardening, and reading, I don't seem to be getting much time with my photos. I have made no progress on my old web page this year. And have accomplished nothing in sorting out our travel bags into folders of pertinent stuff. Some day we will downsize and everything will just get trashed and shredded, I suppose.

Gardening in November

2011-11-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

These photos are from the 18 of November. The pin oak at the back is brilliantly red, the sweet gum tree in the front has its leaves in multiple Autumn colors. The English oak in the back is very yellow. Now, a week later half of the leaves are gone from these trees. We have had two storms go through with high winds and lots of rain. The day between the storms I raked leaves off the perennials and paths, unto the grass path where I ran over them with the lawn mower. I put this leaf mulch on the vegetable garden. Today, I spread some 20 - 20 - 20 fertilizer over the leaf mulch to help it decay and to provide some good fertile tilth to the vegetable garden.

The small green leaves are cyclamen coum, I believe. I do not recall planting a cyclamen in this spot. It is behind the water tub, so is not easy to find. This is an area where I weeded and added woodland mulch earlier. This plant is a bulb, so somehow it survived. It must be a volunteer from some of the other cyclamen plants I have growing around the garden. This is a very good plant with evergreen leaves. Mine bloom twice a year... early spring and late fall. Also, in this area, I put in some other bulbs earlier this Fall, and I see them poking up above the mulch now. I hope they survive the winter. I wonder if the heat reflection from the sun on the black water tub is causing them to think its time to start growing.

While skimming leaves off the pond, I found a few dead gold fish. I had the pump turned off because it was plugging up its filter constantly. Also, because I had read that it is not good for the fish to have the water cooling at the bottom of the pond where they spend the winter. Well, I guess that rule applies to clean ponds. I have not cleaned mine out for two years, so I guess next spring will be the time to do it. I will probably need to restock the gold fish. I cleaned the filter and have the pump running again to try to aerate the water. It was really rather upsetting to see the dead fish. I will have to pay more attention to keeping part of the surface water open so that the water can absorb more oxygen.

Sunday will be the Grey Cup CFL football game. Our B. C. Lions team is sure to win, as they are the best team in the country.

October walk to Panama Hill Park

2011-11-15T22:59:00.001-08:00

a few photos from a walk to the pond in Panama Hill Park. The colors were spectacular on October 23. I can't believe it has been that long ago. Some of these trees and grasses are still full of color. There is going to be plenty of berries of all kinds for the birds this winter.
It was coolish today, but no rain. We have been having light frosts over night. The humming birds are looking kinda chilled when they cannot get their frozen food. I have one of the feeders in the house to put out in the morning with warm food for them now.
Saanich now owns all of this Panama Flats area. I am glad I got a few photos of it when it was being farmed. I believe it is going to be allowed to turn into a bog. It is, in actuality, a peat bog. It had sluice gates to drain it for the farming. In the winter people used to be able to skate on it a few decades ago. I hope the pond area remains as is and not part of the bog. In the winter, more recently there has been lots of water fowl feeding on the flooded crop area. I hope it remains that way, and the bog revives.
I was out gardening for about 3 hours this afternoon. I cleaned leaves off the moss garden and paths. I ran the mower over all the grass areas in the front and back and ended up with two mower bags full of nice chopped up leaves. This is added to the vegetable garden. I must get some high nitrogen fertilizer to add to this mix. There are more leaves on the front tree, so I should have a good thick layer of leaf mulch on the veg. garden by the end of the season. I cut back a stringy low cedar.. well cut the bottom branches off, and it now looks rather windswept, in my best attempt at a Japanese bonsai writ large. I cut back the Jackamani clematis and cleaned up the daylilies and the simplicity rose, a bit. Its good to get the exercise and to be on top of the garden clean up. I wonder how the plants survived when I was not so diligent about leaf clean up!
Do you know what butterfly that cattapiller is going to turn into? I must look for it in my butterfly book.

Trip to Peru and Ecudor in March 2010

2011-11-14T21:38:00.000-08:00

The Paracas ‘Trident’ or ‘Candelabra’ is a huge cactus-shaped figure carved into a hillside at Pisco Bay on the Peruvian coast. It measures about 240 m long by 120 m wide, with trenches a metre deep, and can be seen from as far as 24 km out to sea. It is aligned almost exactly north-south. It is variously regarded as a navigational aid or as a ritual object, representing a cactus or tree of life, where high priests worshipped the setting sun. Paracas-culture pottery dated to about 200 BC has been found there. Graham Hancock notes that 2000 years ago, viewed from a kilometre out to sea, the constellation known as the Crux (Southern Cross) would have been suspended in the sky directly above the cliff diagram at the March equinox. This quote taken from this informative web site

This is the only figure I got a good shot of on our flight over the Nazca Lines. I have seen it called Wing or Hands. More information on this site.
This was a very busy and active trip.

I have set up a 'desert' community on Megashot.net and so got searching my old photos for some sand, desert, canyons and badlands photos. I was up way late last nite working on this, so need my beauty sleep. This is a surprisingly short post for me. All the interesting stuff is in the hot links.

Moss garden

2011-11-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

I took these photos of the moss garden a day or so after cleaning up the fallen leaves. It, again has leaves fallen on it. The moss seems to be growing nicely since the rains started. The dry stream area in the top photo is actually under the deck, but just at the edge of the overhang, so, it gets moisture. The bottom photo has the nice mossy rock and the really good moss under the mountain laurel (kalmia latifolia). The moss is now extending past the fern and along the edges of the dry stream. The lantern is at the beginning of the dry stream. I took these photos with my dslr Canon Rebel and processed them in Camera Raw. I have a lot to learn about this. I really want a telephoto lens that is made for digital cameras. For my uses, I really don't think I need to pay for the expensive L lenses that Canon makes. There is much more data on the RAW files than I was getting on my S3 IS jpegs. But the S3 IS is easier to carry around on our trips. So... the learning continues.
I finally updated my Java thing. I guess its necessary and does not seem to slow down my computer, that I notice. I think I want an ipad2, and a Sony DSC 530 with the wide angle Carl Zeiss lens that does a panorama within the camera. It is coming down in price, and I should go to London Drugs and see what is in the box for the $109 price. I hope the ipad2 is coming down in price too. I guess there is a lot of competition in this kind of gadget, so the price should come down more.
I made a huge apple pie today, and am thinking about making apple butter to use up some of the apples. I could make some apple sauce to freeze, too. My freezer is full of soups and ratatouille. I made more pickled peppers, but they do not need to be frozen, of course. If I got a little freezer, I don't think I would have as good of a turn around on the meats and vegetables as I do now, with the smaller space. We can always get fresher stuff.
I am 10 lbs lighter and have 25 more to go, yet. My doctor has me coming into his office for a weigh in every month. This is helping as I cannot seem to do this on my own. More exercise has been a big factor, as well as watching what I eat.. and eating less. Its really difficult for someone who likes potatoe chips and jelly beans, as much as I do. It sure is worth the effort, though, because I feel better and much more energetic.

Frosty Friday

2011-11-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

Last week end we went over to Vancouver. While visiting friends we went to lunch at the Boat House, on Indian Arm. The tree colors where ever we drove were marvelous, even through the fog. We are having very good Autumn colors this year due to the light frost, and not too much rain and wind. Its so beautiful where there are trees and shrubs that are planted for their Autumn foliage colors. The Virginia Creeper, the Smoke bush and the sweet gum tree in my front garden are still in full foliage. The back has color in the berries of the holly and fire thorn.

We picked the apples this afternoon, and I washed and sorted them. I took the culls across the street and dumped them in the deer pasture. There are a few more on the vegetable garden. I put most of the apples into the plastic bin in the garage. They should last for the winter. I will need to make at least one pie soon.
After finishing with the apples, I raked leaves off the flower beds and the paths. Then I ran over them with the mower. I now have a nice leaf mulch put over top of the compost on the vegetable garden. I gathered up most of the leaves off the moss garden.. which is really starting to look good. The trees at the back still have about half of their leaves, so I will be doing this again. The front trees have more of their leaves. The pond will need draining and cleaning in the Spring. It is covered with leaves. I have the pump turned off, as it keeps getting its filter plugged up. I read in a magazine that it is not good to have it run all winter, as the bottom layer of the water gets too cold for the fish.
I have been doing quite a lot of cooking lately, from recipes that look good. Pumpkin soup, ratatouille, fennel, apple, walnut salad... it makes a nice change from the same old, same old. I think I have the right kind of fennel growing in my garden. I shall transplant some of the little ones I see popping up in the flower beds. I grow this plant because the swallowtail butterflies like it. It makes a nice vegetable in this salad. I will want to try it sliced and cooked, next.

More mid October color

2011-10-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

This is the Virginia Creeper from about 10 days ago. I cut it way back to about 3.5 feet up its pole, in the Springtime. It has grown right up to the top again and is putting on some gorgeous autumn color. I used the old dead twigs to line the woodland path and the composted dirt from the cleanup as compost in the woodland at the back. I am finished cleaning up this woodland area and have transplanted 12 perennials and some daffodils, hyacinths, tulips into the area.

this is looking over my back fence at the sumacs in a neighbor's back yard. The reddish tree on the left is my Japanese cedar that goes this interesting bronze/red color for the winter. The area under this tree is cleaned up, but the compost I had did not extend to under this tree. I have self seeding perennials in this part of the woodland. I am not sure if too much compost added would be good for them. I cleaned out 4 bags of compost from the old compost bin, but I think I will be using it on the vegetable garden patch. I think the soil there needs to be beefed up so things grow.

The sweet gun tree is starting to show a bit of color in this photo of about a week ago. It should be really nice in a few days. We have had a light frost or two and more rain.

My light garden is looking ok. All the African violets are in bloom. The little magenta dendrobium has a couple of flowers.
I have been making soups. I tried a ratatouille recipe. I am not a big fan of food with tomatoes, but this was delicious. Today I made a salmon chowder and it had tomatoes in it as well. Was good, too.

mid October color

2011-10-23T00:49:00.000-07:00

The Autumn colors are looking terrific. It has been raining for the last couple of days... not all the time, but enough to put an inch of water into the rain gauge. Since I am mostly finished my Fall clean up, I can play with my photos. I hope you can see the rain drop trails in the top photo. The second one is the coreopsis in its container next to the bird bath. The bottom one is of a willow I somehow got horn-swaggled into buying at the Rock and Alpine garden show and sale this spring. Its an interesting story. Not everyone gets treated to the generosity of a Count... I think that is his actual title. As I shopped at the sale at the show, I chose a few choice plants ... lewisias if I remember correctly... from on the table, and put them into my tray to buy. Lo and behold, this man came to my tray, grabbed the lewisias and said 'those are mine'. I meekly said, 'you can't take my plants!'. He said, they were in my tray, I just left them on the table while I talked to someone... I suppose it is my own fault' he muttered. and proceeded to give me these willows, because I had said I was looking for one particular miniature willow. Well, I must say, after talking to him and saying that he did not have to give me his plants, it was just as much my fault for taking his stuff, I was very generously compensated for the loss of the lewisias I had chosen. I also learned a lot about the plants. This was a very enthusiastic plantsman, and truly of some Royal designation, as I found from reading the newsletter, later. Our city is populated by all kinds of people who find it to be a paradise. .. from rock stars to royalty. We let them alone to live a normal life, too, it seems. Life is good on the left coast.
The colors of Autumn are changing very quickly. Sometimes the light is amazing... I don't think I could capture it with my cameras. As we had dinner tonight, I watched out the dining room window, as the light faded from the glow on the leaves and color in the sky to grey and black in a matter of minutes. It was truly marvelous. And so was the conversation over dinner. Just as an aside, I think a civilized and interesting dinner hour is wonderful. I am definitely blessed.
I spent quite a bit of time on Megashot, today. This was fun, too. The site is quite fast. I believe Cyrus is working like crazy to get Version 2 designed, coded and on line, asap. There are a few glitches in the site since migration, but as the site will be a lot different on version 2 these things should not matter. (I can't believe I typed CITY instead of SITE in the above sentence. Yes, the site is like a city, inhabited by friends and as it grows, by people we only see in passing, through the Explore or the Contests or in members photo uploads, or other places. )
I ran into a small annoyance ... Java wanted to update... well hells bells, everything wants to be updated, constantly. I said No and googled this Java update thing. After reading some of the answers to my search saying its a virus... eeeek ... everything is a virus... I found a site that seemed to me to say what it really is... Java seems to have this checking thing running in the background and asking to be updated. The people on this site say you can disable this annoyance, and your computer will run faster. ok... I just left it at "no" for now. I have no idea what Java does, or why I might need it. According to the geeks on the site, that I tend to believe, it can be disabled with no loss but with an improvement to speed of the cpu.

Rock walk

2011-10-18T22:41:00.001-07:00

On Oct. 2th the Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Gardening Society Victoria Natural History Society had a Geology field trip. The announcement: "From Metchosin to Swartz Bay, see the evidence of the movement of continents and ice sheets with Atholl Sutherland-Brown, retired Chief Geologist of B.C.
Meet at 9:30 a.m. at Helmcken Park and Ride to carpool. Bring a lunch and drinks
and dress for the weather. Length of outing about five-six hours. No pets."
The weather was cloudy and coolish. It was a very vigorous walk for me. Atholl Sutherland-Brown, I understand, is 82 years young. He tripped across all the rock surfaces with no trouble at all. At each stop, he described the geology of the area, without referring to notes or maps. We had notes and maps to follow along with what he said at each of our stops. I am afraid I missed most of it, as I had to take photos, of course, as well as not being as agile as most of the people. Here is the first paragraph: "The geology of the area is complex because three completely different terranes have been thrust together by plate tectonic subduction with the younger ones forced underneath the older." And it got more complicated, to me, as we went along. It was very interesting. I did not take notes. There was a book mentioned, but I not longer remember the name or author.
On the third photo I discovered how to take .jpeg photos into the RAW converter of photoshop. If you are on windows, go into Bridge, right click the photo you want to use, and go to Open in Camera RAW.
I spent this morning making chicken stock and chicken soup. Most of the early afternoon I tried to set up a Drop Box account, for on line storage. I did not get it set up properly, but don't care. The first 2 GB are free storage. The next step up for storage space costs $20.00 per month. It would not take long for me to fill up 2 GB of space, with photos. I have had near crashes on my hard drive, but have had back up. ... and now have lots of space and it is all backed up. I cannot see where I would need the drop box. Flash drives would work fine for storage, should I ever get antsy about losing my back up drive or the main drive.
In the last week we have had some fine gardening weather. Although, we had a light frost 2 nights ago. I have finished cleaning up the woodland, the Japanese area, and under the deck. The dry shade under the deck needs to be watered more often to extend the moss garden. While cleaning up the Japanese area I see that the moss garden is coming along quite nicely. The ferns can get out of hand, though. I like to leave the Welsh poppies grow. They are lovely and seem to do ok in the shade. So, next year, I shall work on extending the moss garden further under the deck, I hope. I have several different kinds of moss growing. pictures perhaps in a week or two.
The wasps are no longer alive in there nest under the deck. The hornets nest has started to deteriorate and they are not on the outside patching it up, so I guess the frost was the end of them.

October color

2011-10-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

The roses are still in bloom. I have a couple of rose bowels in the house containing the most fragrant Gertrude Jekyl which is a David Austin English rose.

