Hello, Bonjour, Aloha, Konichi wa, Sego, Buon giorno, Buenos Dias and all that, to you all.
Here we are with a brand new chat thread. Please feel free to kick off your shoes and let your hair down. We came from:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1178182/#new
Take care, everyone.
Pu'ole, a.k.a. Sylvain.
Thank you, Pu'ole. As hot as it is here right now, a polar bear would be having a difficult time. Even in the shade it is extremely hot and no end in sight. Watching those Atlantic tropical storms as it will take a really big push to move this high pressure system away.
I've gotten used to the heat for the most part but I don't stay out in it for very long if I can avoid it. Too easy to get sick from the heat.
I hope we get some good storms this year. Not big hurricanes but strong enough to move the system finally.
They ware warning that our air conditions are in the orange range. Asking those that can to stay inside.
Hi, all.
Luckily, our temps remain in the 90s. We keep the house at 78 or 79F because Gail's arthritis really puts on a show when we set it lower. Even at those higher settings, it's still comfortable in the house because the AC pulls the dampness out of the air and you feel it when you walk into the house after having been outside for some time.
We are getting rain every day, not hours upon hours of rain, but enough to help the garden. I have no complaints. I hope you all make it through these record-setting temperatures unscathed.
Take care, all.
Pu'ole, a.k.a. Sylvain.
So sorry for our friends in Phoenix. Another horrific dust storm and the season is not over.
The rainy season has finally hit the Fl. Keys. I was fortunate enough to go on vaction to Nevada/ Arizona for a couple weeks and came back to awesome growth. The trees have all put on new leaves and it is time to start pruning again. My aroids are loveing the rain and I am melting in the humidity.
Scott
Gosh! The weather that some of you are coping with is awful! I hope that those of you that need rain get it soon, and there seems to be no end in sight with the heat rolling across the country. What a difficult year it's been.
PK, just found the pics of your garden you e-mailed me - sorry, there has been a lot going on round here - I just love your "sun room" and pond, so very pretty! Please post some of those pics here, i am sure everyone would enjoy them - I wish I had such a lovely area to sit in and survey the garden.
Welcome Scott (old dude), so glad to have you join our "family"! Isn't it amazing how much a garden can grow when your back is turned! Would love to see some pics...
We have been going through old family pictures that my FIL had. Frank and Robert had never seen them before, and is been very interesting for them to see their grandparents and other relatives on their fathers side, all of whom were quite unknown to them. I have followed their grandmother's branch of the family (who I found out were the Van Horns) a little way back in time. It's very addictive! Have any of you done any research into ancestry, if so is there a site that you can recommend such as ancestry.com or something else that is better? As soon as the dust has settled, I am going to try to scan all those old photos into the computer and (hopefully) get them on dvd's for the grand and greatgrand kids. I have to do something as some of the photos are well over 100 years old and I am not sure how long they are going to last now that they have seen the light of day...Any hints or tips on how to organize them would be appreciated...
Off this morning to the eye surgeon as I think something has "gone wrong" with my cataract surgery - bummer! Hope I am wrong!
Have a nice day everyone.
Aloha
Jen, first I'm so sorry that your eye is bothering you. Hope it is something very simple. My SIL has been doing genealogy of our family for several years. I know she uses ancestry.com but I will see if there are others. When my mom died I inherited a ton of pictures and diaries. The three of us siblings each have a share. Very interesting trying to pick out the various traits that one of us may have inherited. I purchased 3 ring binders and put most of the things inside acid free holders for the binders. (can't think of what you call them) oldtimers
Please report about your eye.
Good morning,
It's a hot and humid day here especially since I neglected to pay my electric bill and spent the night with no power which also meant almost no sleep.
Tony has gone to Santa Rosalia to pay the bill and tell them I'm old and sick so will they please not wait five days to restore power as they did for his neighbor. Being the resourceful person he is, he also thought to hook up extension cords from Dana and Tom's so I have my puter and a fan.
Jen, I sure hope your eye is OK. Let us know. Prayers coming your way.
hugs, katie
Our actual temps went over 100 today but the humidity was only around 30% so we didn't have to deal with that so much.
Jen, hope your eye is ok!!
LouC, pleeeease post some of the pics of your garden!! Been a long time since we've seen any.
Hi.
I love rescuing old pictures from the ravages of time. I scan them, fix the image with PhotoShop and give them a 2nd life for future generations. If you have such pictures, please do not hesitate to ask me to work my magic on them. I'd be glad to oblige. Actually, the privilege would be mine.
