Start of the Rum Pot

I started the Rum Pot with 4 cups of strawberries. They are rather pithy, so I half or quartered them. I added 1 1/2 cups of sugar and let stand for 1/2 hour. Then I added 2 cups of raspberries and 1/2 cup of sugar. Added brandy to cover, which took 1 1/2 cups of brandy. The recipe says to keep it in a cool, dark room and stir every 2 weeks. I put it into the closet by the patio door. The small rum pot is half full already.
Last year I added quite a lot of brandy and blackberries, plums, blueberries, strawberries, yellow plums. We shall see how it goes this year. The yellow plum crop does not seem to be abundant this year. The purple plums seem to be non existant again. Might be buying some of them again. I like the taste of the purple plums.

I got more weeding and clipping done in the back garden, especially in the pond area. There is a bud on the big lily. So this should be nice to see when it opens. I missed taking care of my garden in the last few years, as we have usually been away for half the summer. Its nice to get things cleaned up, clipped, watered and looking good. My compost bin is heaping full and my twig pile is growing. After the good will truck takes stuff on the 13th, I shall call Tom (if I can find his number) to come and haul the rest away.

Water Gardens, real and on line

I was at Cannor nursery yesterday and got some grass seed to overseed the lawn, 3 water hyacinths, 2 thrifts, a pink and a tiny succulent house plant.

We have been having some really hot weather, and I should be out watering again. We are suppose to be on water rationing. I don't know the times or days that I should be watering, bother.

I got my Japanese garden album finished and loaded to my page. I revised all the main pages and subpages and reloaded them too. I like the music I have on the water garden subpage. Its a Chopin piano called Butterfly etude that I collected off limewire.

Picture, web, and gardening stuff

I have been playing in the RAW converter again. I am getting a lot more comfortable with using PS CS. So much more to learn.

I have the individual pages of the Japanese garden to annotate and then I can load that album. I did a few changes of the main pages, for when I reload them with the new drop down menu items on My Town.

Yesterday I tried to collect The Matrix without any luck, so far. I need a plug in for the WM player..... don't know if I need it right now, as I have too much to do.

We are having some very hot weather - up to 30+. Last nite I watered the vegetable garden and the pond area. Filled the pond. The new fish seem to have grown about an inch longer. All 8 of them are still there. I have been feeding the ones in the deck tub and the pond every evening at about 5 - 7.

No Words - Bears

Playing. :))

More No Words

No words forum on photo.net

I am thinking of starting a "Bear" thread on the No Words forum with this one. I have learned how to add photos to those forums without linking directly to my HD shots. On photo.net I use the properties path for the photo in this code:

8Center8 8img src="http://etc."8 8/center8 (with the brackets where the 8s are). The photos are then larger than the 512 pixels across that the forums allows otherwise. Also I will never move this photo on my blog, but I might move it around on photo.net or delete it entirely, and break the path to the No Words forum. I can check to see how they look on line, also, from my blog. See if they are too big, etc.

Limewire and gardening

I spent yesterday downloading Limewire and learning about it. There are all kinds of files to share. The above penguin picture is one someone was sharing. It is not mine. Cool photo.
Last nite I downloaded The Life of Brian and today I am getting the March of the Penguins. It takes forever to download the movies. I have to learn how to burn them for storage off my HD, next.

A couple of days ago I got the vegetable garden weeded and got some more clipping and pruning done around the garden. I moved the daylily over a few feet, as it was crowding my best pink. The pinks all over the garden are lovely and fragrant. I should root more cuttings all around the edges of the garden; especially along the border of the stone path under the roses. A whole bed of pinks would be fantastic! I should move that red tall plant (Montebretia, I think it is) to further back along Parmar's side of the front garden, and plant a clumping plant in there, perhaps a nice lupine. After moving the daylily I had to water it in and so watered around the back and filled the pond. So, I shall need a list of plants I will need... like grass seed, a lupine., pinks perhaps. I have room for 3 more hedging cedars along Parmar's side, to block the view of the David from the street.

I have the photos for my Japanese garden album sorted out. The topiary from Butchart's garden is one that I don't think I will be using. So, I now need to resize and fix the photos and then load them to that album. I am slowly getting things done on my page. The thyme photos and campanulas I expect to add to my June album.

Web page

I finished revising and loaded the album May under Gardening to my page. Now I am caught up in the revisions I needed to do. I have learned quite a bit more about using my PS RAW converter and am starting to use PS more and more. I can start shooting RAW again, just in case I ever get that photo that National Geographic will be begging me to release. :)) Sure, why not?
So, I am now working on the Japanese Garden part of the Water Garden. I will have 4 shots of Butchart's Gardens Japanese Garden included. This is one of them.