The plants on the deck are about finished blooming. I have not replaced them with Chrysanthemums or pansies. I probably won't do this either. As soon as it rains these plants that look great coming out of the greenhouse turn to brown mush.

This is the Tibouchina 'Royal Dreams' shrub on the deck. It has one leaf that has changed color. This is a very showy plant, but tender. It has to come into the house over winter. I shall put it into the library, so that none of the other plants get any outside bugs it may have on it. It can be pruned back quite a bit, so it bushes out more with more of the Royal Purple blooms on it. When I bought this one it was a tiny plant in a tiny pot. It is now about 4.5 feet tall and looking very healthy.

The michaelmas daisies are in few well behaved clumps all over the garden. Aside from the tree leaf colors they are the best Autumn plants. I have seeds saved from some of the plants and hope to put them into pots to grow. I have some seed from the wild sweet peas that I hope to get growing in the woodland area. There is poppy seed, delphinium, hollyhock and lily of the Nile. I have 4 bags of topsoil to put into the pots where I hope to grow these seeds.

This is the firethorn, covered with berries, this year. The germander is finished blooming and will be cut back in the early Spring. I like to leave the perennials foliage on over winter. The robins are going to happy with this feast of berries later on when they ripen. Early Monday morning I was sitting at my front window watching all the birds. We have the Colquitz river across the street from us. It is rather wild area that is not made into a 'park'. Its wonderful habitat for the the wild life. I saw deer in the deer pasture. There were Canada geese, 2 big blue herons, a whole bunch of robins, tit mouse clumps, and numerous other birds. In the back the humming birds are constantly at the feeder. I wonder if they fatten up to over winter here.
I have transplanted my recent purchases of perennials and bulbs. There are a few good 'butterfly and humming bird' plants. This woodland area is covered with good mulch. When I emptied the last bag of this mulch, I found that I have more of it under the bag of fine cedar bark mulch. So, if I should need some good compost there is a bit there. There is also the old compost bin to empty, also. We are to have about a week of perfect gardening weather, so I must get out.

Early Autumn in the garden

2011-10-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

This is another view of the renovated path in the back garden.

The vegetable garden has been weeded and the compost added. It needs one more bag of compost added. The Community compost people emptied the bin today and left the needed bag. I have used up all of the compost so far this year.
The weeding in the woodland garden is finished. I will need to be very diligent about removing the blue bells when they come up in the Spring. I have added the butterfly bush next to the black tub. I have added the woodland compost to the area and have used up all of that compost that was available. I have put in some daffodil bulbs, a few crocus, hyacinths and dutch iris along the middle ground of this 5 - 6 foot strip of woodland. The area I am working on stretches from one side of the old garage along behind the garage to about half way past the garage. I have not measured it, but it must be at least 25 feet. I have purchased 11 perennials from Cannor, and I hope to put about half of them into this area. There is a monarda, a veronica, a lychnis (Maltese Cross), Liatrus (gay feather), anise hyssop and a primula that I will add between the bulbs. These perennials should cover the fading foliage of the bulbs from the spring. Across the old sidewalk from this area is the lovely lace cap hydrangea under planted with some ... I think its called sweet woodruff and muscari, with some stray daylilies, the lily of the valley shrub, and ferns that hide the old black compost bin. The compost bin needs to be emptied. I am adding kitchen compost to it, so it should be good additive to the gardens when I get it dug out.
Along the front I added 40 more muscari to the crocus field and I should now have a border of blue around the crocuses when they all come up in the spring. I expect to add a lavender, a black eyed susan, and a dwarf coreopsis to the strip next to the crocus field. I need to keep the daisies under control in this strip and not let them crowd out everything else. I could use one more pussy toes in the front of this border.

The apples are not great this year. I think they are ready to be used now. I still have apple sauce in the freezer from other years.
The next area on my to do list is the pond and Japanese garden area. I need to weed all of the violets and stuff out of the moss garden, dig out some ferns that are taking over, and then think about what I am going to do about the area under the deck. I want to make a sitting area, so there might have to be some digging and moving of dirt to make the level area.
The trees are starting to turn colors and the rains have started. There was over half an inch of rain in the rain gauge. I saw a weather forecast saying that our winter is going to be colder than usual. I guess those hornets were right!

October harvest

2011-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

An attempt at a still life. The bottom photo has been enhanced with the Virtual photographer filter called 'spice'. I do think it adds a bit of spice to the original. This is the harvest from my garden on Oct. 1.

more of the harvest still on the trees. The fig is having its best year. There are lots of grapes this year. I am waiting for colder weather to make them sweeter.

This is the verbena bonariensis. It is said to be on the Washington State invasive plant watch list. I can hardly believe it. I want more of this easy care plant to grow in my front garden. It is said to self seed easily. I only have a one or two plants from an old old plant I once purchased. I shall save the seed and plant it where I want the plants to grow. I think it needs more moisture than it gets in my carefree front garden strip. This area has a ground cover of thyme, a season of tall daisies and achillea, then the michaelmas daisies bloom... now. On the other end of this strip across the front I have lynchnis, under planted with pussy toes, with some dutch iris in the Spring. This year I have added a yellow spot of black eyed susans and coreopsis. There is the plum tree, a red currant shrub and a lavender. The black eyed susan has a very long blooming period. I need to establish more of them!

I renovated this path in the back garden by taking out the flat field stones and adding the stepping stones. I added pea gravel to fill in and hope to get the Sicilian mint to grow and weed out everything else in the path. This is the view of the path from the old sidewalk along beside the old garage, and looking towards the entry to the Japanese garden. I have weeded this path up to the entry to the Japanese area where it also branches off to one of the entries to the vegetable garden.

I have weeded along the back behind the garage from the irises and germander to the end of the old sidewalk where it becomes the bark woodland path. I have dug out the big leafed plant that was in the front and crowding out the Trilliums. I have left this plant to grow at the back of the border beside a torch lily clump. I have the new buddleia/butterfly bush planted in front of this clump. I hope the thin leaves of the torch lily and the fat leaves of the other plant make a nice backdrop for the butterfly bush. There are Saskatoon berry trees behind the tub garden, and then the irises, and germander. There are a few cedars and a yew behind these two plants. After I had the weeds taken out I put down about 6 bags of the good woodland compost I had liberated from the clean up of the Virginia creeper and St. John's worte in the spring. The dry twig from this same operation in the Spring is making a very nice springy covering on the wood land path. It should keep the path from being muddy in winter.
It is dark by 7:00 now. We had about an inch of rain last week, some high winds and cooler temperatures. It is good gardening weather. I have quite a few jars of soup made and frozen. This should free up some of my time to get outside.
Of course there is always computer and camera stuff to play with, too.
Last nite I was watching some depressing videos about the deepening of the depression. The people living in the tent cities are really very sad and in dire circumstances, now. There was talk of revising the whole global monetary system going back to a base of gold for all currency. It was estimated that the US dollar would hold less than half of its present value. The Chinese and the Oil barons are not much interested in financing the US wars any longer. Of course, our dollar seems to be tied to the US buck and will probably slide down the slippery slope as well. Although, our debt is no where near the proportions of the US. Its all pretty scary. Makes me want to buy a piece of land where I could raise some livestock and poultry... that will never happen, though.

Playing with Pictures

2011-09-28T11:40:00.001-07:00

Lake Koocanusa, BC

With the completion of the hydro/electric dam at Libby Montana in the early 1970's, Lake Koocanusa was formed. There are 75 km of navigatible waters from the US/Canada border north to Wardner, BC. There are a variety of ecological and environmental areas along the shoreline. You can see Deer, Elk, Wild Turkeys, Bald and Golden Eagles, Osprey and the very occasional bear. Badgers, coyotes and other wildlife can be seen as well
The north end of the lake's shore is surrounded by forests with spectacular views of the Rocky Mountains. As you journey south, the shoreline becomes more arid and sandy beaches abound. With almost 80% of the shoreline being crown land, this is a boaters paradise.
A number of forestry campgrounds exist on both the east and west shorelines, as well as several private campgrounds, and Kikomun Creek Provincial Park. Stores with camping supplies, fuel and fast food facilities are available at several of the private campgrounds. Houseboat operations exist on the lake - these offer perfect conditions for visiting the numerous beaches. The beaches are wonderful for picnicking, swimming, and overnighting as they are well protected from windy conditions. This also makes the lake ideal for water-skiing and other water sports. Water temperatures in the summer can reach the high 70's.
Fed by the waters of the Kootenay River, Elk River and streams from the Flathead and Kootenay drainage systems, fishing abounds from early spring to late fall with Dolly Varden, Kokanee and Rainbow Trout.(copied from the travel bc website) We camped at one of the campsites We were treated to a lovely, misty sunset after dinner. This was during our trip to the Pincher Creek Model T Ford meet. We left our car and trailer with Harry and Rosalie, and continued on to Saskatchewan.

The RCMP musical ride: the charge; at Fort McLeod. This was one of the stops on the Model T National tour this summer.

The photos of Vern's Stanley Steamer are from the Island Challenge tour earlier this month.
In attempting to make my photo album for the June gardening page for my old website, I found that my new Photoshop has changed the ability to make web photo galleries. They all use Flash and javascript that I cannot edit in notepad as I have been doing with my old PS CS. So I reloaded my old PS CS. I had also lost the use of Optik Verve's Virtual Photographer. This marvelous plugin does not work on the PS CS 5 with 64 bit Windows 7. It DOES work on my old PS CS. I am happy to have it back. I hope they make a version of their Virtual Studio that works on the 64 bit. Its a wonderful stand alone photo editor.
More computer stuff -- I have managed to get my headphones and mic sorted out, at last. I am so dismal at hardware stuff. Trevor is going to bring a longer cord and attach my new hd screen. I will want to use it for movies and watching tv on line. ... should I ever get the time.
We had dinner with Andy and Tara on Sunday.. was delicious -- while visiting them Andy showed us his Ipad and some of how it works. Yesterday I checked out the cost of an Ipad2 at London Drugs. It is probably going to be over $1000 by the time I get the most capacity, camera hook up and other things I might want to add to the basic. Our microwave blew up with smoke coming out of bottom the other day, so we were down to London Drugs to get a new one. The ipad2 will be good to have when we travel.

The hanging tree is from our Pincher Creek Model T tour, this summer. This is the sepia version from Virtual Photographer in my old PS CS. All of today's photos have been tweaked with setting from this excellent plug in.
We have had about an inch of rain over the last week. We had high winds and about 2100 people were out of power in town. Ours went out over night the first time. The garden is looking better for the rain. We have been eating figs. The grapes should soon be sweet and good. The black berries are abundant this year. I only picked a couple of cups full, as I still have blackberries left from previous years, and I am not making a rumpot this year. The few tomatoes we had were delicious. I really must get some growing next year. The basil was not a success, but the parsley was good and is still going.

Yesterday I melted the hummingbird feeder with feeder mix that was too hot. So, need new ones. In winter I like to have two... one to thaw out and the other out hanging up to feed them.
I have finally got the light garden trays and plants cleaned up. This morning I water and fed them all. The African violets are all in bloom. Two of the orchids are just finishing a long period of bloom with two more just in bud.

Now, if I can get some time out in the garden, I will feel like I am more caught up with everything.

September-- it has been a glorious month

2011-09-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

Bridal Veil Falls. This was our lunch stop on the Can Am Tour this year. It is a 15 minute walk to the falls from the parking lot. It is well worth the up hill climb for all of the 15 minutes. It took me half an hour, as I had to stop for photos at every stump and clump of moss. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the climb Pat was having his wedding ring cut off his finger. He had a bee sting when we left the coffee stop at the Military Museum. The bee was on the steering wheel, when he grab it to start on ward on the tour. On his wedding ring finger, of course. Neither one of us thought to take off the ring. By the time we got to the lunch stop his finger was swollen to twice its normal size. This ring has a history of some redesigns over the years, not to mention the pins in the finger, itself. A very stoic man, my Patrick. We will have the ring redesigned again, however he wants it. I think he could have a diamond added for he is truly a precious gem.

In this photo I am shooting through the windshield of the the 1912 Ford Torpedo. The title is The Navigator has lost it! I love the total chaos of the shot. Or is it double exposure? :-}

The dahlia photos are from our coffee stop of the same day of the Can Am tour. We stopped at a bee farm. The talk about the bees was very informative. There is a wall where we could view the hive live. The dahlia photos are from the parking area, where the dahlias were featured on a raised hill, with a garden bench overlooking the surrounding area. The flowers were spectacular.

Dahlias are a flower I think about for the cutting garden. This cutting garden, in my dreams, is where the non-existent vegetable garden is now. I am still deciding whether to make a cutting garden or a vegetable garden. At the moment the veggies are winning.

We had 1/2 inch of rain last nite. The grass area is looking green already. It was cloudy, but warm today. A very nice day. The afternoon would have been perfect to be out gardening, but I spent the time cleaning up my light garden. This clean up was long over due. I really need to re-pot and add soil to the plants soon. The African violets look superb... they are all in bloom, now.

I brought in 2 plums today and they are the last of the plum crop. The fig tree has a few more figs that need a few more days of ripening. The grapes are full of fruit. The apples are rather small, this year. All of the garden needs weeding. . . but it is not too bad.

I spent the morning making a beef stew, and the afternoon cleaning up the light garden. Yesterday, I made the minestrone soup, which we had for lunch today, and it was given the OK for dinner guests. It really is quite yummy,. The freezer is full. Next project is baked beans.
Minestrone Soup

1 1/2 lb. shin beef, with bone
1 cup dried navy beans, soaked over night
5 qt. water
2 tbsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 cups chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups diced carrots
1 1/2 cups diced celery
2 cups finely shredded cabbage
1 Tabsp. parsley flakes
1 medium potato

1/2 lb ground beef
1 1/2 cups sliced zucchini
1 1/2 cups broken spaghetti
1 cup frozen cut green beans

I cannot believe this receipe has no tomatoes.
I added: a can of tomatoe soup
and 4 chopped tomatoes as well as
Oregano and fresh basil all at the end of the cooking.

Grated Parmesan cheese
Basil

Put shin beef, beans, water, salt and pepper in large kettle.
Cover and simmer 3 hours. Remove meat from bones, add to soup.
Add onion, garlic, carrots, celery, cabbage, potato and parsley.
Brown ground beef and add to soup. Cover and simmer until
vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.
Add zucchini, green beans and spaghetti. Simmer until spaghetti
is cooked, about 10 to 15 minutes. Top with cheese and basil.
Makes about 7 quarts. May be canned or frozen.

I managed to get the waterfall running again, today. I like how the pond looks covered in duckweed.

Megashot.net is looking very good recently. Come see us there.

September - a very busy month in the garden and otherwise

2011-09-20T20:22:00.001-07:00

The Autumn crocus around the garden are looking very good. The top photo is from a week ago. The clump of blooms is 3 times the size now. I like these easy care plants that give a good show when there is little else blooming in my garden. The next photo is the jackimani clematis. This one is beside the garage at the back. The last photo is an attempt to show the magic of my little solar lights. This one is on the deck. I need to learn how to do good night shots, without noise. I will probably have to use my dslr to do a decent job of it.
Monday, we got home from our 4 day trip to the CanAm, which is a Car event for the model Ts. photos later, perhaps. I spent the day unpacking and recuperating from all the excitement.