Here is a sample of my work, showing before and after. I'm not yet quite done with this one, but the restoration process is well underway.
Take care, all.
Sylvain.
GM, Sylvain and all.
How you do dat?
Jen, sorry about your loss.
I also am on Ancestry.com and love it. I have a hand written chart of my father's side back to 1752, so I have a head start. It's amazing what I'm finding.
Hugs to all..gots ta go....DH calling.
Nancy
What a nice group of people this seems to be! I live in Marco Island on the West Coast of Florida. We've been in the house for 3 years and had to re-do all of the landscaping, so I'm now into fun with vines, orchids, plumerias and a small veggie garden. I travel for business, but love my garden when home. I , too , lost my father several months ago to dementia and Parkinsons. I have excesses of plumerias that I shove in pots to root. I'm in the Catskills on business til August 8 and then home for 3 weeks.
So that's my story and I'm stickin to it!
We're the greatest!!!
Hap
Aloha,
Thank you all for your kind thoughts, turns out that I am highly allergic to the eye drops I was given to use, so four times a day I was making the swelling worse. Dr said that the lens he put in is healed nicely, so thats a good thing. He gave me some steroid drops to use instead, and this morning I can already tell the difference as there is much less pain. I expect I am going to grow very large muscles or two heads though! Got my next eye scheduled for August 31st - I am just a glutton for punishment!
Pu'oke, thanks for your kind offer, I would love to take you up on that. You are doing a fabulous job on the photo you are working on - my! it must take hours.
Robert left to go home to Florida last evening so it seems very quiet here, but kinda nice to have the house to ourselves. Did you know it takes four to six weeks to get the offical death certificate here? I don't know if that is normal, or just the way things move here in the Islands. We are going to inform social security anyway, but we are not sure if they need the death certificate in order to stop deposits to Frank Sr's account...
Nancy, thanks for the info on the site. When things settle a bit I will join up and see what I can get as far as tracing some of the Cummings clan. My FIL was the youngest of 11 children, and it seems that his side of the family all had incredibly large families...I will have to be organized and not go off on tangents!
My Starfruit tree is producing by the bushels again! I took a load down to work on Monday and they all went like hot cakes - some people said they had never had tasted them, and after they took them to their units they came back for extras. I wish I knew which variety I have because those who are familiar with them tell me that they are a very sweet variety. I am planing on dehydrating a few today to see how that goes - freezing (even in a sugar syrup) was a disaster, all mushy when thawed.
I hope you all have a great day,
Jenn
Aloha Debijaynes, and Welcome! So glad you have joined us - I will have to look up Marco Island so see where it is exactly...It sounds like you are now coming to the fun part of the garden after doing all the basic landscaping. We love photo's here - hint, hint!
Jenn.
Jen, relieved to know they found the problem with your eye. With a steroid it won't take but a few days to be ok. Everything in your garden produces an over abundance. The volcanic soil is rich beyond measure. Our local nursery sometimes has crushed lava rock for amendments and it makes a big difference. Your quilt got me inspired. For about 10 days I have been going through the stash I inherited from my mother. There were two quilt tops ready for the frame. Took them to a local quilt shop to be quilted on the long arm. There are enough pieces already cut to make at least 20 more. Between her sewing tools and mine, I could open a store.
Sylvain, I am always impressed with your talents. Seems anything you attempt comes out super good.
Welcome to our new friends. You will see this thread covers just about any subject you can think of. (oops, ended a sentence with a preposition) Mainly a way to keep up with the lives of our group. Always ready to add to the crowd.
Back to the "studio" for more quilt time.
Good morning everyone and welcome to our newcomer,
Jenn, very glad to hear your eye is healing well. It's very scarey to have something wrong.
I'm just back from a trip to town. Gave a ride to three people who are camping here and were going to town with four big gas cans - walking. They had no idea how far it would be. I dropped them at the gas station with instructions on how to find a ride home. When I went back to check they were gone so I guess it all went well. Two men from Germany and a young woman from China.
Got a gallon of freash orange juice from Araly and Manual and other groceries from Saul. Then home again with Scout the former visitor who is now permanent and loves to go for rides.
The electricity got turned on yesterday shortly after Tony paid the bill. I slept well last night. I have to say that sleeping every other night just doesn't work for me
I wanted a small paint roller for a craft project. Went to our local hardware and found just what I needed. They had only one and I snatched it up. Looked around but there were no others. Strange.
I think I need a nap. This has been a strange week and it's only Wednesday.
hugs, katie
Katie,
It looks like you have a stressful life down there. are you OK? prayers to you.
