September gardening and more

 I spent quite a bit of time in photoshop on this photo.  On our Rocky Mountain tour we took the Harbor to Harbor little airplane from Victoria to Vancouver and on the return also.  This is the return trip.  You can see the messy spots from shooting through the window.  We were only allowed 25 lbs luggage on the flight, but the beautiful scenery from the air was worth it.

 This is the sedum, Autumn Joy.  Its an excellent plant for this time of year.  It holds the blooms for weeks and the dried heads into the winter.

 Another shot of the Rocky Mountaineer along the kicking horse river. 

This is how far the park makeover has progressed.  There are lots of people using this trail.  I can just see down the trail, over the front cedar hedge, if I view from my dining room.  When the leaves fall off the liquid amber tree I will be able to see the trail and traffic out of the living room window, too.  The grass seed they put down a couple of weeks ago is sprouting.  We have had some sun and some rain... just beautiful fall weather.  Over the last two days we had an inch of rain.  We need more, but of course, the rainy season has started and we will get more.
The garden is doing ok, with the sedum, michaelmas daisies, and others that I will show when I get the photos done up.  We have had several car events in the last few weeks, so I am reviewing those photos also. 
Last week it took me two days to clean up the light garden, with cleaning and repotting plants, cleaning the trays, replacing burnt out lights, and then watering and feeding the plants.  I have an orchid that has not bloomed before with 2 buds, and there are 3 phalenopsis in buds, and the hai marie discolor is in bloom. There are several African Violets in bloom.    It all looks really good.

I spent the morning playing with the customization of my PlayTime community front page, on Megashot.  It is now ready for Halloween.  Hope I can find some scary photos to invite. 

My freezer is full of soups and casseroles and pre-prepared vegetable dishes.  This makes it so easy to get lunch ready or a quick supper when I have been otherwise busy. 

The deer pasture makeover

 This is from last week when Don Mann Excavating were starting on the makeover of the deer pasture into a park as per the Sannich Parks plans.  They had the Plan man from the Parks department out there with his plans spread out to let the Mann man know what bushes to remove, etc. 

After they scraped off the blackberry bushes and other shrubs that did not belong in the park, they dug a curvey trench about a foot deep and 6 feet wide and filled it with drain rock.

The new path was then packed with the great roller machine and gravel added to the top layer.

This machine shook the whole house when it was running to pack the path.  Mann excavating finished last week and this week the Park people have been in with 3 trucks and a couple of digging machines.  They did more clean up of the shurubs and trees that are going to be kept.  I did not get pictures!  They have a circular form built on one end of the path.  I think they mean to fill this circle with red bricks as they have done at the entry to the park on the other end of Grange... just a block up from our place.  I see that they have also removed some concrete on Gerda and have cleaned up the edges of what used to be a street.  This part of the path now joins to the deer pasture and goes on into the park.
I was not seeing any deer the last few months in the pasture.  In talking with some neighbours they told me that there had been a cougar in the park.  And yes, that reminded me of the experience of last autumn when Angie and I were going to go through the park to the Crooked Goose for lunch, and encountered a young girl who was babysitting a couple young children.  She told us that a cougar had crossed the path while she was walking!  We also have eagles in the park and every year recently I have seen the new ones out taking flight training.  I guess the wildlife is doing its natural cycle. 

This past week I have been making soups, spaghetti sauces, prepared vegetable dishes, cabbage rolls, and chicken stock, etc.  Perhaps it is just the time for harvest and this is something that is an inherited  behavioral trait.  I have a few more soups to make up.  So, when I am finished I will have a good selection of soups for the winter.  I started doing this last year because we wanted to cut back on our salt intake.  The soups from the grocery stores were just too full of salt and who knows what else.  I find I enjoy this and it makes it a lot easier to get lunch on the table or to have an entre or vegetable ready for our supper.   I was going to add recipes, but anyone can find whatever they need on the internet.

Digital darkroom

 This is a photo from the Upper Canada Village from our trip in 2009.

 This is from our trip on the Rocky Mountaineer.
I have been spending a lot of time in photoshop, trying to learn to improve my files.  I have been using 16 bit mode and find that it adds more data.  Also adding layers with adjustments on them adds more and more data, too and the files get larger.  When I save as PNG files they are even larger.  I can open files in camera raw to do even more interesting adjustments.  Yesterday, I found the transform adjustment under lens correction / manual.   The PNG site is very interesting:  This blog won't let me upload a PNG file so I just put them into Jpeg, untiul I discover how to reduce the size without losing data.  I downloaded Gauntlet, but I am not sure if it supports 16 bit.  It made a smaller one larger for some reason.  .... more learning! 

 The Atlantes from our trip to France in 2002

 The three graces at the Louvre from our trip to France in 2002.  The above images were turned back to jpegs after processing in 16 bit, camera raw, 16 bit mode, etc. 

This is the Virginia creeper from a couple of weeks ago.  While we were away it slumped down the pole and is looking rather like an octopus.  I thought I would leave it there while it changed colors, but it is getting kind of ragged with people driving on it.  Pat might be getting the driveway fixed, so it might not last until color change time.

Saanich has had Don Mann excavating in to make a trail across the deer pasture.  They have removed what seems to be most of the trees and bushes that Saanich does not want to keep in the park.  So far the trail looks nice, but it has two outlets onto our street for some odd reason.  The other end of this repair goes to Gerda St. where they are going to make some sort of a park monument thing within a circle with about a 10 foot diameter.   The trail has had a layer of drain rock and now a layer of gravel.  It is has curves and is quite close to the River.  This changes the whole appearance of the deer pasture.   Pictures and more later.

The yellow plums are finished for this season.  We ate quite a few and I have 4 containers of pureed fruit frozen.  So far, we have had 2 figs.  There are a few more ripening.  I watered the front a couple of times. And watered at the back.  Finally, tonite we seem to have been getting some measurable rain.