We have had very good weather the last 2 days. The only thing I did out in the garden was to refill the humming bird feeder, pick 2 plums, and 2 figs. This is the 6th fig. The plums are finished. The ones I cannot reach are dropping to the ground, some into the pond. The grapes are very full of clusters and should be good this year. There are lots of apples, but they are not very big. They will probably be deer fodder in the winter time.

I spent today making soup. I made about 3 quarts of the pork and pea soup. I did not have ham, but had a big piece of roast pork. I added cloves and cinnamon to the mix and it tastes really good.

I have another 3 quarts of mulligatawny soup. It is quite good too.

Slow Cooker Mulligatawny Soup

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium carrot, diced
1 medium celery rib, diced
1 small red bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tsp. mild or medium curry powder
1 large, green apple, diced (skin on)
2 tsp. finely grated lime zest
2 tbsp. fresh juice, freshly squeezed
1 tbsp. honey
1 bay leaf
4 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 1/2 cup of water
1 cup cooked white or brown rice
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
1 (14 oz - 400 ml) can coconut milk
Salt to taste

combine the first 14 ingredients in your slow cooker.
Cover and cook on the low setting 4 hours. Stir in the rice, cilantro or parsley
and coconut milk. Cover and cook 10 minutes more. Season the soup with salt and
serve. Makes 8 servings.

Megashot is on the new servers and is very fast now! I hope to get some time there to play this week.

More on the black hornets

2011-09-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

I want to confirm the comments information from Ken that these black bees are actually hornets with a vicious bite, if threatened. So far they have not bothered me, thank heavens. These photos were taken about a week ago, showing the wasp and hornet drinking water in the pond and using the duck weed as a convenient landing spot. Since this hive is quite low to the ground, I think, it might be a harsh winter. Our weather has cooled quickly, so I expect these nasties to soon be gone.
I walked back from the mall today after my lab blood tests. Found another Colleen McCollough book and another Phillippa Gregory one. This should keep me going for awhile.
We have had a couple of little earthquakes recently. I did not notice either of them, but lots of people did. I think we were driving in the van at the time of the first one. Pat remarked about the road seeming to be wavy from all the truck traffic.

Some September Harvest

2011-09-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

We have been eating yellow Plums for desert for the last 3 weeks. They are especially good with mango swirl frozen yogurt and a touch of marsala. I cannot reach very many more of them with the plum plucker. This plum plucker is a small plastic container duct taped to an old broom handle. The plums are nearly finished their season. The figs, on the other hand, are very slowly ripening. As usual the 'second crop' of small figs is abundant, while the larger older ones nuimber about 12. The last week of hot weather should have hurried them along a bit.
The weather was very hot and then just today the mercury plummeted very quickly. I even turned up the thermostat as I was chilled.
We have been away to the Island Challenge car event and just got back on Monday. pictures to follow, perhaps. Aside from cleaning up about 5 more feet of the path in the back garden, pruning and dead heading perennials and shrubs, and watering, I have not got very much gardening done.

When we were on our 10 day trip to Barkerville, there were many wild flowers that needed to be photographed. It was a wonderfully adventurous trip. More photos later, perhaps.

I have been doing a bit of photo sorting for my web page, and updating the travel lists. As usual, I wish I had at least two lives to do all the things I want to get done. I see I can watch TV news and some programs on my computer. I know I can watch movies in parts from on you tube. Ken Anderson has given me some information on using Netfix to watch movies and tv. I don't think I will get much time to do all of this, though. I will want Trevor to hook up my hd screen and the headphones so I can watch and listen to this stuff late at nite, when everyone else in the house is sleeping.

Black Bees

2011-09-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Photos of close ups of the honey bee feeding on the pollen of a michaelmas daisy. There appears to be a varroa mite attached to the back of the bee on the top photo. These tiny mites appear to be crab-like and suck the juices out of the bee and infect them with a virus that kills the bee. Beekeepers can have infestations of these mites in the hives, and the mite is decimating the honey bee population. Some bee keepers have contracts to put their bees into fields to pollinate the crops. So the infestation of mites is causing millions of dollars in crop production losses. In the UK they are seeking to introduce the black bee as a substitute for the honey bee. There are also chemicals that can be used to attract the mites to a surface where the chemical is applied, and thus the mites starve when they are not on a bee. This chemical is like the pheromones emitted by the bees and so the mites are attracted to the trap.
I have a hive of black bees in a cedar tree in my back garden. Some of the research I did with google searches says these black bees can be aggressive. The ones in my hive are not at all aggressive. The hive is about 10 - 15 feet off the ground. I was a bit antsy about getting close to them, and I could not seem to get a good close up with my little Canon S3 IS with its 12X zoom. I do not seem to have a long enough lens for my Rebel.

black honey bee - Apis mellifera

Apparently these black bees have a thicker skin and the mites cannot easily penetrate it. This hive is egg shaped and is about 12 to 18 inches long with the hole at the bottom. I have been doing gardening near them all summer and they never bother me.

This is a closely cropped shot of a bee at the germander. This patch of plant has been covered in honey bees when ever I am out there. I have not seen black bees on it though. The germander is not far from the black bees hive. Nor did I see a black bee on the michaelmas daisies. I could not find information on what these bees prefer to pollinate.

Also, in searching for black bee images, I came across carpenter bees. They are not social bees though, and this hive would not be carpenter bees. Apparently carpenter bees are about the size of a bumble bee, but have no hairs on the abdomen and are black to shiny dark blue. They are not aggressive either. The male cannot sting, and the female only stings if it is threatened. She makes burrows in wood, collects pollen and nectar, deposits some of this food in a hole, lays an egg on the cell and seals it over. So, this bee is also a good pollinator. Some people with orchards set out pieces of soft wood for this bee to use as a home to encourage it to colonize the wood and pollinate the crops.

The wasps are a far bigger nuisances than any of the bees. I see them stripping wood off the deck and using it to build their cells for laying eggs. I watched them rolling the wood into a small ball to carry away. They can get to be quite a large hive. A couple of years ago Pat and I removed one of these nests from in the debris under the camillia tree next to Mrs. Pees sidewalk. Pat is not afraid of bee bites, and did not get bitten, even once, while digging out the nest. We hauled it off to the compost bin, and I thoroughly watered down the area. There were wasps coming back for days afterwards, but I guess the queen was gone, and they have not rebuilt there. A couple of weeks ago, while liberating some clay from under the deck, I inadvertently must have struck a wasp nest. I got two stings and they took at least 2 weeks to heal. Today I watered under the deck, but could see no sign of the wasps around the area. But I will still wait for winter before I clean up under the deck, now!

Today, I spent more time watering the corners that I may have missed with the sprinklers, yesterday. I did some weeding. I see I have some sort of canker on the plum tree at the front. I cut off all of the branches with this stuff on it, that I could find. The tree looks healthy with lots of branches and good green leaves. Next spring, I should prune it properly and feed it with the fruit tree spikes. I will need to research this growth on the tree to see what it is.

September Gardening

2011-09-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

I have finally found some time to get out in my garden. These are photos of arum seeds, Irish heather and the grapes. We are eating yellow plums, little tomatoes that grow on the deck, and we have the first fig in the house ready for eating. I picked the red currants, put them through the juicer, and got about half cup of juice. In cleaning up the bowls and juicer I added about another cup of water. I added a cup of sugar and boiled this mix for about 3 minutes. I now have two small jars of yummy red currant jelly. This is labor intensive, but there is a lot of satisfaction in using your own produce.

I mowed the grass paths and the back. I clipped back the fig off the paths. That thing grows madly. It seems I should be watering my deck stuff everyday. Oh well, its not doing too badly with its weekly watering. The path I renovated in the back, by adding stepping stones is looking good and is much better for walking on. The stones were too uneven to use in this spot. The pond is doing okay. I like the covering of duck weed. Its a nice refreshing green. The whole garden needs watering and more weeding, of course. The weather predictions are for another week of good weather, but cooler at nite. The days are getting shorter quickly.

This is a photo from our 10 day trip to Barkerville, the gold rush town. I have changed this to a sepia to make it look like the 1860s. The trip was quite an adventure. We drove up to Port Hardy and caught the ferry to Bella Coola. We had to spend the night on the parking lot at Bear Cove terminal, as there were high seas and we could not leave on schedule. We got on the next day at 5:00 pm. Since we were behind schedule we did not get to spend any time ashore at the communities where the ferry stops. We spent the next night in the camper van, on the ferry, though we were not suppose to be down there. The weather was overcast and rainy so all the beautiful scenery was a wash out. After getting off the fairy we found a wonderful campsite at the Gnome's Home just out of Bella Coola. The next day we drove 'over the hill' which is a narrow, winding gravel road over the mountains. I was scared skinny. The rest of the trip up to Barkerville was good, with good food, good campsites, fine scenery. Barkerville was interesting, and we spent to half days there. On the way home we took the Duffy Lake Road back over the mountains. Another winding road over the mountains. This one was paved with good shoulders and some turn outs. But it had 11% downgrades with 20 km hairpin turns. Our brakes were smokin'. The scenery was spectacular! We got back on Sunday the 28th. I have been catching up on home and garden, and my rest.

I have been spending a bit of time on Megashot. Its always fun. I never seem to have enough time to do all the things I want to do!

August gardening on the West Coast

2011-08-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

This is a Japanese anemone. I have a few of these graceful plants in different areas of the garden. This particular one is just behind the the boxwood at the front and the burning bush shrub at the side of Mrs. Pee's sidewalk. Behind it is the Jackimani royal purple clematis. They are both in bloom now.

There is also fireweed in bloom with the clematis and anemone. At their feet and behind the clematis is bishops weed, that is in front of the chimney. There are also some orange daylilies in this combination. I might want to move the day lilies, some day. I think the bright orange clashes with the other colors.

This is the Irish heather in bloom in the front garden, next to the grass path. Behind this heather you see Ladies Mantle. This plant seems to go with anything, and grow anywhere. It is easy to remove, and not too invasive. All the heathers in my garden are in bloom.

I have had this photo on my desktop all summer. I finally took the time to look it up and found it is called Marsilea Mutica. I had thought it was a clover, of course. It is actually a fern. It can grow in my pond. The planting depth should be 6 to 18 inches, full sun to shade, recommended pot size 8 x 5. It is US hardiness zone 6 - 11, so we should be okay. I think we are in US hardiness zone 8.
I am getting a few new plants on my wish list. This one, a maltese cross (lychnis). I get along fairly well with the lychnis plants. :) The photo of the water plant was taken out at Glendale Gardens. It has been ages since I was out there!
A couple of nights ago, I was looking at my videos. I noticed the one of my waterfall that I had not loaded to u tube. So, now it is on you tube and I have been able to add it to the bottom of my blog, if you care to scroll down. My new camera is suppose to do even better videos, in hd. Have not had time to try it yet. The reason I was looking at my videos is because I want to be able to use my new hd screen for movies and videos. I want to learn how to find movies and how to watch TV on this screen. According to Trevor, my techie, I can use both of my screens. I like this one for my photos, and everything. The new one is a wide screen and I am having a hard time getting used to its resolution for surfing web pages and for viewing photos. So, in this regard, I now have a new little desk with the new screen on it behind me. I can swing around in my chair and take my wireless mouse and keyboard to the other screen. I hope they are now far enough apart so that they do not interfere with each other. I will get Trevor to come and hook them up, properly, soon. I am hopeless at hardware connections.
Yesterday I walked from my doctor's office on Blanshard to Chinatown, probably about a mile. Then in the afternoon, I managed to get the seven, new, round stepping stones laid into the path in the back garden. It looks pretty good. I shall add some pea gravel between the stepping stones, and add Corsican mint to grow. I only want the Corsican mint along the stepping stones. It looks really good on the other end of this path. I must keep the blue eyed grass under control. It seeds around far too much. While getting some clay soil from under the deck, I managed to hit a wasps' nest and got two bites. Dammit. The bites are still itchy and bit swollen. Thank heavens I am not one of the people who is terribly allergic to bee stings!
Today, my walk was to the 7 - 11 to get my winning lottery ticket, of course. They are doing some work on Roy Road, so I did not come home via Roy Rd. It was another lovely day, today. I have watered around the back, in the woodland, and along the driveway. The front garden will have to wait for another day.
We are eating the few little tomatoes form the plant on the deck. I use parsley also. The plums are ripening. The figs are still green, but there are some big ones. The grape is loaded this year. The apples should be good too. The red currant needs to be picked and made into currant jelly. It is so good, when take the time to make it!
Pat finished putting my new little desk together last night and I spent this morning moving things around. By this evening, I feel quite comfortable in my new computer space. I am working on tweaking more photos for the 170 photo album for June for my old web page. The Gardening Page has a few more albums to go, yet!

On the deck

2011-08-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

The lobelia is doing fine in the shade on the deck,. The hollyhock is a shocking red color and goes very nicely with the dark royal blue delphinium. These two plants are on my deck this year in seperate pots, but both tall. Both in bloom at the same time.
I managed to get quite a few things done today, including watering and feeding the indoor and deck plants.
Last night, in anticipation of having my HD screen connected and sitting on my new desk, I watched a movie... the day after tomorrow. Once I get this screen working I shall attempt to figure out how to watch tv and movies on it.l
I now have a couple of chicken soup jars and potatoe soup jars frozen for future use. We are planning our next short trip to Barkerville. We can catch the ferry from Port Hardy to Bella Coola. With stops along the way, I believe we spend 2 days on the ferry. . . a mini cruise! This is going to be fun.
I must know how to shoot movies in Barkerville. I think they have people playing the part of those good old gold days.

This is a photo from our last trip to Pincher Creek and the surrounding area. I love this shot. Thinking about printing it, nahhh to much road in it. I am so enjoying the RAW conversion stuff. I spent a bit of time looking at some of the new stuff on my computer. This computer, as the one before, and the one before that, is really rather marvelous. I am enjoying windows 7, my new camera, and all.
I managed to set one of the round stones into the path today. Did some weeding and watering. Watered and fed the deck and house plants.. I am using parsley from on the deck and the little cherry tomatoes, too.

Madly gardening in August

2011-08-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

I took these photos the other day, in the bright sunshine. I really should know better. They were fairly easy to correct in the RAW converter in Adobe Photoshop. The David Austin Rose at the top is a wonderful color and very fragrant. The orange double day lily is something I have had for years. This particular one is on Parmar's side of the house... not that they would appreciate it. It grows like crazy so I have been able to divide it and move pieces of it to different areas of the garden. The oriental lily is something new. I have finally got lilies to grow! It takes getting them up out my clay soil. So this one is in the little rockery in the front garden. I also have an orange one (not my favourite color) that was a gift from the Grants one year when they stayed at our place.

