June... errr September in the Garden

 I am working on the June album for my old web page on the Gardening page.  This is one of my favourite photos of the west coast planter that sits in the front garden.  In September it looks quite nice also, with the mounding alpines and no blooms.This photo was from 2010, June.  Now the mounding plants have covered the pea gravel mulch and need to be pruned to keep them from growing over each other.
In this bed and to the left of these plants I have some David Austin roses.  I had montebretias in front of the roses, but they were flopping over the stone path.  I dug them out last week and gave them away by putting them into plastic bags at the street with a FREE sign on them.  When Derek came to get his black bamboo shoots, there was one bagful left for him.  Today, I transplanted the Japanese quince that I have had on the deck, into the spot in front of the roses.  Hopefully, it will have its red blossoms that will be equally attractive to the humming birds as the crocosomias were.  I have too many pots on my deck and shall move more off and into the garden as soon as I find spots for them.  I have two small willows that are doing well in the pots, but they like lots of water, so they will need to be in a place where I can easily water them. 

This is another June photo from 2010. It is a good shot of the back garden... well part of the back garden.  The stone path is about a year old.  The grass surrounds the apple tree.  The yarrow that is looking so good in the photo, has died, and I really must replace it.  Maybe I could put the very nice delphinium I have on the deck, into this spot.   In September, that is today..the apple tree is loaded with apples and is dragging the branches to the ground.  The michaelmas daisies are in bloom.  The stone path is looking good as it has the lovely Corsican mint growing between the stepping stones.  I replaced the field stones you see in the path with round stepping stones over part of this path, and it is much easier to navigate.  The field stones are too uneven unless I have managed to find a good flat side to them.

I have these June photos because I have been working on the June album for my old web page.  I have finished the resizing and tweaking of the photos for this album.  I should have 17 pages of 10 thumbnails per page.  There are some really good plants and photos in this album and I must get them finished and loaded to my old web page.
I was amazed to find that I could get the music on my ipad, on this old page.  It has a bit of javascript I found on the internet to make the music play... and I did that years ago.  I was much younger then.  :-)))
I mowed the lawn also today.  I have been busy!  In the morning I finished preserving the 25 lbs of purple plums.  I have 22 pints of the fruit.  I pit the plums, quarter them, and bring them to a boil for about a minute to get rid of any bacteria.  I add a tiny bit of sugar, a bit of water  and a splash of brandy to help preserve them, .. of course.  :-)).  I have a few dozen left over for enjoying fresh.  They are so good.  In the afternoon, I made 8 quarts of minestrone soup.  We tested it for supper tonight and it is very good too.  So, I have 10 of the 580 ml plastic containers to label and freeze.  The rest we will have for lunch in the next few days.    Since I am not eating wheat, I did not add the broken spaghetti.  I boil some up for Pat's soup, each time I make it.  It needs to have parmasean cheese and basil added to it just before serving.  I will be making ratatouille, muligatawny and a few other soups soon, also. We are trying to stay away from the prepared, salty soups, we get in the grocery stores.  So, since I like to have something on hand these homemade soups should fill the bill for convenience.  The apple tree is loaded with fruit, so I may be making a lot of apple sauce, too.  Maybe even a pie or two for himself.

Since my doctor told me about this Wheat Belly book I am back to losing weight again.  This book is very very scarey.  Wheat causes all sorts of problems for our physical and even mental systems.  It seems that the genetic changes to the wheat in the last 50 years have caused us to become obese and have all sorts of other diseases.  You really must get a copy of the book and read it.  It is hard to get 'off wheat" but you will notice a difference in just the first few days.  I notice my energy level return to normal.  I thought I was just getting old and slowing down... well ... now I know that a lot of this tiredness was  due to the effects of wheat.

In the garden and on line

 Yesterday I discovered an email in my junk folder, from the CEO of Multiply.  They seem to be moving the head office to Jakarta, because of the shopping potential.  We were given links to plug-ins for Chrome or Firefox to download our stuff to our computers.  There were other options like transferring to Blogger.  This was my first photo page with MSN started in Jan of 2001.  In 2008 MSN migrated those of us who wanted to keep our accounts, to Multiply.  I moved and added a Travel album to my account.  But this time I  downloaded my old photos in their albums and deleted my account with them.  I was not really using that place.  But, of course, it has the nostalgic ties for me.  This is one of my better flower photos in one of the albums.  It is a lewisia.  It looks like I picked the flower and put it on a deep purple background.  I don't recall what that background was, but it goes well with the flower. 

