Blue Heron visitor

This big bird was checking out the fish in my garden pond this afternoon. I could not move the vertical blinds as it would have been spooked. I did a short video of it walking along the deck railing. I cannot seem to get the video to load to You Tube so that I can post it here.

As soon as I started to move closer the bird saw me and was gone. No doubt it will be back. Maybe I should have left it alone and watched if it did try to go fishing. I don't think it can reach the bottom of the pond unless it was floating and dived. Hope I catch it next time!

Today I spent hours trying to figure out yet another movie maker, so I can edit my videos. Was a big waste of time for all I learned about it. So, today has been less than productive.

Yesterday, I was learning how to make buttons for my web site and my blog or anything else I might want to have a button for. You can see my first attempt in the side panel with the professionals buttons. ;-) So, this new notion and obsession, of course, needs a page on my old web page. I spent quite a few hours making the Creations page and putting a button on it, uploading it all to my domain. Now I have decided to expand the Creations page to include hotlinks to any .pps slide shows that I do. I know I can upload them to my domain, as I have one uploaded now. All of this takes forever for me to figure out and build. It is by no means professional, but it is mine, for as long as I want to keep the domain.

There is some progress made on our new web site, but its hard to tell, when the features are not yet in place to use. Soon, hopefully!

My light garden

I have spent most of the last 2 days cleaning up my light garden. I repotted violets, cleaned cactus, repotted the 2 begonias, cleaned the orchids and the trays. All the plants are watered and clean and tomorrow I will fertilize the ones that are going to survive the cleaning. I split one very tired violet into three. One looks to be fading fast. I really don't need 3 of the same. My light garden has 3 shelves and is 4 feet long by about 5.6 feet tall. This was my 'picker upper' gift to myself when I turned 50. Its a pleasure to own. In the morning, I turn on its lights and spray the few orchids, violets and the begonias with a light mist. This has become a ritual for the morning, like brushing my teeth.

The theme for the week at VFXY is 'something new". I hope the new little buds on the old orchid will be okay for the theme. I bought this orchid for the half price of $12 at the grocery store. This store puts their orchids from the flower shop on at half price when they loose their blooms. Its a good deal. I have two of them now that have re-bloomed and are in good healthy condition. They are not specialty orchids, just phalinopsis, but they look good, and bloom better than the fancy ass ones I have purchased at orchid shows. My violets are mostly minatures. I only have so much room and am now at full capacity. Air plants are really small and showy when in bloom. I have one that blooms and the other one just seems to be constantly green... no blooms. I have never had a cactus bloom for me yet. I guess I shall need to get a Christmas cactus, or treat the ones I have very badly so they think their life is at an end and they should go forth and propogate.

Garden at the end of December

At the end of December I saw the humming birds out at the feeder again. I thought they were missing for a few days. I did get a couple of photos of them, but nothing memorable or any better than ones I have uploaded in the past. While out trying to get a good photo of the little birds, I took this shot of my best mossy rock in the moss garden. I see this little area of the little Japanese garden just over the railing of the deck. The moss is coming along quite nicely. It is growing well on the waterfall also. The garden is looking pretty good. I do need to clean up more leaves. The lichens in the photo are a favourite subject of mine in the wintertime. I get such good bokeh shooting at them. There are several kinds on the plum tree. These are zoomed photos.

I spent some time researching the Canon 7d today and have seen nothing but good reports on it. At one point in time I thought I might want a full frame Canon and L lenses. But for my needs, I think the 7d and S lenses will be just great. In fact, I was reading one review that said the S lenses were sharper. Plus less costly. So I have a few notes and now need to do some pricing. There was a 15 mm f/2.8 fish eye lens mentioned that would be fun to play with. I should be able to get a Lensbaby that works with the 7 d also. It will be a while yet before I order. I think I will keep my S3 IS for travel photos, as it is so easy to use and I never have time when travelling to play with lens changes anyway. The S3 does tolerable super macro photos for those inspired moments.

I have been spending some time on the new Megashot site. We are almost ready to go public with it. There are soooo many cool features. We will have the ability to make our own home page, private or public galleries from our photos, a presentation slideshow with audio, a 'store' of our own for ecommerce, and many more features. We can build and participate in communities of any topic we are interested in. We can rate photos on the site to choose the best, anonymously. There are contests to participate in. We can also derive some ad revenue from a community or on our home page. Most of the features are optional and fully customizable. Any member is going to be very busy on their site, just to begin. Megashot's main focus is photography, but it is also a networking site and a way to get your art work or even club activities advertised and seen. Hope to have more news on this in a week or two. I really quite excited about it all. Cyrus has designed and has had the whole site built. He has been working on this for long hours (not to mention long expenses) over the past 2 years. It has come together beautifully. There is, of course, more things he wants to do but hopefully we can get this much of the site on line soon. Start making your own banner for your site on Megashot. :-}}