On Thursday, I was out for two hours in the morning and for 3 in the afternoon. I cleaned up around the beds near the holly tree. This involved picking prickly holly leaves out the flowers and grass. Also weeded, of course and dead headed the campanulas. The area is looking so much better, now, with all the dried perennial stuff cleaned out, and the jasmine shrubs pruned and cleaned up. I hope its not too late to be pruning stuff. In the afternoon, I dug out the front part of the woodland garden next to the water tub. I took out the lemon balm, and the big leafted perennial. (Can't remember its name). Then I dug a hole for the butterfly bush. It is in front of a small cedar and beside the water tub. I left 2 of the big leafted perennial plants at the back by the cedar. They will spread again, no doubt. The tritoma is behind this five square foot area also. Actually the area is probably more than 5 feet deep. I watered the new hole generously and then brought the butterfly bush and transplanted it. Then covered the area with more of the left over 'mulch' from the Virginia creeper bed renovations. Watered this all in very generously again. The butterfly bush is in bloom and is a lovely dark red/purple much like the color of the David Austin Rose above that I love. There is nothing in front of the butterfly bush yet. I might like to have something that stays green in winter. I will wait on this, to see if I have the lemon balm, blue bells and other 'weeds' taken out of there. Mulching is a good deterrent for the blue bells, and most other things. But the mulch has to be pretty thick. I may need cedar bark in the Fall. Some tulips or daffodils would be nice to have in the front there. Nothing that will spread into the trilliums, though. Next, in this woodland area, I need to remove the big herb thing that grows behind the irises. I want to add some lychnis chalcedonia, or maltese cross to this spot. This plant is a vivid red and blooms in July. It needs good drainage. The soil in this area is surprisingly good. I must have added tons of peat moss when I first made these beds 20 years ago.

I spent Friday morning getting photos and planning a few things. I thought I needed more flat stones for the path in the back garden. Since Pat wanted to go to Slegg lumber to get some stuff, I begged his help to get some round stepping stones. This is a really good idea, as it is very opportune to get the round stepping stones, and the bottom part of this path is made with round stepping stones. The bottom part of the path has Sicilian mint filling in around the stones. It looks really great, and the fragrance is wonderful. Now that I have the 7 new stones, I will renovate the top part of this path adding the round stepping stones, and putting down news paper to block weeds from growing. I will need to find some clay to cover the newspaper. I guess I could liberate this from under the deck. This will free up some flat rocks for use elsewhere, should i need them. I can always use these rocks, it seems. After Slegg Lumber, we went to Canadian Tire and bought my new desk, in a box. It needs to be put together. Today, we started it, and it is looking pretty good for a very inexpensive 41 inch desk. It has 3 drawers and a keyboard shelf. The front has 2 doors that close over the drawers and all. Really quite nice. I am going to use this to make an "L" shape out of my computer area. I will keep my new monitor and my old printer on it. I will be able to use this new wide screen with the HD stuff for watching movies. I may even learn how to watch TV on it, if I can find the time for this. I have a few movies that I have saved from my Limewire days, and I find I can also watch movies in parts on you tube. With this hd card and new screen set to its proper resolution I should have another time consuming pass time. Man! nothin' like being retired!

Since Saturdays are my watering days, I spent 3 hours this evening moving the little sprinkler around to get all the areas in the front watered. Between moving the sprinkler around I did more dead heading and weeding. In the morning, I ran the big sprinkler at the back on the vegetable garden and the apple tree area. I will need to set up the sprinkler that shoots in a long narrow line to do the woodland area around the old garage, and the strip along the driveway. It takes time to do this, but the plants seem to appreciate the effort. I can see where mulching is going to be just what is needed in places to keep the weeds down and conserve moisture in the summer. I like the self seeding plants in the woodland area, though, so I may leave the back corner without mulch, but clean up the thistles and lemon balm and other weeds. So, I have a few things to do out there! All this is good exercise and I am on track for my weight loss as per my doctors orders. .. 3 lbs in a month... seemed easy ... but just not that easy after all. The exercises in the morning and all the gardening is working, along with less starchy stuff, and no more jelly beans or chips. I certainly feel a lot better, already. If I can keep this up, I should be down the 3 lbs., plus and well on my way to the 15 lbs. loss. I want to take off even more than that, too. This has to happen over time and with sticking to the diet and exercises. Think new wardrobe, hair and everything! :-)

This is a Lychnis Chaledocia, or Maltese Cross. My Mom used to grow a great big patch of these. Very nice flowers. I have a plant in the front garden that is slowly spreading. With the natural leaf fall I think I need to add more nitrogen to this area that is constantly covered in dried leaves or the freshly fallen ones in the Autumn. Next year I should look into getting a bag of this 30 - 30 - 30 fertilizer, perhaps. The vegetable garden could sure use it too. John and Isabel grew the most fantastic vegetable gardens where ever they lived. They used lots of good natural fertilizers as well the commercial kind. Of course, there is no substitute for regular attention to watering and weeding too.

While trying to get my photos together for my "June" album on the gardening page of my old web page, this Maltese Cross was one of the photos I chose to use. I could not, for the life of me, remember the name of the plant. I tried to google it as red flowers, but did not find it. Finally, I remembered the Maltese Cross common name. While trying to look up the name, I would often see Daves Garden mentioned under the names of the google images I was seeing. I thought this Dave must be one hell of a gardener to have all those photos showing on google searches! Well, of course it is a gardeners website, with forums and people can load their flower photos to the forums or their 'journal'. So, I joined, to brag my Maltese Cross name search. There are all kinds of forums. But most of them are for subscribers only. Ok,... this might be good when I have more time, if ever... at the moment, I can use google to find things like this, instead of paying the $20.00 to ask a question in the forums once every 5 years. But, it does look like an interesting place and fun to participate with other gardeners. It is out of California, of course. I do hope to get back to it, sometime. Gardening, travel, photography, computer stuff, reading and just generally living seem to more than filling my days.

August in the garden

2011-08-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

While working on the June album for my web page last nite. This Delephinium photo is one I chose to use. I really like this photo of this delphinium. It is rather a pale blue but is near the lovely dark purple water iris and blooms at the same time. I really like the combination.

This is one of this years snapdragons that are on the back garden next to the round stepping stones. The snaps at the front did not come up this year. Considering they are suppose to be annuals, I feel I did fairly well to get about 3 years bloom out of them. I hope the mixed ones I have on the back garden do as well. Although, they are in a spot that gets quite soggy in winter.

This morning I spent about 2 hours cleaning up in the vegetable garden and preparing the soil to put in the 6 swiss chard that I bought yesterday and carried home from the mall. They look like good plants. I must keep them well watered. And so, to that end, I have the sprinkler running now, on the back. The vegetable garden is not too good. It has a couple of tomatoes, a cucumber and 3 potatoe plants that grew from last year's none production. I added a bag of compost to them all after weeding and transplanting the swiss chard.
In the afternoon I was out again for another couple of hours. I am getting the back woodland cleaned up. It is looking pretty good. I weeded from the irises to the trilliums which are just across from the compost bin... about 12 feet of weeding. This area has polyanthus in the front, the irises, and a weedy tall herb with cedars and the saskatoon berry trees at the back.. I think I will get rid of this herb and plant sedum, perhaps, or delphiniums and holly hocks. For the moment I have nothing in the strip between the irises and the cedars at the back. The irises end at the water tub, and have the saskatoon trees behind the tub to the red hot poker. On the other side of the tub there is this big leafted shade plant with racemes of blue flowers. Nice leaves and the bees like the flowers. But it has spread all over this five foot square area in front of the red hot poker. There was also some lemon balm in there. I need to dig all of these roots out as I want to put the butterfly bush in there next to the tub garden. Across the sidewalk from the irises is the lovely lace cap hydrangea that is putting on a great show this year. The butterfly bush is also coming into bloom, so these two shrubs will be in the same area and almost across from each other and booming at the same time. The compost bin is hidden by tall ferns and a lily of the valley shrub. The woodland is going to be very nice. I put down 4 bags of the mulch left over from when I cleaned up the Virginia creeper and St.John's worte. I hope the Saskatoon trees produce a little better next year. I must get them some fruit tree spikes next spring. The woodland path is looking good. The twiggy stuff from the Virginia creeper worked well for the path. The two thirds of the woodland that I still have to do is very wild and over grown. There is the tall Japanese cedar and a small grove of sumack, with a nice Japanese anomone, honesty, columbines, malva and other self seeding plants, as well as thistles, another big her with fern like leaves, and a couple of little shrubs, a bamboo that I should dig up and put into a container before it runs everywhere. Across the path from the big Japanese cedar is a rhodo and a pin oak, monkshood and more self seeding plants. It will take me a few more days to get this cleaned up. I must be careful; not to dig up or mess up the fawn lilies, as they are spreading very nicely. They are dormant now, so I should only dig in their area to remove roots of weeds. I have avoided digging where the trilliums are dormant today. The trilliums have been multiplying a bit too. I will have to keep after the blue bells in the spring, as they are very aggressive and take over the area. Once they die down, the honesty and other things come up though. Hopefully I can get the area under control. It looks so good when cleaned up.

August ruminations

2011-08-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

The Yucca is looking pretty good this year. You can see the second stalk of blossoms growing. The plant has an offshoot that has progressed to the blooming stage. I cleaned up this plant and the surrounding area, earlier this year. The virginia creeper has grown back vigourously. The St. John's worte is taking a little longer to recover. The sedum in the foreground will soon be opening its blooms too. I must spread a few more of these well behaved plants around the garden.
Today was a lovely day outside, again. But, I spent most of the day on my computer while making chicken soup. I have 2 jars of the soup frozen, for a colder day. We tested it with our dinner and it is as good as always. While on my computer I got a bit of Megashot stuff done. We really have some good photographers there. The site was pretty fast today compared to what it has been in the last while. They are working on Version 2 which should be ready soon, in its new data center and servers. Its a marvelous site and is going to be even better and faster in version 2. Its no wonder Megashot and chicken soup are mentioned in the same paragraph! :-}
I spent a bit of time reading about HDR, the newest thing in photo processing. The dark room has come a long, long way since the old wet dark room days. Its quite fun. Somewhere in my readings, it said that you could drag and drop any photo onto the icon for your photoshop program, and sure it works wonderfully well. I dragged and dropped this RAW file on to the PS icon and it, of course, went directly to the PS RAW converter. I am getting better at using that converter, slowly. I didn't find much I wanted to change on this yucca photo.

August in the garden - dead heading perennials

2011-08-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

this is an older photo of my very colorful water iris. I missed the blooms this year, as we were away at the time.
I have been working on the 'June' album for the gardening page on my old web site. I have gone through my photos for June, over they years and have come up with 170 of them that I want to add to the album. Its going to have 17 pages with 10 photos per page. I have 2 pages of photos downsized and ready for the creation of the album on photoshop. Its a long process, after the creation of the album, too, as I go through the html and add comments on each page and sometimes on the photos; and menus for each page to link back to the rest of my web page. I got quite a bit done last year, despite being away for 3 months. I should be able to get this album finished, at least.
I did a couple of hours out in the garden dead heading perennials and shrubs. The fire thorn is under control again. That's always a thorny issue. It will have lots of berries on it again, for the robins, in winter. The pinks, the tall campanulas at the back, are clipped. The Michaelmas daisies are going to be the next show. I clipped the old blooms off the lilac, and sheared the cedars along the vegetable garden. The malvas are finished and cut back. Despite the watering yesterday and day before, the garden, is not that terrific. I need more plants to fill in for when the earlier ones are finished, perhaps. The little tomatoes on the deck are ripening. The perennial plants are mostly finished, except for the delphinium, the hollyhock and the scaboisia. The delphinium pot with cosmos looks good.
I see we have a bee hive up in our tree. They seem to be black bees. The little honey bees are pretty thick on the blooming germander, too. So, it looks like I will have my own bee hive for the pollination of my fruit trees, or vegetables, if I ever get them growing. This is good too.

There is rioting in London. This is madness, like the riots in Vancouver after the Stanly cup final hockey game. I makes no sense to me at all.

August in the garden

2011-08-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

The delphinium on the deck is a wonderful color. I am waiting for a sunset to shoot with this one in front of it. The lace cap hydrangea is covered with blooms this year. It is a lovely color too. This hydrangea has wonderful fuzzy leaves. There are a few other plants in bloom, but these two are the best. The day lilies are nice, and the campanulas are looking good. The tomatoe plant on the deck has tiny tomatoes that are ripening. We will be able to be eating them in a day or two. I have been using parsley, fennel, oregano, chives from the garden. I watered by hand back and front today. Yesterday, I was out weeding and pruning back the fig tree and other stuff along the old sidewalk and the stepping stones at the back. The humming birds have been around and a few butterflies. The ravens visit the deck railing looking for more party snacks.

While viewing some of my old photos I found this one and thought to play with it a bit in photoshop to give it a bit more pizzazz. It is the parliament buildings in Budapest, Hungary. I will probably load it to Megashot some day.
I have managed to get our recent trip added to my web page with yet another under construction page. I must get to work at creating albums and get the gardening page finished. I have the June album to do next. It is going to be a large album. I think May is the best month, followed closely by June, in my garden.
http://www.mmmee.com/11Sask

2011-08-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

I was looking back at a few RAW photos from July. The little pink flower is in a planter on the deck. it is a penstemon. I cropped it tightly and made it square format. The next photo is a play on texture of the size of the leaves of the fig, the fennel and the strawberry tree foliage. The last photo is the stepping stones in the bottom back garden. There is Corsican mint filling in between the stones. It has a wonderful minty aroma when stepped upon. The blue flowers are annuals. The snap dragons are along the edge of this path as you go towards the back. I am working on a perennial planting for this area of the garden.

The stock markets have been falling like rocks, globally, in reaction to our governments overspending.

Every man, woman and child in Canada currently owes $16,953.41 for their share of Canada's public debt. The USA is at apx $46K per person. I wonder if companies like Bombardier Aerospace or other Bombardier company employees would be willing to kick in extra monies for the extensive loans the company has received from the Canadian Government... which, no doubt, went right into their bank accounts. We could review Malroney's bank accounts and see if he has a few million lying around for his grasping, piggy raping of the Canadian economy while in office. Will the real Conrad Black please stand up? And those are simply the names that made it into the public domain. I hate to think of all the names that are not public, but are still feeding at the public trough.

August... so soon!

2011-08-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

I was playing with my files from our last trip. I printed this one ... right out of the camera, no photoshop. I think it turned out really good. It is downsized here. I think I will frame it and start a small gallery along by the wall next to the stairwell.

The hoodoos from near Drumheller,Alberta, in color and black and white. I have lots of RAW photos of the hoo doos to play with.

The charge of the RCMP musical ride at Fort McLeod on Canada Day... a month ago! oh my, where has the time gone.
The gardens and lawns in the city are starting to go brown. Tomorrow is my official watering day, so I should get out and do some of that. It has been cloudy the last few days, and I was hoping we would get rain but no such luck.
I have 4 more solar garden lights and a pair of garden clogs. The light I bought for a test, works really well. I am going to keep one of the new ones on the window and see if it works inside. I have a stalker. There is someone leaving little drink bottles, banana skins and other evidences of their presence in the inner garden at the front. The garden stalker has not been around for a few days, though. I should set a trap for this intruder. Any ideas? a pit bull guard dog? a bit extreme maybe. One of those scare away water pulse things might be just the thing! Should keep the bunnies out too. I understand these things work on motion detection. Maybe I could set it so it only monitors the inner garden, so that guests don't get soaked coming in the front door.

Deck planters in July

2011-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

This pink poppy, somniferum papvar, has volunteered to grow in one of the deck planters. It is an annual and I shall save the seed and see if I can get it to grow next year, in what is going to be my cutting garden.

This is the only butterfly I have seen at the butterfly/hummingbird planters. This is a very close crop of a RAW photo. I am really liking this RAW stuff. So much more data in the files, and easy to convert to tiff or jpeg to save.