Hap
Right now I feel like I'm so tired I could just die. But I don't think I will. It's just 5pm and I'm wondering if I can stay awake for another couple of hours so's not to be wide awake at 2am. That's about my worst stress.
Don't know what I'd do without Tony. But with him, fresh orange juice and the pain roller I reeally,, really wanted I think I'll be fine after another goood night's sleep.
Thanks for the prayers. I can always use them.
I think seeing that the electric bill gets paid is going on Tony's list of things to handle.
I think another gac seed is bursting open. The first one, which started about ten days ago is now about two feet tall and sending out secondary shoots.
I think we need to learn about solar power. TYhe electrical power here is not very strong. Tony told me today that people here are petitioning the government to get it improved. Mine is OK for now but solar would be great. One more thing to learn about.
hugs, katie
I'm all for solar power. Investigated it some here in our area and I can't live long enough to recoup the cost. I'm sure there would be lots of people clamoring for it if weren't for the cost. Expect the lobbyist for the power companies have something to do with that.
Hello, everyone and welcome to our newcomer, Debijaynes.
Yes, this is a great group of nice people with both our feet firmly planted on the ground. We do not waste time re-inventing the wheel, settling the world's problems or shoveling clouds.
Ah shucks, guys... my photo restoration efforts are not so extraordinary. All that comes pre-packaged in the box with the PhotoShop disks. It is a slow process because it involves hundreds of corrections. One starts by rescuing the image itself. Then, tears and scratches are removed from the picture. Then, you move on to recreate those parts of the image that are missing and remove dust particles, etc.
I have stitched back together pictures that were torn into pieces. Those turned out quite well because they were newer than the images preserved on a sheet of tin (daguerreotypes). Those are so fragile, you shouldn't even breathe on them, or take them out in the daylight. The scanner's light source doesn't hurt them, though. I have always enjoyed old pictures and saving them from oblivion seems like the right thing to do.
Here is one of my proudest achievements: a picture of my great grandmother, quite artsy for the period, wouldn't you think?
Take care, all.
Pu'ole, a.k.a. Sylvain.
Good morning everyone,
Hurricane Dora is moving up the west coast of Mexico so I'm checking the national hurrican center regularly. It would be wonderful to get some rain but we can do without the high winds.
I have been researching solar power. There's a lot of information out there about DIY solar power. We wouldn't get tax incentives, of course, but with the almost constant sunshine it would probably be more dependable than our local power supply. Through eBay I found a place that is doing workshops to teach people to do their own solar power. They work in poor areas. The person who has the eBay store which is affiliated with the workshop group speaks both English and Spanish.
I am so grateful for the internet.
Jenn, so glad your eye is better and it was only the dropps. That was scarey.
Sylvian, what a beautiful picture. You are right to be proud of it.
hugs, katie
Beautiful French lady. Charming.
Katie, CFE is now required to turn back your electric meter if you have solar and feed into it. It means you don't need to have batteries to store the electricity as you can deposit during the day and withdraw at night. If your power is really unstable though, you might want to have batteries anyway to regulate it. Do you have a constant breeze where you are? Wind generators have come a long way in the last few years and are sometimes a more economical solution.
Thank you, I didn't know that. We do have fairly steady wind. I'm on a hill sort of behind a higher hill so a lot of the wind gets blocked but we will check into it. kb
I have never been so hot! I'm in the Catskills in an office that is a metal building-- the thermostat says 88-- but that's as high as it goes! NO relief til Sunday at least-- I don't know how people are riding in this heat.
Jenn-- regarding the death certificate ( my father just passed away) Social Security is notified by the funeral home and EVERYTHING is taken care of-- even survivor benefits for my Mom. It's such a hard time, at least something is done.
I have to go out to get my cleaning and I can't wait to get into the car A/C.
DEbi
I got an email from a woman who works at glowinc.com and they have close their offices until Monday. Sensible boss there.
It's barely gotten above 90 here which is low for us. Today we have some cloud cover. Hurricane Dora is moving north and may bring us some rain.
I was just raking leaves ina my jungle area wwhere the schotia tree, a mango tree, a lime tree, a bouranvilla and a juniper coexist and saw the first mango on a tree that Fely (Tony's wife) and I planted from seed the year I moved in. It has flowered before but dropped any fruit. This is a very large mango. It's still very green so we'll have to wait awhile to find out about flavor, fiber, etc. I'm very excited. We've spent so much time getting the basics of the house done and the trees in that the first fruit from a tree is huge.