This is one of the photos from the week end of the 7, 8, 9th when we were at Campbell River and Quadra Island for the Island Challenge meet.  We had excellent weather and a really good tour.  I am processing my photos and adding them to one of my Megashot accounts.  When I get them finished I will link all the people who were on the tour to the 'gallery'.  Pat has sent the link to a few people.  I don't seem to be getting many views, so far.  I think people just look at the 'thumbnails' because they are pretty big, and do not bother clicking on them to enlarge them, and thus give the photo a 'view' for the views counts.   I have quite a few photos to do for this event, as well as all of them for the Can-Am on the 13, 14, 15 and 16th.  I have managed to get a few of my "June" album for my old web page processed.  Still have about 12 of them to resize and process.  I might even get that album finished this year.

I spent a bit of time hoeing in the vegetable patch.  It has good tilth after all the compost I added last Fall and this Spring.  The gladiolas are up but have not formed buds.  They were 'on sale' when I bought them... so maybe next year I will get blooms.  I shall leave them in the ground under more mulch.  The dill got about 8 inches high.. not a good showing.  I have marigolds that are just getting started.  I know we had a late spring but these marigolds are really really late in getting started.  My giant Russian sunflowers sprouted one plant and it grew to an amazing foot tall with a tiny bloom on it.  I will try again next year, with more nutrients added to the soil.  I know the patch does not get enough sun. 
I found one more fig on the tree and there are 2 more big ones ripening.  This brings our total figs to a grand number of a dozen.  There are lots of little ones that may even ripen if this weather keeps up.  I watered the back and at the front a couple of days ago, so this encourages the plants in their growth cycle.  I have 3 dozen purple plums in the house.  I have pitted and quartered 8 of them; added about 3 tablespoons of sugar and let them stand for half hour, then added them to the rum pot.  The rum pot still has lots of liquid so I am not adding any more.  I have been taking it out of the fridge for a few hours every day hopefully to help it evaporate some of the liquid and become a nice thick rum pot mix. 

A busy September

 I am slowly getting the photos tweaked for my June album on My Garden web page.  This one caught my eye.  It is a vista looking over the valerine flowers towards the front door.  I was surprised to see this vista but I need to be on my neighbors lawn to get this view.  I must have a look from the street and see if it can be seen from there.  I have 15 more photos to do before I am finished that album and ready to create the album with photoshop.  Then I add any text to the album in note pad, It takes a long time to get all the pages of the album reworked in note pad, but I like having the ability to create individual albums, with my limited abilities with html.

 On the 7, 8, 9th we were at Campbell River for the Antique Car Event, The Island Challenge.  The meet hotel was right by the river.  Wonderful location.  A good time was had by all.  Good weather, good food and good touring.  Was good to see everyone.

This is a photo from our trip to Saskatchewan in July/Aug.  I photoshopped this with my 'Virtual Photographer' software, that I am running in an old copy of Photoshop.  I like how the colors turned out in the photo.  I am trying to do up the photos for both of the above trips and add them to their galleries on one of my megashot accounts.  Both galleries are slowly coming along.    I will use the same photos to add to the albums on my old web page, too.  So, I am slowly getting more done on my old web page. 
I have been reading a bit on my ipad, and learning a little more about it every day.  So many things can be done just by touch, and there is the keyboard, too, of course.  Today I saw a camera in the London Drugs advertisements.  This Panosonic Lumix has a Leica lens and a 20x zoom.  It also does panoramas.  London Drugs price beats Amazon prices, too.  This camera also has some 'touch' navigation for the shooting set up.  At $350 I think it is a good deal for a 20x zoom.  I have until the 30th to decide if I want it.  It might replace my Canon S3 IS for carry around ... it has image stabilizing.  But it will need the battery charged.  I like the S3 IS ability to run on ordinary AA batteries.  I really wish they would all go to this easy mode but I suppose they make a lot of money on the sale of the batteries.