The delphinium is looking really good, with the cosmos at its feet. This is a combination I will want in the 'cutting garden'. As well as hollyhocks, monarda, scaboisia,

I had left some nuts that were well past their best before date, out on the deck railing. As I put a few out they would disappear without me seeing where they had gone. Finally, I saw a pair of ravens helping themselves to the party snacks. I did not get a good shot of them, but I am very happy with how the black feathers turned out in this RAW photo. Great color and detail.

I have been reading Phillipa Gregory, Cornwell, and have picked up a couple of novels about Troy. This, and the house cleaning have kept me busy recently. I have been spending a bit of time on Megashot, and doing a bit of gardening with cooking, of course, thrown in. It is all a fine mix. Life is good on the West Coast.

I seem to have trashed my sound from the speakers somehow. I have to get Trevor to come see if the speakers are broken, or if it is something else I have done. The speakers should still be under warranty and so should his time to replace them, if that is the problem.

More Internet Crime - Swatting

2011-07-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I saw a humming bird at the monarda flowers, on my deck. The main reason for all the flowers on my deck this year is because I read an article about creating a hummingbird/butterfly container of flowers. The project has gone very well and the flowers are looking pretty good. The small cherry tomatoe plant has bunches of little green tomatoes, also. The basil was not a big success. I probably got the wrong kind, as mine has tiny leaves. I don't think the ones I am growing would make more than a couple of tablespoons of pesto. The only butterfly I have seen on the deck plants, so far, is a white one. I did see a swallowtail in the back garden, where the fennel grows, and a mating pair of morning cloaks in the front garden, on the plum tree.
I spent the morning playing with my camera and reading in the manual. I discovered how to use the macro setting. I was using it with my 28 - 135 lens. I must try this with the 50mm and the extra macro lens extension. I like how the scaboisia turned out. When I downloaded the photos I could see the RAW beside the large jpegs. The RAW are so much better. It is very obvious when you see the thumbnails side by side.

In the afternoon, I was out in the garden for about 4 hours. I have clipped back most of the daisies, pulled weeds, and did more clipping back of plants that have finished blooming. I tried to set up the sprinkler for the early morning run, so I could just turn it on, but I could not get it position right, so I did most the the front garden watering by hand. There is still more weeding and watering to do, of course.

Today, I walked back from the mall, which is about a mile and a half. Was a pleasant walk. In looking at the plants for sale at the Country Grocer, I see that I need to go to a few garden centers for a good look around. I don't really have room for anything, though. I really should make my vegetable garden into a cutting garden, as my vegetables are just non doing well. Since I am going to be away for weeks at a time in the summer for the next few years, I don't think a vegetable garden will work for me. I am enjoying a boquet of ladies mantle, white roses, achillea, and a malva type flower in pink (it is reseeding all over the garden and really puts on a nice show). So, perhaps the cutting garden could have gladiola, and other tall flowers that bloom in the Fall, when I am most probably going to be at home.

The internet is becoming a rather perilous place, with no apparent control or attempts at controlling the nastiness. Here is an example of something called swatting. I don't see how the people who are doing these crimes can possibly think this is amusing. It is too bad that the Internet has to resemble the wild west when we are suppose to be intelligent, thinking human species.

Copyright Infringement

2011-07-25T20:19:00.002-07:00

My best shot of the St. Mary river, rapids and falls. We visited Bryan and Joan at Kimberley and spent the night in their driveway. Before we left in the morning we were treated to a five minute walk from their house and walk along the St. Mary river to the waterfall. What a marvelous location. This river and waterfall is just out their back door.

Pat's 1912 Torpedo Roadster Model T Ford in the town of Lundbreck. I have lots of good car pictures from this stop. We also stopped at the Lundbreck waterfall and I have a few of those photos for addition to the album for my web page, eventually.

It was a coolish day today and would have been perfect for gardening. I somehow got trapped on my computer and wasted the afternoon searching out places where my photos are being used by people without my consent. I have noted the ones I found today on my Facebook wall. For all the good it is going to do me. This should be a link to my Facebook wall showing 5 of the uses of my Peace Rose photo, and one of my Peloric foxglove photo. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=701271576&sk=wall When I complained to the abuse department about my Peloric Foxglove being used on photobucket, this is the reply I received from them:
Thank you for notifying Photobucket of a potential infringement of intellectual property
rights.  Photobucket respects the intellectual property of others, and expects its account
holders to do the same.
Unfortunately, the notice you supplied is incomplete. Please submit the following notice:

NOTICE OF ALLEGED COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
1. Identify the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed, or; if multiple
copyrighted works are covered by this Notice; provide a representative list of the
copyrighted works that you claim have been infringed. Direct links to the original images
or digital copies must be provided as proof of copyright:

2. Identify the material or link you claim is infringing (or is the subject of infringing
activity) and that access to which is to be disabled, including at a minimum, if
applicable, the URL of the link shown on the Photobucket service where such material may
be found:

3. Provide your mailing address, telephone number, and, if available, email address:

4. The following statement must be included in the body of the Notice:

        I hereby state that I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the
copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
(e.g., fair use)

5. I hereby state that the information in this Notice is accurate and, under penalty of
perjury that (CHOOSE ONE):

I am the copyright owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner or I am
authorized to act under an exclusive right of the copyright that is allegedly infringed.

I am not the copyright owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner or
otherwise authorized to act under an exclusive right of the copyright that is allegedly
infringed.

6. Provide full legal name and the electronic or physical signature of the owner, or of a
person authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of any exclusive
right under the copyright.
Please direct this form, with all items completed to Photobucket's Designated Copyright
Agent:

Heather Dana
Designated Copyright Agent
Photobucket Corp.
http://photobucket.com
PO Box #13003
Denver, CO  80201
abuse@photobucket.com
Fax: 303.395.1165

Thanks,

Photobucket

In looking around photobucket site I found that they actually encourage this action. They actually have a 'download' button on each photo uploaded to an account, and the 'share' of course. Looking through a couple of accounts I see what is probably many, many gifs or jpegs that are downloaded from whereever these people find them. Copyright issues are impossible to control in situations like this. Watermarks are no real deterrent, unless they totally cover the photo. The best defence I suppose is to load only to 'private' galleries and give friends the password. Otherwise, you will be seeing your photos all over the internet. It seems the world has lost its good morals. The news is full of more and more atrocities. The recent unfathomable attack on people in Norway by an insane gunman is an example. My heart goes out to the victims of the insanity.

When I see that and consider the weather conditions in other parts of the world, as well as the famine, fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, global economy collapse, etc., I consider that my copyright problems are really miniscule.

Trip to the Prairies

2011-07-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

this is a canola oil pump. :-))

We camped in the Kikomun Creek provincial, park on our way back home, and were right at the shore of Lake Koocanusa.

One of the jpeg snaps of the Hoo Doos in the Red River Valley just out of Drumheller, Alta. It hardly ever rains here, but on the last two trips through Drumheller we had rain. The clouds lend a nice backdrop to the Hoo Doos.

This is to show our campy wine glasses. They go perfectly with the decor. We eat pretty good in the camper van. We try to get an early entry to the campgrounds so as to be more sure of getting a spot. This gives us time to settle down from the driving and prepare a good meal. I usually finish the dishes and have time to check for sunsets or any photo opportunities before nightfall.

We have been home from our trip for a week. I have managed to get the laundry finished, mowed the lawn, and did a bit of garden weeding and pruning. Watered the house and deck plants last Saturday, so they will need food and water tomorrow. The garden needs more weeding and watering, but it is looking not too bad. I had to add water to the pond, of course. I had the waterfall pump unplugged, but the evaporation took the level down about a foot. While viewing the pond, I was surprised to see that I actually still have some big fish left in there. I have at least 3 of the big old ones, and more than a dozen little gold ones... two of which are white. Earlier this Spring, I bought 4 new ones, as I thought I had no fish left, that the predators had got them all. It seems they were just not ready to come to the top... too cold. We have had a very cool Spring and Summer, so far, and I am glad of it. East of the Rockies they are having a very bad heat wave.

I have been spending time reading as well. And I seem to need to catch up on my sleep. The Model T Fords meet was held at Pincher Creek. It was very windy and I got quite a lot of sun the first day out. We toured the area for a week. Later in the week it was cooler and so there was only the wind to contend with. Nevertheless, it was a good time, even though the car did not run perfectly.

I filled the humming bird feeder and have noticed that we have a little rufous hummer, as well as the larger anna's. My hummingbird and butterfly plants on the deck are doing fine. The only butterfly I have seen on them so far is a white one. I did see a dragon fly and a swallowtail butterfly in the back garden, though. We have lots of the little wall lizards, and the brown bunnies do seem to be multiplying. I can see no damage in my garden from deer or bunnies, though. I picked up a pamphlet on dragon flies, as I seem to be finding a few to photo on our trip. I am presently tweaking photos from the trip, of friends, to send out in email. I have some RAW photos taken with my new camera. Even the jpeg's from that camera have more data. But I still like the S3 IS for its light weight and the ease of shooting. I will have to find a good longer telephoto for my Rebel, if I am going to start carrying it around... maybe one where my filters will fit. (58 mm).

Model T days

2011-06-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

I like this shot of my best Dutch iris that is on the little rockery in the front garden.

Yesterday we were up early and over to the meeting spot for the model T Fords rally. There was a good turn out of 15 cars. While having coffee and doughnuts and visiting; Dennis mentioned to me that we are going to need a closed trailer to take our car to Pincher Creek. Pat got seriously considering this idea. He did some asking and phoning around. By 5:00 o'clock he had purchased one at Duncan. Our bank account will survive the hit.; It is a great relief to me that we now have a covered trailer. As Dennis said, we have a fairly big investment in our 1912 Torpedo Roadster Model T Ford. Pat has it running beautifully with help from James. It is looking great. The rally was fun this year. We had 4 checkpoints, that took us downtown.
I will eventually be making an album for each car event we go to, and load them to my web page. I have a few photos ready for this album, but it is not likely to get made this year. I hope to get at least the June album made for the gardening page... and more of the gardening if I ever get time.

June in the Garden

2011-06-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

The oriental poppies are almost finished blooming.

These lovely Welsh poppies are delicate looking. They self seed around very nicely. They are growing in the woodland and under the deck. They are not as messy as the Oriental poppies.

This is the special red columbine growing in the woodland. Most of the columbines are a dark blue. Today I noticed one in the front garden that is purple with white around the edges of the petals. I let these plants self seed all around the garden too.

This is the woodland path beside the garage. I have put a lot of the clippings from the renovation of the Virginia creeper along this path. I hope they will eventually break up and make the path higher and better drained. The plants beside the path are looking lush, almost tropical.

Today was sunny but it seemed a bit cool. I mowed the lawn, using the new ramp to access the back bit of grass. I clipped the perennials, including the bishops weed, the perennial geraniums and the lemon balm at the front. Yesterday I move Irises to the front, from the edge of the vegetable garden. I clipped back the wisteria some, after the tree terrorists had been chopping at it. This is the stump of the wisteria that continues to grow sprouts. I was trying to train it to a standard but that is not likely to happen now. It has run along the ground and has twined up the douglas fir tree where it has a wonderful show this year. It is fragrant too. I used my hedge trimmer to take off some of the cedar hedge along the path behind the garage. I have the yellow and the dark blue tall bearded iris in the house, as they were flopping over and getting beat up along the path and the driveway. We are suppose to get rain, so I have not set up my new sprinkler for tomorrow. But I should get out and water by hand as the sprinklers do not really do a great job of getting into all the little corners or under shrubs and trees.
I bought a little solar light for the garden... just one to see if it worked. It works!! It has a rechargeable battery, and little solar panels. The panel is only about 3" x 3". Amazing. Why don't we have these things sitting on our windows to charge up and use for indoor lighting. I must get a photo of it. and get some more, too.
I cleaned up the humming bird feeder and I now have hummers coming to it. I see a rufous humming bird and the bigger anna's humming birds feeding. My deck plants are doing great. I hope to see the hummers feeding at the plants. There are far too many squawking sparrows around. There are robins, towhees, house finches... I haven't seen the wrens lately, or the big heron.
The daisies are in bloom and the foxgloves. I am waiting to see if I have any peloric ones. A special moss I bought a year ago has survived and is spreading a bit in the moss garden. All is looking pretty good.

More Iris in the June garden

2011-06-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

These two photos are of the gorgeous water iris at Berwick House in the water feature.

The yellow water iris in the woodland tub garden. Apparently these iris are invasive. I must go see if my contribution to the Colquitz river have survived. They grow fairly vigorously in the garden, but not invasive.

Another shot of my tall bearded all yellow iris that lives on the woodland. Today, I added one of the wine colored tall ones to this iris bed at the beginning of the woodland garden. This area has the ebony, the yellow, the dark blue varieties of the tall beareded irises. I also moved some of the wine colored ones out to the front rectangles. They should do ok, there.

This is the only Dutch iris I have growing. I must get some more of these elegant iriises.

The siberian iris in the front garden. You see the bench beyond the time circle. The Siberian iris stand in front of the black bamboo. I had a white one of these in the mix. There is a nasty grass growing among these iris. The leaves are quite similiar, so that is probably why this grass has got away on me, in this area.
It was another perfect day today. Pat made me a ramp for pushing the lawn mover and wheel barrow up to the back over 2 steps, without having to go all around the garage on the woodland walk. Its a very good ramp. I am so pleased with it. I removed an old cedar planter that was by these steps on the patio area, so that the ramp sits straight up the steps. The first run up the ramp took my wheel barrow loaded with the plants and dirt from the old cedar planter. I transplanted the plants to the area by the kiwi tree, at the top, next to the path that goes by the apple tree. This area needs more good dirt added to it. I will probably add some of the dirt that I rescued from under the St. John's Worte... its good woodland type of soil, and should beef up this clay soil. I did a bit of pruning here and there. I moved a few lily of the valley from Mrs. Pee's side to under the deck.... clipped down the bishops weed on that side too. These ignorant tree terrorists have been chopping away at one of my evergreens again and throwing the debris in the pond. I had a look at their side of this evergreen. I hope they are happy with the ugly twiggy mess they have to look at. Weird concept of landscaping, idiots.

Some of the Iris in June

2011-06-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

The bottom two photos are Siberian Iris, the other ones are tall bearded Iris.
I have watered the house and deck plants today. We have had a tiny bit of rain. I could wish for more.
The Boston Bruins have won the Stanley cup winning the 7th game of the final series against the Vancouver Canucks 4 to 0. The expected riots happened in Vancouver. It does not matter if they win or lose, there are idiots who seem to be infected with this destructive crowd mentality. Well, this should free up more of my time, now, although I really don't feel very motivated to do anything. Disappointing to see our team lose. They played good hockey over the whole series. The last 7 games were very rough compared to the games played against the other teams. One of the Canucks suffered a serious back injury. They all must be covered in bruises. They really looked tired and battered tonight.

Berwick House

2011-06-12T23:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we took the old car over to Berwick House where a few of us were invited to show our cars. I wandered around the gardens taking photos. They have some wonderful water features... very little lawn, its mostly ground covers. Berwick House is a retirement complex... very high end. Some of us went on a tour of the complex and viewed a one bedroom with den unit, and a two bedroom two bath unit, as well as the dining room, spa, library, theatre, and all the other places in the complex.