It's very strange to have cloud cover - our weather is usually so clear. I have to check that no tools have been left outside just in case it does rain.
My clean-up of the patio is proceeding well.
hugs, katie
Aloha,
Pu'oke, what a great job you did on your g grandmother's photo, what an elegant and happy person she looks to be - I can see where you got your "happy genes" from now!
Christi, it's so nice that you are completing your Mom's quilts, I can just imagine her looking over your shoulder and being so pleased that you are finishing up work that she didn't have time to do while she was on this earth. Pictures please when they come back from the quilters! I am still working on my quilt from you know where, it's a struggle to get all that fabric through the sewing machione head and the cats don't help one bit...
Katie, here's hoping that you do get a little rain from Dora, it looks as if you won't get the high winds thank goodness. How exciting to get your first fruit from your mango - you must let us know how it tastes when it is ready to eat. How long has it taken from seed to holding its first fruit?
Debi, thanks for the info, we didn't know that the funeral home would take care of the social security. We actually did receive the death certificate on Friday - way ahead of what they had told us to expect so we are finishing up the odds and ends. We will be going to the grave site next weekend to see if the marker has been placed and to place a lei...
So sorry it's been so very hot for so many of you, it's very hard on both people and gardens when it goes on week after week with no relief in sight. A metal building no less, Debi - Oh Lord! Any rain for you yet PK? Texas looks as if it has been hit very hard and I feel so sorry for all the farmers watching their cros and animals suffering.
Off to work today with another load of starfruit in tow! We are starting to have the summer rush of visitors now that school is out on the mainland so I get pretty busy with people coming and going.
I hope you all have a great day, and try to keep cool!
Hi all,
This is sort of off the thread, but it would be great if someone could point me in the right direction. Seeing that are quilters here, can I assume there is an interest in antique fabric, etc. I have a bunch of antique lace, lace with beading, etc that are left over from my antiquing days.
Can anyone point me in a direction to donate these!
Thanks.
Hap
Try the Sewing and Quilting Forum. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/sewing/all/
Still hot here. Temps were in the low 90s for a high but the humidity shot up and so there didn't seem like it was any cooler. I spent most of yesterday outside and several hours today. Went to the City Market in Kansas City and got some home grown produce from farmers. Ran a few errands then went and helped a friend dig up stuff and move stuff. Helped some more today so was outside for a good 4-5 hours. Wasn't much of a breeze out there!! I can handle heat if there is shade and a nice breeze. lol
A glorious morning, everyone.
Nancy, I would advise you to bundle up your antique lace and vintage fabrics in small packages and sell them on E-bay. There are lots of collectors out there. Specially if the piece has something called provenance. For example, you could sell a piece of antique gingham that was allegedly used by Martha Washington to make an Easter bonnet and the curtains in her private outhouse. Fabric without provenance story: $5.00; fabric with a good provenance story: $125.00. Having me advise you: priceless!
From I can gather, not a week goes by without having the nevarious Martha Stewart covering anything from a small lampshade to the Seattle Space Needle in antique and vintage fabrics. Keep the offerings small so you get many repeat customers. There's good money in them thar fabric and lace pieces.
Take care, all.
Sylvain.
Sylvain, it is always so much fun reading your posts in the morning. Starts my day with a smile. :-)
Thanks, Pepper.
Sylvain, I'm just not the ebay type. Too much mucking around with packages and running to the PO. Just lazy!
Thanks anyway.
Nancy
Nancy, I could send you my address.......just kidding. Sylvain, is correct. Big market for lace, old or new. I have a tote full and seems I can never get enough. One of my vices.
PK
OK, Nancy. You know I love you dearly.
I'll pick up said various and sundry lace and vintage fabrics and put them up for sale on E-bay for you. I'll send you the proceeds later and we can go on a cruise, or something insanely frivolous like that. And you know me: I never kid about going on a cruise, either. In the mean time, don't let any picker's grubby paws anywhere near your precious collection.
I'm not kidding about marketing those for you. I can see it from here: "This piece of Belgian lace was owned by Mme Curie, who never got around to adding it to one of her little black dresses because she was too busy discovering radium: KaChing!", or "This exquisite piece of Madras hand-spun and hand-woven cotton is one of Mother Theresa's unfinished projects: a matching set of dish towels for her convent: KaChing!". Hey, with enough creative writing, one could sell a roll of damaged paper towels as a newly discovered section of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But I digress.
Take care.
Sylvain.
hahahahaha
Ok, You're on, Sylvain......
LOL Sylvain.