This morning we got up earlier and went to the Father's Day Model T 'Barney Oldfield Rally'. We raced around the route in 20 minutes when we were suppose to take 45 minutes. So, naturally we got the least points. ha! Something backwards about that. But we don't want that ugly trophy to sit in our house again for a year. Was good to see people.

Web page and gardening

Yesterday I loaded the revised April album to my web page. I won't do any changes in May, so I should have it loaded soon.

This is a shot of a Campanula in the rain. I will load it to my June album. These flowers are blooming in the garden just now. White ones and blue ones. I should get out and try get some photos of them. Foxgloves are in bloom, rhodos finishing, roses covered with blooms and fragrance., thyme for fragrance also, clematis blooming everywhere.

I did a bit more weeding and clipping in the Japanese garden. It all looks better when clipped and cleaned up. I burned the grass in spots where I added weed 'n feed. It looks bloody awful.

The Black and White Version

Testing RAW conversions

I am slowly learning a bit more about this converstion process. I cannot seem to get them to save as the same 'temperature' that I see in my PS conversion. Hmmmmm...

www.usedvictoria.com

Yesterday I added the 5 items to the used victoria web site for selling all kinds of things, over the net. Pat priced them and wrote the ads. Within 2 hours of putting the ad in, the rider mower was gone. The bicycle sold last nite, also. The reel mower was just sold tonite. These items were in pretty good shape. We must have had them priced right.

Just the ladder and the tank remain. The ads run for a month.

We have yet to get rid of the rest of the left overs from the garage sale, as they are sitting about on the patio. Some will go to the goodwill truck, some to the dump, and some to the wood pile.

I spent about an hour and a half mowing the lawn and weeding. I got the area along the garage cleaned up. It could have some annuals added, maybe.

Gardening and web page

Yesterday I got the light garden cleaned up and all the plants cleaned, fed and watered. Through a couple of the most awful african violets. The tip of the Norfolk Island Pine that I put into a pot of dirt seems to be surviving and has taken root.
My little rock plant willow that I keep on the deck is showing some growth. I lost one of the plants that I bought at the Rock and Alpine show, but the rest are doing ok. The annuals that I transplanted are doing good too.
I have reloaded the January, February and March albums to my web page. They seem to be working properly now.

Gardening, web page, and stuff

I have been busy since my last post.
I put weed and feed on the grass areas, we had sun for about 3 days and then it began to sprinkle and rain a bit. So the grass areas are coming along slowly. They need mowing again.
The vegetable garden has many small weeds and some of the vegetables are up. Needs weeding. The weeds all over the yard need some roundup applied, again. I am slowly getting them under control, I think. The pond looks good when filled. All the lilies are showing leaves, so I should get blooms from them all.

I have discovered a glitch in my gardening albums on my web page, so I am redong each album and reloading. I have finished loading January and February. No matter, not too many people go there anyway.

Today our neighbourhood had garage sales. First time I ever did this. There wasn't much traffic. But getting things ready did get the back garage cleaned up a bit. Now, we must send the old stuff off to the dump or give the better stuff to the sally ann.

Pat, Bruce, Mike and Ron went to the swap meet at Cloverdale or where ever it has moved to now.

My Andean Fire orchid has a bud! Pixie is blooming and the pink Paph is just finishing up. One called Phrag. has buds too. The phrag looks like a dendrobium - leaves, anyway.

I renewed by Usefilm account today, heavens only knows why! There now is a critiques corner that is just mostly getting the same old shit for critiques.

More Gardening and Photoshop

I have spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to do this collage thing in PS CS. I can do it in my old photo editors. Oh well. Eventually I will figure it out.

I transplanted 4 of the new little cedars behind the herbs on the vegetable garden. I transplanted the Easter lily to the bed along the sidewalk, and the anemone blanda corms to the front along in front of the roses. Clipped a few trees and shrubs. It has started raining lightly, again by 6:00.

Butchart Gardens and White Heather Tea Room and Ink

yesterday we had a late lunch at the White Heather Tea Room, compliments of Candy and Gary. The food was scrumptious and the service superb.

While searching for photos to round out my Japanese Gardening album on my page, I got working with the conversion from RAW to Jpeg of my Butchart Gardens photos. I have some good stuff in there! It is just going to take a little more time to work them to make them presentable. But then I will have the larger files, if ever I should be able to use them to print out for contests, calendars, etc. The other photos are from some recent Jpegs of my own garden. My garden is just bursing out all over with color. The vegetables are starting to peek out of the soil now too. We have had semi rainy weather for the last week.

We got ink for both of our printers yesterday and I spent a couple of hours getting Pat's printer loaded and working properly. It is set to do black always. I could not find the printer in the program files. I have no idea where it is on that PC. Should do a search, I guess.