Their irises are in bloom. Since I am, at the moment, on an iris kick, I have quite a lot of pictures of the irises from the garden there. This one with variegated leaves is rather eye catching. More irises later, perhaps.

Our car on display. Too bad about the busy background. We were at Beckwith house from 2 to 4. After that we went to the first Saturday night of the gathering of the cars at Francelli's cafe in the Royal Oak mall. There was a live band, hamburgers, hot dogs and lots of old cars. Most of the cars were 50's and hot rods. Some nice stuff!

I managed to pick up another book by Bernard Cornwell and had to stay up until 3:30 reading last nite; despite being tired from too much sun and exercise. Was a good day, though.

Today I spent the afternoon weeding and pruning in the Japanese/ water / moss garden. Then watering a bit at the back. I found that Shauna had left a block of cement under the cedar hedge on her side. It is exactly what I needed to put under my Japanese lantern to raise it up a bit. This block even has 4 little feet which now sit in the pea gravel of my dry stream. This block looks exactly like it was made for this application. Thank you Shauna. I don't think she will miss it. It is all looking good. Except the vegetable garden. Too many tree roots and not enough sun.

June in the garden

2011-06-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

The pots on the deck are something new this year. I was inspired to plant a butterfly and humming bird planter and the pots just seemed to keep growing from there. I have 4 larger pots and 2 smaller ones of a matching set I had purchased some years ago. I have 2 taller black pots and the cedar box. There is a tomatoe and basil in one, the butterfly perennials and annuals in one, the tulips, comsos, delphinium in another, the hollyhock with a whitle perennial, scaboisia, one of the smaller ones holds a willow from the VIRAGS plant sale, a black pot with another willow, a black pot with a Japanese quince, and the cedar box with a few annuals.

Two of the rhodos by the deck that are looking good this year.

This is a close up of a drop on the water lily leaf in the deck water tub.. a closely cropped drop.

This snail lives under the deck. I usually find them to be darker green and living on the moss garden. There are not very many of them, so I don't mind seeing them in the shade garden.
Yesterday I watered and fed the house plants and deck plants. I needed to change 2 of the grow tubes on the light garden. My African violets are all in bloom, and there are now 2 moth orchids blooming.
We have had overcast but warm weather for the last couple of days. I was hoping it would rain, but it looks like I will need to water.
I have managed to get a few critiques done on Megashot and have been slowly catching up on the meet and greet for new members. We seem to have some very active newer members which is great to see. Version 2 is in the works and promises to be faster, sleeker, and even better than the present one; which, in my opinion is very very good. Its a huge portal with many features as well as photo upload and storage.

Wildflowers

2011-06-08T22:18:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, after lunch, we went out to West Coast Tires to get our new tires for the Dodge Lodge. It was going to take 45 minutes to have the tires put on the van, so I brought along my camera, of course. The time seemed to fly by and the tires were on the van in no time, it seemed. The above photo is the ferns and yellow, dandilion like flowers, nature's arrangement.

I don't know what this one is but it looks like a miniature foxglove.

A pretty, delicate little flower. This one would be welcome in my garden anytime.

Miner's lettuce. Something I thought grew best in shade, but it was on the mountain side and exposed to full sunshine.

Saxifragia and rock moss. The saxifragia grows in my front garden and looks great under the dark foliage of the smoke bush.

More Saxifragia, ferns, moss, a big leaf maple, a slender elegant evergreen, grasses, and a part of the road.

I was trying to get a shot of the western bleeding heart that was in bloom, but tiny. The wind was blowing, so the plants are out of focus. But look to the top right. OMG is that a snake? I asked Pat, if he thought it was a snake or an old bungy cord. He said it is definitely a snake. While shooting, I never noticed the snake. But there it is!
West Coast Tires is in a little cleared area, just off Sooke Road. They were flooded out and have since rebuilt their shop. The area I was shooting in was newly exposed rocks from the excavations. It is rich in all kinds of local plants. There were wild strawberries, the western bleeding heart, the miner's lettuce and so many interesting things, once I took the time to look at it.
We now have our new tires, newly done brakes, thanks to Ray, and we should be ready for our next road trip in the Dodge Lodge, towing the new old Model T, to Pincher Creek, Alta,

The water garden and moss garden

2011-06-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

It was a fine day to be out gardening. I watered a bit in the morning. After lunch I was out for about 3 hours. I did weeding and a bit of pruning. There are lots of little Saskatoon berries, there are little yellow plums, there are tiny apples, and the strawberries are still blooming and forming berries.

This is a look at the dry stream that goes from next to the pond to under the deck, into heavy shade. At the bottom of the photo is the little lace leaf maple and next to it is the lantern. I am happy to see it is beginning to grow some moss and get a nice patina. Across from the lantern is my best moss that is under the mountain laurel that is just coming into bloom. On the left there is a little cedar by the lantern and you see one bloom of the rhodo that is just over from the lantern. At the curve in the dry stream there is a old stump and on the other side just before the curve is a large fern. At the stump the dry stream curves and runs under the outer edge of the deck.

A close up of the moss. I have at least four different kinds of moss growing.

This is a look at the dry stream from both sides in the area of the 'posts'. After the posts, the stream takes another turn and disappears under the ferns. I have moss on the outer side of the deck of the dry stream. I cut the ferns off that try to grow in the moss, but leave the Welsh poppies grow. They are a bright yellow, delicate flower and look great with the moss. Just up from where the dry stream takes its second curve there are helebores an azalea, more ferns and another rhodo by the deck support post. When cleaning up this area I was surprised at how few violets there actually were. I thought this was going to be a 2 day job, but it actually took very little time. The moss is coming along really very well. I must try to keep it all moist. I saw only one slug and one of those little green snails. On the side of the dry stream that is farther under the deck, I have solemons seal, a variegated evergreen little shrub that I clip, and I let the violets grow on this side. On the other side of the ferns there is a bleeding heart plant that is surviving.

This is a view of the whole pond. The marsh marigold on one side and the little lebanon cedar on the other. There are campanula and saxifragia on the side that is at the bottom of the photo, with iris to the right and the water hawthorn in middle in bloom. If you look closely you can see the frog.

This is the frog. I think it is one of those big ones that is taking over the habitat of our indigenous species of frogs. It is about half the size of the big one I had in my pond before. I don't know how I can catch it. When it leaps and dives into the water when it hears me coming it makes this weird squeaking noise. I don't think it ate the fish, as the new ones I purchased are still in the pond.

The water fall is now running a bit too fast, but better fast than too slow. You see the marsh marigold and the sweet flag. The sides of the water fall are slowly growing moss. I must get some moss growing on the bottom of the mermaid or find a better place for her to sit.

June in the Garden

2011-06-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

The clematis are coming into bloom. The above is the one that climbs up to the deck and surrounds the deck water tub. The wisteria has been relegated to climbing up the Douglas fir tree. It makes this evergreen bloom beautifully.

Ok Ken! Your advice for the penguin to upload to megashot is right ON. This is the one. Thanks.. actually I may just upload three of them.   What the heck... I have lots of storage room, there and our photos display very well, too. :-)

Today was another perfect day. Since I had to go to the lab for some tests, I decided to spend the morning at our Royal Oak mall. Its a very charming mall, with an eclectic collection of shops and medical professional offices, pharmacy, grocery store, used book store, a good collection of restaurants and many other things. There are no high end clothes or shoe shops, which is just fine with me.   Lunch was a bowl of won ton soup.. yumm.

The Canucks have won the 2nd game of the Stanley cup playoffs. This game went into over time, again... but only for 11 seconds and our team scored. B.C. is going wild over our hockey team. The police are already training their riot squads for the day we win. I really hope there is no over exuberant celebrating this time. Now, I believe they go to Boston for the next game in the series.

A nest full of sparrows has hatched. This evening they were dust bathing in my front garden flower bed. So I went out and dusted them off with the garden hose. I did a bit of watering as well. Those little birds were complaining bitterly over this ill treatment they received. Saturday and Wednesday are my days to water flowers, shrubs, vegetables, with a sprinkler from 4:00 to 10:00 in the am and from 7:00 to 10:00 pm.    Otherwise I can water by hand any time, as long as my hose has a shut off trigger. At the moment, I don't think I need the sprinkler, although we did not get any of that much promised rain. I have not been out weeding for a few days... maybe tomorrow.

Endangered Species - Galapagos Penguins

2011-06-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

Photos from our trip to Ecuador and Peru last year. We have a new community on Megashot.net http://www.megashot.net for endangered species. I cannot decide which one of these I wanted to upload to Megashot, so thought I would have a look at them on my blog. It was a difficult shooting position: in a rocking boat that was lined with other tourists on both sides. The sun was bright at mid day.
Yesterday in the Times Colonist there was this article with regard to B.C.'s laws about endangered species: Quote...
Languishing species report earns tongue lashing from NDP

Robert Shaw
Times Colonist
June 2, 2011

The B.C. government is keeping secret the recommendations of its task force on protecting species at risk, says NDP environment critic Rob Fleming.
The task force, made up of scientists, academics and environmental groups, was struck last year to look at whether changes to legislation are needed to protect endangered animals and ecosystems in B.C. The creation of the group was promised by government in its 2009 throne speech.
The task force submitted its report to Environment Minister Terry Lake in January, but government has never disclosed the recommendations and would not release the report publicly Wednesday.
"I don't know what their recommendations were, nobody does," said Fleming. "It's been sitting collecting dust for six months."
Lake was not available for comment Wednesday. "Government is now examining the report in detail and giving it the frulsome review that it deserves," he said during his ministry's budget debate earlier this month. "I can say at this point that it will be considered fully by government." Lake said he hopes to release information from the task force3 "in the relatively near future," but offered Fleming no timeline for such a move.
"There was no explanation for the delay that was satisfactory, and no explanation for the amount of secrecy that has shrouded this report," said Fleming.
Fleming introduced his own endangered species private member's bill Wednesday, saying New Democrats want to act on the issue while B.C. Liberals continue to do nothing. It is the second time he has introduced a bill on the topic, but his initiatives have never been supported by government. His latest bill is almost assured to fail because the B.C. legislature adjourns Thursday for its summer break.
Fleming's bill aims to identify and list endangered species and protect their habits to ensure their survival.
Environmental groups the Sierra Club of B.C., the Wilderness Committee Eco-justice, Conservation Northwest, and the David Suzuki FRoundation expressed support for the NDP bill Wednesday, saying B.C. has 1,900 plants and animals declining or at risk of disappearing.
B.C. and Alberta are the only provinces without standalone species at risk laws, said Fleming. ... Unquote.
and then I found the B.C. website about our endangered species. Its a good site, very up to date and comprehensive. I don't believe I have photos of any of our own endangered species.
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/atrisk

we have been promised rain for the last 2 days. Its was cloudy and warm, beautiful the last few days, but no rain. I have the lawn mowed and edging done. ... easy, as I don't have much grass. The garden is looking really pretty good. The moss garden needs some attention. The woodland is full of plants. I need to weed some of the more rambuncious ones out to give the others a chance. My potted plants are doing well.

The eagles

2011-05-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

The tall bearded iris at the edge of the vegetable garden are doing very well this year.

Lately, I have been waking up at about 5:00 am and cannot get back to sleep. So, I sit at my front window and watch the animals and birds. There is a bit of traffic, and a very few walking people. The drama of this morning was the eagles and crows dispute. We have a nesting pair of eagles in our neighbourhood. Last year I watched them flight training 3 of their baby eagles. This morning one of the eagles came swooping in ever lower circles towards the tall trees across the street and along the power line area. I have never seen the eagle hunting that low or close before. On its swoop towards the trees, it was immediately mobbed by about 6 - 8 crows. The eagle then flew away back up over the roof of my house. The other eagle then arrived and took up a perch on the top of the power line tower. It was attacked by a couple more crows as it sat there. I wonder, if maybe the eagles nest has been raided by the crows. I don't usually see both of the eagles away from the nest at the same time, at this time of the year. I don't know where the nest is, but I think it is somewhere in the Panama Flats park.
After all this excitement, I got out my new Rebel camera and played a bit trying to get good shots of the Limoges box with the 50mm lens. I did get a couple of eagle pictures in RAW but have not uploaded them to my computer yet.
It was a beautiful day today. After lunch I went out to the garden and got the new plants I had purchased at Brentwood Bay nursery transplanted. I now have 4 gentians in the front inner garden area. I added a thrift, a pink geranium and a Johnson's blue geranium, and a blue daisy like one to the rectangle closest to our driveway. This little area is seen from the street and our driveway. It is nicely cleaned up now. The bamboo is running into the bed and I have to clip it back every year. I weeded some of the area by the smoke bush, and moved the ratty looking hebe from there to the strip in front by the purple plum tree. I have this little area cleaned up, also. The rectangle area behind it on this side is rather wilder looking, but has some nice plants in it. The peonies are not doing well on this side, but the other side the peonies have lots of buds. I have the butterfly bush in a pot. When I get the woodland cleaned up, I will be able to just cut this pot off the bush and plant it. The plastic is not very thick. I added the butternut squash and 2 tomatoes to the vegetable garden and the marigolds along the edge of the veggie garden. I see last year's potatoes that did not do well are showing little leaves. I planted the 2 new primulas near the little spruce tree just behind the snapdragons I have along there this year. The soil was very soggy in this new bed from the winter rains. The soil needs more improvement. I have only 1 1/2 bags of compost left now, as well as the good woodsy stuff I have in 16 or so bags, that I took from under the st. john's worte, when I cleaned it up. With a bit more weeding and grass edging the front should be in pretty good shape and it will be time to give the woodland some serious attention. Its so much easier to have the big green bin for clippings, and the cordless mower and hedge trimmer.

May, the tulip month

2011-05-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

More of the tulips. Last Autumn, along wtih the black tulips, I planted about 40 more. Most of them along the driveway strip. The ones I like the best are the lily flowering tulips. They have the pointy petals. The pink tulips along the old sidewalk by the garage look quite nice too. All of the tulips are tall this year. I fed them bone meal and compost. A little attention goes a long way.
The oriental poppies are in bud as are the tall bearded irises, and the perennial geraniums along the driveway strip. The geraniums look good all year, but the others are going into dormancy by August. I need a few more plants along the driveway to have more of a show for autumn. There are some michaelmas daisies migrated there, and there is some low growing phlox. Perhaps a day lily or three. I can get them from Mrs. pee's side of my garden. She won't miss them. But, I am thinking I want the Stella d'or one that has a very long bloom period. I also want some that are not that bright orange. The orange looks good with the bishops weed on Mrs. Pee's side, but I do not want that bishop's weed anywhere else.
Today, we went to Mary's Blue Moon cafe for lunch. We shared a lobster sandwich and each had a cup of soup. Most delicious seafood chowder. After that Pat caught up on some of his reading while I had a quick look around Brentwood nursery. I came away with $50 worth of new plants. I have 2 gentians that I want to put in the front garden by the smoke bush. I have 2 primulas to add to my primula collection. The p. vivali needs special attention, 2 more perennial geraniums... a Johnson's Blue and the lovely smaller pink one, a butterfly bush.. needs to be in a pot for this year, until I get the woodland cleaned up, another thrift, and an alpine aster in dark blue. Also got a six pack of marigolds, a butternut squash plant a two tomatoes, another little blue daisy thing. After we got home I helped Pat measure up the Model T for its new cover. I also got some more of the woodland path chopped down and it is beginning to look like a path again. I sure hope none of these clippings grow. I will have to cover them with old carpet or something to kill them! All in all, a very good day.

