Archive: September 2007

Apparently "Yahoo Photos" is closing... If you're one of the victims, perhaps you want to check out Webshots.

As a free Webshots member, you’ll start off with 1,000 photos and 100 videos, and you’ll get 100 more photos and 10 more videos for each month you’re with them. If you want more storage, check out the Premium membership, which starts you off with 5,000 photos and 500 videos, plus 500 more photos and 50 more videos for each month of membership.

I have been very happy with Webshots and plan to add many more albums. 

Had quite the workout today. First Cecile and I went to the lily bulb sale where I picked up 3 bulbs, a white martagon seedling and 2 asiatics, 'Tropical Breeze' and 'Wizard'. Had some coffee and baked goodies. The sale and the goodies were in greenhouses and we were quite hot. Gorgeous day for the middle of September but a bit too hot to be in a greenhouse for any length of time.

Next we went to Ikea. I picked up a coffee table to have a spot for my AeroGarden. Another winter gardening project... That Ikea warehouse is huge and a few times we got lost.

When we got home, I went into the backyard to start the fall cleaning. Got to get ready for fence painting... Stayed at it for about 2 hours, then came inside to rest, have supper, chat with Alicia who was over for supper.

After supper I thought I'd go have a nap, but my mind was on that coffee table. So I put it together in a bit over an hour. The process was straight forward, but I had to take a number of breaks to rest up.

Now I'm pooped and have a headache. Yet I'm happy with all I was able to do. I just hope I won't pay for it later... 

First, for me there is the joy of outdoor gardening, but I can only do that for a few months in the year. Over the past few years I have gone from "almost everything" to "almost just lilies." The hybridizing bug got me, I must admit. Asiatic crosses can produce flowers the second year and most results are unexpected due to the gene pool. I like surprises. :)

My indoor gardening grew out of a need to keep doing something with plants in the winter (beating the winter blahs). I started out with Christmas cacti and a bit later with orchid cacti after someone gave me some cuttings. The orchid cacti take at least 3 years from cutting to bloom, so the Christmas cacti had most of my attention the first couple of years. I quickly learned that pink and red are not the only colours. I now have various pinks, red, white, yellow/salmon and orange. I take my CC's and OC's outside in the middle of June and bring them back inside toward the end of August. My red OC was blooming when I took it outside, bloomed again early August, and is now (mid September) in bud for what I imagine the final show for the year.

My CC's started blooming in August, but not profusely. Right now though, I have several hundreds of buds and that's no exaggeration. As long as I keep watering them well, I should have a wonderful show of flowers the next month. The pinks in the south window are already starting. I have some theories why I have so many buds/flowers. First, I only fertilize once, in the spring, and second, before I bring them in, they get some real cool nights...close to freezing. I read somewhere that if a plant thinks it is going to die, it will try to reproduce. Maybe they are just being panicked into flowering...

And yeah, some bugs come in with them. Most are taken care of by the spiders that come in also.

I also have several spring cacti (Hatiora). The red one out-did itself this year. The pink one did nothing... So go figure...

African violets are useful because I can start new plants by leaf cuttings, so there is work (gardening) involved. I'm not that fanatical about removing dead flowers and leaves, or fertilizing to a schedule. Yet my babies do fine, mostly anyway...

This past week I added an "AeroGarden" to grow herbs over the winter. They call it aeroponic, but it's like hydroponic. Check out their website. http://www.aerogrow.com/ or http://www.interwood.com/a/p/aero/AeroDetails.shtml for Canadians. Not cheap, but interesting...

So why do YOU grow what you grow? 

This week I am off work to do garden work and paint the fence.

While those primary tasks need attention, I took some time yesterday to enjoy the beautiful fall colours in the river valley before they are all gone. You can enjoy the photos on Webshots in my Fall 2007 album.

Got a 1.7x teleconverter for my 70-200mm lens, making it a 120-340mm lens. I don't think it will get a lot of use because of the 120mm at the wide angle side, but it did a good job on the squirrel shot. I imagine it will work better with a tripod. The monopod was useless because it stopped up and down motion, but exaggerated a side-to-side swing. And would you believe it, the tripod I ordered over a month ago, finally showed up today. I think a trial of all the new equipment is needed sometime this week.

This story just ran on CBC news and is so full of holes, a rant is required. Reading the CBC article on their website also invalidates some of the assumptions presented on the news program.

After having read the AP story, the reader is invited to make up his/her own mind.

Let me start by saying I dismiss the study, just the presentation of the outcomes and what was presented as fact. Like the "fact" in the title. There are many more "facts" to consider as both articles point out, yet all were downplayed. Age and weight are factors, yet the story went "when age, weight, and education are factored in..." That made me sit up. How does education make a woman more prone to breast cancer?

Both stories bear out the error in the news story as it was presented to the public. Can this be attributed to journalistic license or journalistic error? And who will take accountability serious? 

Makes me wonder how many people take the news seriously and change their lives by the stories they see and hear?