May - the black tulips

2011-05-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

These are photos of the saxatilis tulips. They are the first to open in the Spring. They spread nicely all over the garden. They are usually finished by mid-June.

Grace left me the 30 black tulips. I put them in along by the old garage, thinking they would be good against the white. They are really quite tall. I had a few in the house and they lasted very well. They are very good boquet material. I shall be emailing Grace with a link to my block, rather than filling her email with photos.

May hedging

2011-05-26T20:52:00.001-07:00

This is a view from our driveway along the path that goes across the top of the garden. The hedge on the right side is made from the boxwood clippings and is slowly filling out. The top left is a low cedar that covers the bottom part of the big pink tree peony The vase has arabis in it.

This is a shot of the lovely hebe in full bloom and the hedge is now trimmed. This hebe is currently the star of the front garden.

This is the honeysuckle pilea along Parmar's side, with the new cedar hedge behind it. These cedars are going to be good screening from all the cars in the driveways, all the blank lawn area and the butchered trees across the street.

Shooting from the thyme circle upwards to the top of the front garden through the alliums to the hebe. The thyme circle is in bloom, but there are no bees. I need to do more weeding in this area.

The magnolia and the big tree peony are in bloom at about the same time this year. They are nearly the same color and sit across the grass path next to the entry way. They are putting on a fine show now.

The peony, closer.

I spent about 10 hours clipping the hedges. It actually goes quite fast with my little battery powered hedge trimmer. After doing the top hedge and the side I mowed the grass, front and back. The crocuses leaves were beginning to brown, so I took them down also. I dumped these hedge clippings and lawn clippings on the back woodland path. There are no pictures of the honeysuckle hedge that runs along the street side of the large cedar hedge. This honeysuckle is really ratty looking. I really should dig it out and replace it with boxwood clippings. Maybe this Fall, if I have time. In front of the ratty little hedge, the daisies are coming into bloom for their show time. I also clipped some of the big cedar hedge and took a couple of wheel barrow loads of the cedar duff and clippings to the woodland garden path.
It was rainy yesterday, and I had laundry to do. In the afternoon I went over to Royal Oak mall, and picked up a few books, other stuff, and of course, two more six packs of annuals. All of this exercise over the past couple of weeks, as well as a few late nights spent on Megashot had played me out entirely. Last night I slept from 8:00 pm to 9:00 this morning. I tweaked photos, and transplanted the little annuals today... nothing too strenuous.

May in the Garden

2011-05-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

This is a look at the little rockery at the front in full bloom. I see the little weedy flowers growing in the gravel. I shall need to kill them with that weed be gone. They are very difficult to control by hand weeding.

A lovely bright magenta azalea just under the window of the suite at the back.

this is the rhodos and the little azalea. Those terrorist tree killers really don't deserve to have this for a view along their sidewalk.

The apple tree had quite a few blossoms this year. I did not see many bees around though.

The lilac is in full bloom. I cut some of the blooms off Mrs. Pees side and have them in the house in a huge boquet. They are nicely fragrant outside and in.

It was raining the other day, so I managed to get a shot of the Peony tree in the rain. This plant is right by the edge of the deck at the front entry. It is gorgeous and fragrant. The flowers rise up out of a low cedar.

This is a perennial bachelor button that self seeds around. I have some in the front and a big patch in the back near the water tub. They are a lovely royal blue color and look good in a big clump.

This is the water tub in the back woodland. These bachelor buttons are now in full bloom. The water iris has buds. The honesty is coming into bloom and the blue bells are finishing up. I have this area weeded just about up to the tub. That is, the irises are weeded, and there are a couple now showing buds. They are getting more sun since old weird sheila removed her ugly board fence. I must feed them compost, too.
Over the last week, I have cleaned up the Virginia creeper and the st. john's worte. I had all the clippings piled up along the woodland path. I now have some of this stuff put into the big green bin. I hope I can get most of the rest of it chopped down to little twigs to cover the wood land path. It takes time to chop it up, and is not my favourite thing to do. The path will be better for it, once I get it finished though.

This is the solomons seal that is at the front. There is also one under the deck. It is a very good shade plant. It is mixed up with too many other plants at the front. I need to make it a stand alone plant and have the clematis, for one plant, taken away from it.

Limoges little boxes

2011-05-24T13:34:00.001-07:00

On our way down south last winter we stopped at the Puyallup, Wa., swap meet. I collect little boxes as keepsakes of places I visit. While dashing around the swap meet, this little box just about jumped off the table into my pocket. On closer examination it said Limoges in the tiniest print on the top and larger on the bottom. At $4.00, I had to have it. Today, I finally took the time to research these little Limoges boxes. Most of them I looked at had the hinges on them and so I thought that mine was just a very nice copy. More searching on the internet shows me the manufacturer's name on the back. It is Fontanille and Marraud piece, probably from the 1930s.

My little box has the stamp on the left. It is made in Limoges, France. I have seen pictures of other hinged boxes using this same design of the dancing couple. Its very intricate and a lovely thing. I now have a new craze for collecting Limoges. There are very many of these boxes that were used for snuff boxes, gift boxes, pill boxes, patch boxes, perfume boxes, etc. It is quite interesting. Probably the most famous Limoges would be the Faberge eggs done for the Tzar (Pat says for the omelette) to give to his mistress.

When I get more time I shall do up better pictures of this little treasure box.

May in the Garden

2011-05-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

This wonderful hebe is in full bloom. It sits in the front garden as part of the little rockery. You see a few of the other plants in this area. The hedge was not yet clipped at the time of this photo.

Here is a photo of some of the tiny plants on the little rockery at the back. These are last year's transplants that are doing very well. I think they may get bigger than their tags say they will be. The next photo is full of shadows. It is the view of the strawberries in bloom and the newly transplanted Chinese vegetables. Behind them are the big black pots, that I have yet to plant up. Behind the black pots, are the tall bearded irises. They are going to have a great show this year. There are lots of buds now. The last is the mermaid at the top of the waterfall. I need to find a different place for the mermaid or make moss grow on it.
Yesterday and the day before I spent a few hours trimming the hedges along the top and down the side by Parmar's grass. I also trimmed back the burning bush off their sidewalk. Now, of course, we can see their garbage cans sitting out there from our front door. Amazing... people will keep their garbage cans by their own front door. I have yet to clip the little bottom hedge. Since it is a bit misty rainy today, I am taking the day off. I watered the deck plants a bit yesterday, also. I moved the grass front and back. Since I have the access to the back grass covered in vine clippings that will not fit into the big green bin, I devised a way to take the lawn mower up the two back steps. I have a light board that is easy to place down as a ramp. I take a short run at it with the mower and it works, really very well. I may do this to get to the back grass, all the time, now.

Some spring clean up in the garden

2011-05-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

This is some of the tulips in bloom now. These flowers are so easy and put on such a grand display for years. I have them planted everywhere in the garden and they are a riot of color just now.

This is the before and after picture of the Virginia creeper and the St. John's worte. The Virginia creeper had advanced way up the telephone pole and then slumped down again with all the weight of the debris, squirrel nests and all within in the vines. The ivy, that I added for some winter color was advancing up the pole too. It put on a glorious display in Autumn. It will grow again, in no time. The St.John's worte will be better for its close pruning.

It seems we are on water rationing again this year. We also have a by-law out lawing the use of weed killers on lawns. Everyone has to pull out their dandilions by hand. I have all kinds of little weeds taking over my bits of grass. They will become 'meadows' in no time.
Yesterday I spent about 6 hours out in the garden doing numerous things. I finished the clean up of the Virginia creeper and st. john's worte. I now have about 16 bags of this good woodland type soil, to add to the woodland when I get it cleaned up. I spent some time clipping out dead wood in the Japanese cedar and on the pin oak. So far I seem to have one tall bearded iris in this woodland iris bed, in bloom. I cleaned up that area a few days ago, but they need some good compost. The irises on the vegetable garden edge are going crazy this year. Many buds forming from just a bit of attention to their soil and weeding last year. They are really tall too. Anywhere that I have added compost, the plants seem to be extra tall. The tulips are at least 2 1/2 feet tall.
I cleaned most of the birdseed weeds out of the bed by the side of the garage. The tulips are doing great, there. The oriental poppies are coming into bloom. There is still some grass there that I will have to keep after. At the top of the driveway strip the perennial geraniums are looking terrific and are covered with blooms. There is morning glory along this flower bed strip along between our driveways. I really need to keep after it with the round up and the paint brush.
I transplanted the plants I had purchased on Sunday. The 6 little Chinese vegetables are looking good in their garden row. The strawberries have lots of blooms and the rhubarb is slowly growing up. I clipped some of the cedar hedge along the top of the garden. It doesn't need much, so I can do it with the hand pruner. I transplanted the new small pink baby's breath into the strawberry jar on the little rockery at the back. It should fall over the edges in a cascade of pink. Most of last year's new little alpines have survived and are doing fine, along with the lewisias, a campanula and a few other older ones, on this little rockery. I put a couple of cosmos into the pink pot by the back garage entry. I have the tomatoe and 2 basil in a big pot. The new delphinium in a big pot and 2 of the smaller perenials and the same with the hollyhock. The triouchina tree is in a pot of its own. It is suppose to bloom all summer. I hope I can keep it alive and well grown. It is a beautiful tree, but will need to be brought in for the winter.
I fixed the water flow of the pump and now have a faster wall fall. The 4 new fish are visible. the water hawthorn is blooming. I saw the frog again. It is not big enough to eat the fish. So, what ever got them did a thorough job of it. I no longer even see little black ones, and I had hoards of them.
Trimming the hedges is next on my to do list. The sun is suppose to shine tomorrow.

May in the garden

2011-05-16T00:25:00.001-07:00

The fern leafed peony is a very exotic plant and lives next to the little rockery in the front garden,. It's wonderful show is not long-lived, but it is quite elegant. It has the lime green coriscan helebore for a good foil to the bright magenta perfectly formed flowers on their background of ferny green leaves.

The ajuga is putting on a grand show in the little rockery at the front garden.

This the Mountain Avens, or Dryas Octopetala. It also lives on the little rockery. It has these lovely white blossoms held above the evergreen, oak-like foliage; on a small scale. This plant is happy to spread along the rocks over clay. The flowers turn into very nice fluffy displays of seed heads that give the base of the West Coast Planter the look of a chiffon gown.

This is a look at the woodland garden along the side of the garage and part of the path leading to the back woodland. There is the bleeding heart, anemorella, cyclamen, the self seeding honesty, a perennial forget me not, that has the most gorgeous foliage.
These photos are from about a week ago. Since then I have been working at reducing the Virginia creeper to about 4 feet high, on its climb up the telephone pole. It took about 15 years tor reach its height.. but I hope to have before and after photos of this end of the strip between Shauna's driveway and mine. It has been a big cleanup. I have 12 bags of leaf mold kind of stuff collected to use in the Woodland, after I am sure all the Virginia creeper and St. John's wort clippings are dead. I have this in 12 twenty litre plastic bags, for now. Since the big green compost bin is full, I have more of this vine clippings stacked along the woodland path, that you see above.. I have about 8 feet to clean up on the street end of this strip. I have spent at least 16 hours on cleaning this strip, so far. On Friday, I used my weed be gone to spray some of the more persistent weeds along the strip. But the morning glories will need constant attention. I sprayed the woodland path, and hope all the thistles are gone for good. I hope I can salvage some of the twiggy stuff for the woodland path. Next compost day is the 24th. I shall be stomping over this collection of twiggy material to try reduce it to leave some stuff on the path, and reduce the size of the material to go into the bin, next week.

Today, it rained. There is about 1.5 inches of rain in the gauge. This is fine, it gives me a break from the exercise of cleaning up the strip along the driveways. I must have about 16 hours invested in this clean up, so far. The Virginia creeper and the ivy took about 16 years to grow to these proportions, so its a fair trade off. The creeper is cut down to about 4 feet, that will be going up the pole in no time again, I am sure. The St. John's worte has been clipped to ground level. It will be even more healthy and growing thickly after its pruning. The Agave has been cleaned up. The New Zealand flax could not compete with these plants and the snow. It is history. I have uncovered about 3 feet of driveway where the plants were growing. There was a lot of debris inside the old creeper's vines. I believe the squirrels were nesting in this nice secure place.

Alas, I no longer see the squirrel that once did the high power line runs in such an acrobatic display. Lately, I have been waking up at 5 in the am and watching the creatures in my front garden and in the deer pasture just across the street. We have deer, rabbits, and many regular visiting birds. The tree in the front has not leafed out yet, so I can see the front garden from my living room window. Its designed for this view. The view from the lower floor window is good too. The lower floor view goes on throughout the year and is shady in the summer with the leaf canopy of the liquid amber tree.
Since it was raining today, I went to Cannor Nursery and picked up a few more plants. Basil, a few annuals and 6 more perennials. I think I will be adding then to the pots I have on the deck. There is a hollyhock and a delphinium for height. Snapdragons and petunias to fill out the containers. Some chinese vegetables and one tomato. Four new little goldfish for racoon fodder.
Otherwise, I am almost finished the Girl who Played with Fire book, the 2nd in the the Stieg Larsson series of books. As my IT friend Ken said, the characters get more weird as the series goes on. I want a really good book to read about the computer world of today. I doubt I will find it. I want a good novel with good information about how much this IT communication has changed our societies. I understand that people now text message their friends that they are going to call them later on their cell phone. :-))) Parents have their children wired into their Blackberries to keep track of where they all are in their busy lives. And FaceBook knows everything, just like god. Its amazing how much stuff people put on their FaceBook and other social networking sites. When there is a crime to investigate, it seems there is always something about it on Facebook. People make themselves so vulnerable.
My last site meter counter said I had an average of 89 hits per day. Not too bad for someone who is not even trying for hits. Speaking of which, Megashot is, as usual, a place for people to gain recognition for their photography. I get tired of the games they play to try to stay ahead of this game. People are interesting, on the internet or off.

Some photos from our day trip to Port Refrew

2011-05-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Some photos from our Port Refrew trip, including Skutz Falls, which should really be called Skutz rapids.
I was out in the garden for 4 hours today. I got quite a lot of things done. I finished filling the pots I want to have on the deck. I have transplanted the 3 willows I got at the Alpine plant sale. I have the Boydi put into a small pot that sits in the copper pot with no hole in it. I will be able to keep water at the feet of this little willow. I lost the one I had last summer when we had a heat wave while we were away. Another one that has lovely little pussy willows, and I am told I can pin the little branches around and they won't mind. So, I have this one trained to fall over a nice green rock that I have. The other one, that doesn't have a name, is in a deep black pot. I believe this one can get out of hand if not watched. So, it is in this pot on the deck for now. I shall endeavor to keep it watered at all times. I did some pottering about the vegetable garden area. I moved the 3 black pots to a position where I removed cement blocks for the water meter maid's convenience in reading the meter. They are now along in front of the tall bearded iris. I have two of these iris with buds, so far. The lilac is going to be blooming soon. The clematis is climbing up its screen. I weeded this iris bed strip and the herbs spot, and dug out most of the weeds, while leaving the flowers that have self seeded. The strawberries are in bloom, and the rhubarb is slowly growing. I moved the pots out from under the deck and put them beside the garbage can I use for the weed bin on the garden. I have 2 bags of compost left now and the bags of pea gravel, 4, I think. I clipped the cedars back a bit off the path, and trimmed the sage back a bit off the path, too. I spent some time clipping back Virginia creeper that goes up the telephone pole at the front. I now have a bunch of these stems heaped up and waiting until I can put them in the big green bin. Should rain tonight, so I won't bother watering in the new transplants or the newly filled pots. I should get some annuals for the two big pots. I have room for 2 little alpines with the willow that has the green rock in front of it. I need a few more fish, again. I haven't seen the frog for a few days. My Saskatoon berry trees are full of blooms. I have not seen too many bees, so it is doubtful that I will be getting any fruit this year.
When I looked at my last post to my blog, I saw a kitty coleman tag added to my blog. I wonder how that happened? Has someone hacked into my blog? Very weird. Some people seem to have a lot of time on their hands to cause annoyances. How stupid is that?

May in the garden

2011-05-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

The star magnolia and the other one are in full bloom. The area of the woodland beside the garage is at its best right now. The path needs to be weeded. But this area of the woodland is looking pretty good. There is the bleeding heart, the cyclamen, honesty that self seeds every year in purple and white, the perennial forget me not which has terrific foliage, and the anemorella, which is covered with delicate blue blossoms.
Yesterday I spent about 4 hours out in the garden. I moved the grass. I did a bit of weeding in the moss garden, but it will need more attention. A lot of the pea gravel seems to have disappeared from the dry stream, but not under the deck. Very strange. It will get refurbished when I get to this area to clean it up. I did a bit of rearranging of the stones of the waterfall. This waterfall is becoming more mossy. The big work of the day was to mow down the edges of the st. john's wort along the strip between Shaunna's place and ours. Then I swept up all the debris. I have a heaping load of dirt and leaf mold that I am saving by the old compost bin, to be put on the woodland when I am finished cleaning it up. This effort has given Shaunna and I more space on our driveways. I have yet to cut back the Virginia Creeper and more of the St. John's wort. It will all be mowed quite low and I am sure it will look very good this summer, after its pruning. I finished digging out weeds along this strip and took a wheel barrow load of them to the green bin. I need a sunny day so I can paint the wild morning glory .. a very rampant invasive weed .. with roundup. This is an ongoing battle, as the people on the other side of this strip have never controlled the plants on their side. Shaunna and Gerald are going to be doing some work on their back yard. I hope it included a retaining wall where their fence is falling over. I assured her I would be quite happy to pay my half of the costs when they decided what they were going to do. All of this vigorous sweeping seems to have given me a very sore wrist. I put cold packs on it for a while after I got into the house. It is still sore today, so I have taken the day off.
The world wide weather seems to be one crisis after another. Japan had a huge earthquake awhile ago, that took out one of its nuclear power plants. I believe they have it under control now, but am afraid to look. There has been horrible flooding in Australia, and now some on the Canadian prairies. Violet windstorms in Southeastern US, and terrible snow storms in eastern Canada. I shall have to re-read that book called Climate Wars, again. Its all pretty scary, when you consider the power of these earth movements. We have been most fortunate where we live... just a late Spring.
Our Federal election is over and we have a Conservative majority in the house, with Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. The first Green party member of parliament was in the Saltspring riding. Elizabeth May has made history! A week late for May Day, but there she is! More good news for us, is that our Vancouver Canucks are doing very well in the playoffs for the Stanly Cup. There has been some very exciting games that go into overtime... good hockey!!
The Prince of Wales is wed. It seems to be a very big thing. People in Victoria went to the Empress for a 2:00 am breakfast to celebrate the once in a life time occasion. More in the news... Osama bin Laden was killed by the US Seals when they raided a compound in the mountains of Pakistan. From a book I read about the origins of these terrorist groups... this mountainous area has long been a stronghold for them. Some of these groups have their roots in the time of the British control over India. Sometimes it seems we reap what we sow.
On a happier note, my blog is again registering high eighties hits, and climbing.

African Violets

2011-05-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

This is a RAW conversion of a quick shot I took of some of the African Violets in my light garden. This was to test the upload from my camera to the computer by directly connecting camera to computer. This is necessary because the little drive on my tower cannot handle cards with a large amount of data. So, that works, and was not the problem, with the computer it seems.
I spent some time getting acquainted with the settings for my screen and find I need to be at the highest recommended resolution setting. I am baffled by the thing making me choose a landscape or a portrait setting. I wonder why I cannot just view every photo as it has been taken, without this distortion. I am using my old screen and not the new wide screen. I updated Windows and all seems to be ok so far. EXCEPT, now my speakers do not play. They are plugged in, so far as I can determine. Its not a media player problem, as the program runs but there is no audio. I tried to plug my earphones into the front of the tower and the plug in is rejected. If I force the plug to stay in I can hear the music. So Trevor will have to come back and listen to the music!! I am finally learning how to get the resolution, size of print and icons to a good size. Windows 7 is fine... I don't see where the big learning curve is to use this OS. There are so many things I want to spend time with on it now.
We had quite a lot of rain last night. Looks like an inch in the rain gauge. I had the outdoor lights on and the indoor ones off after dark and was looking out the front window at the garden. It was really lovely, with the sparkling raindrops and shadows. I did not attempt a photo, the window had rain drops on it.
The sky seems to be clear at the moment, so the garden is calling me.

Waiting

2011-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

A photo from our trip to the US SW. This is in White Sands desert. Its amazing how much vegetation there is and how the plants adapt to their conditions.
Tomorrow I should get all my stuff back. My new hard drives seem to have had some kind of flaw. I will have new ones tomorrow. This is my techie's best treatment for the problem. He tested my old hard drives, but they passed all the tests. And yet, when we went to clean up the drive the program he used could not get the job done. So, the tests are not always right. Poor guy, he doesn't know I am an alien. I seem to have these detrimental effects on all things magnetic. I am going to keep using my old monitor as the wide screen HD was making me crazy. I could use both, if I had a wider desk. Right now, I would need to uplug one and plug in the other if I want to watch movies... yeah right, like I have time to watch movies.
I spent 3 hours in the garden today under a cloudy sky that was threatening rain. I got quite a bit of cleaning up done in the bed along between our driveways done. I dug out weeds and moved some of the dirt to the beds on the otherside of the driveway. I have cleaned from the end of the cedar hedge to the telephone post. I next need to clean up the Virginia creeper that goes up the post, and the St. John's wort that surrounds this creeper. My green compost bin is full, so any more clippings and weeds will need to be added to next month.
I made a start on the woodland garden cleanup. I have weeded out the iris bed. It needs some fine tuning yet and the addition of compost. The beds along beside the garage on both sides of the sidewalk need more attention, too. The tulips I planted last Fall are up and nearly open. There is bird seed weeds in this bed. I will have to ask Andy to stop feeding the birds over the beds, unless he wants to weed them. Dammit!
The woodland along the other side of the garage is looking terrific. The plants just thrive when I add compost to them. I currently have only 3 bags of compost left. I am using some to fill the pots I have up on the deck again. So far I have the butterfly garden in one, the tulips and basil in another. I have a Japanese quince in one, but am not sure if this will survive. I added the parsley into the same blue pot it was in last year.
I seem to be waking up at about 5:00 am every morning. I set at my front window and watch the birds and other critters in my front garden and across the street. We have quite a lot of birds ... lately the Alaska robin pair have been in the front, and a pair of ruffous sided townhees.

I am reading another book by Phillipa Gregory about Mary Queen of Scots. It interesting. This is a different twist to the story.

Some wild flowers in April

2011-04-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

The skunk cabbages were out in glorious colors in damp spots, along our day trip route to Port Renfrew last Friday. I added some HD toning with photoshop on this one.

The Pink Fawn lily was found at Skutz Falls where we made a stop on our way home around the loop from Port Refrew to Duncan and over the Malahat to Victoria. The fawn lilies in my woodland garden are yellow and white. They are spreading nicely. I need to get rid of the introduced bluebells in their area, though, as the blue bells are very invasive. When this woodland area is cleaned up, I will want to introduce some pink fawn lilies, if I can find some at the nurseries.

One of the photos of the Bay at Port Renfrew. We had a delicious seafood chowder at the Hotel over-looking the dock. The hotel is newly re-built and is a lovely spot. Port Renfrew is the beginning of the world renowned West Coast Trail. Botanical Bay is another attraction in the area. I hope to do another over-nite camping trip to visit Botanical Bay again. Its a bit of a hike into the protected area to see the flora and fauna. Its been a few years since I was there last. I must take a good macro lens for the sea creatures that I may find.

The tulips are in bloom in the pot that I planted up last Autumn. I intend to get basil plants to add to this pot so I can have basil right on the deck for culinary purposes. And maybe even for the pesto I have learned to use, made with store bought basil, which gets rather spendy.

The tulips are coming into bloom all over my garden. Last Autumn, Grace left me a package of 30 tulips, as a hostess gift from their visit to our home. I also purchased a few more and planted them last Autumn. Hopefully there will be more photos later.
I have the butterfly/humming bird planter transplanted with perennials and some heliotrope, in a matching pot and it will be on the deck. Speaking of humming birds... a week or so ago, I watched one of them playing in the little waterfall of the pond. It was a delight to see. Too bad I never see any fish in the pond. I think the river otter must have paid a visit while I wasn't looking. I did add one little fish 2 weeks ago, and I have seen two little ones. I have not seen the frog again, but I am sure its in there. The marsh marigolds are putting on a great show and the water hawthorn is in bloom. There will need to be May photos here too.

I have finished the top dressing on the grass paths and the little patch of grass around the apple tree. The trees are mostly pruned back. I have yet to do the hedge trimming. I am attempting to grow new little cedars behind the big ones that Mrs. P. had billybob destroy next to their sidewalk. When Pat cut these cedars down in height a bit, after Mrs. P.'s whining about junk in her house eaves troughs, I found that a few of these little cedar leaves had grown substantial roots, where they had landed in the water iris pot in the deck water feature tub. So, hopefully in no time I shall have a back up screening hedge of cedars where billybob, or his hockey playing boys, can't get at them. :)))

I have weeded a bit in the front little rockery, but mostly go out to see how the little plants there are coming along. The lilies are doing great and I hope to see a fine show this summer. The soil in this area behind this little rockery needs to be improved, also. Perhaps, with a view to adding more litlies. On the other corner of the front, I have a small area where I have campanulas and pasque flowers, iberis, a couple of daffodils. I will want to introduce a few tulips here, too. Its a chore to keep after the violets, but I am beginning to like them, in small numbers.
The strawberries have a few blooms and the rhubarb is slowly growing. I have not planted any vegetables yet. Ruby and Steve were over for dinner on Monday, and she was telling me of the great success she is having with her new garden boxes. She has peas and sweet peas up. Her strawberries are in bloom and her other berries are just booming! She is an inspiration to me to get busy on making my vegetable garden more productive.
When they were over to dinner we had ham and scalloped potatoes and other good stuff. Since I had the ham bone on hand, I wanted to try the pea soup made with the ham bone. I found this recipe on the internet. I always thought this soup would be a big fuss to make, but it was not too bad. I had all the ingredients and so made it up and it is delicious, if I must say so myself. I have to jars full frozen for the future, and we had two lunches of it. We should get at least 6 servings from it. I had the chicken stock from a roasting chicken I had made earlier in the week. I used to dump out the juices that collected around the chicken when it was roasting, but now I shall always save them. This juice was a good jellied stock, when cooled. I did not do up more chicken stock from the bones, this time, as I still have some on hand from before.

This recipe makes 8 servings

Classic Pea Soup with Ham

Ingredients

1 smoked ham_hock (about 1 lb/500 g)

1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable_oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 each carrots and stalks celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp (2 mL) each salt and pepper

4 cups (1 L) sodium-reduced chicken stock

2 cups (500 mL) dry green or yellow split_peas

3 green_onions, thinly sliced

Preparation:

Using paring knife, peel off and discard skin from ham hock. Trim off and discard fat. Set aside.

In Dutch oven, heat oil over medium-low heat; fry onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, salt, pepper and ham hock, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes.

Add stock, peas and 2 cups (500 mL) water; bring to boil over medium-high heat, skimming off any foam. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat until peas break down and meat is tender enough to fall off hock, about 1-3/4 hours.

Remove ham hock; pull off and shred meat. Set meat aside. Discard ham bone and bay leaves. In blender, puree half of the soup; return to pot along with meat. (Make-ahead: Let cool for 30 minutes. Transfer to container and refrigerate, uncovered, until cold. Cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days. Reheat to serve.) Ladle into bowls; garnish with green onions.

Enjoy!!

Spring in the Garden

2011-04-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

The mermaid sits on top of the water fall now observing the top mossy water running down. There is a view over the top of the variegated lily of the valley shrub to the back of the water garden. Sadly this view includes Mrs. Pee's barren, cement back yard. You see the green foliage plants beside the pond by the deck... a geranium, a monks hood and some primula. The marsh marigolds are making a lovely big golden clump and are reflected in the pond.
This evening when I looked out to the pond, I saw 2 little gold fish. So, there are some fish in there!! Hope to see more of them as the temperatures warm up.

There are two trilliums in the back woodland garden. The big one has 3 blossoms. It was buried beneath a big leaf of a plant. It is doing much better since I uncovered it. This area needs some attention to curtailing the invasive blue bells. I hope to carefully use the Weed be gone spray on them. They are getting all over the garden, not just in the woodland area. Across the sidewalk from the trilliums and hiding the old compost bin, is the old lily of the valley shrub that is in full bloom and is perfuming the garden. The white fawn lilies are showing in the photo. You can see some of the bluebells in there. They will be very carefully painted with weed be gone, and hopefully give the lilies a chance.

A daphne, a lewisia, and two tiny alpines on the small rockery at the back. I am happy to see a few of last year's alpine purchase surviving. The lewisias are not the showy ones, but are nice little rockery plants. This little rockery needs top dressing of compost and perhaps more pea gravel. Most of these tiny alpines do not want moisture around their crowns. I have yet to transplant this year's alpine purchases. I really only have two or three to go in. I will be putting the cyclamen coum in the front little rockery area where is is better shaded. The willows will go into larger pots until I get time to transplant them in the right locations.

Spring Flowers

2011-04-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

More photos from April 18. The wind flower, anemones along the old sidewalk beside the garage

The stone path at the back. It seemed to be missing a stone, that I have since replaced. Now I need another fairly big stone for the front rockery. This shows the windflowers and the old cement sidewalk at the end of this stone path. The other end of this path goes to the water garden.

The arabis and my best hyacinth that are along the driveway beside the house.

The primulas putting on a good show, in front of the rhodos and the hellebores by the back steps up to the deck.

I had a quick look at a headline about the uprising in Syria and all the people being killed. Canadians are advised to leave that country, too. The news is full of these horrible happenings in the Muslim countries, and of climate catastrophes. Its good to live here. My anal, silly old women neighbors are a joke compared to what I see in the news.

I am reading another book by Phillipa Gregory.. this one about Katherine of Aragon and the Tudors. Its very depressing too. I should really have been out gardening as it was a lovely day.

This is the strawberries. I put composed manure around them and covered that with the grass clippings after mowing the grass bits. Hope I can keep them mulched to retain moisture.