FEELING BETTER BACK FOR AWHILE AT LEAST

Looking forward to the event!!!!

That flower bud fooled me. It opened last night a day ahead of my prediction. We got up early this AM. The image was made using Betty's sewing machine lamp as a general flood. Betty held a three cell flashlight to create the highlight. I took about a dozen bracketed images and used two of those images to create what you see. By eight thirty this morning it was closed never to open again.

I have checked the quality of this image in the raw file. It is strong enough to go large. I can make that happen privately if anyone is interested. I have last years edition enlarged to about 20 X 20 double matted and framed for my office. We are talking professional quality here. I would not cheap it out less than the best that can be done.

Here she comes. Pulling back the cover ever so easy.

Just beautiful! Love the lighting and the quality of the picture!

Doc--You Rock!!........Gita

Doc,

It is wonderful. Thanks for sharing! The RAW files are great too, excellent foresight.

It was nice to have this flower's "grandma" along on this trip. This image can be thieved and home printed up to 10 X 10. A problem is that the big box stores do not offer a square frame. Maybe a handyman could cut down a larger frame. Anyway enjoy it by playing with it if you wish. Note a small blemish easy to photo manage in the top left corner.

One huge print is possibly going to end up in Texas. Nice. Yea!












This message was edited Sep 3, 2013 9:32 PM

This message was edited Sep 3, 2013 10:03 PM

so pretty!

Oh my goodness Doc, that is breath-taking!! Not only just the photo, which is Fantastical and heart-breakingly beautiful in its own right -- but also, to think of the entire life and story of it. You have done a masterful job of capturing a precious moment in history, and my hat is off to you both!

(applause)
You and God cooperated wonderfully to produce that picture.

I was shopping for a square frame- I was perusing a place on Ebay in Missouri that makes them-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Small-Flat-Black-Gallery-Solid-Wood-Picture-Frames-Custom-Made-Square-Sizes-/350490355849

Seemed like good prices

"AC Moore Crafts" store--(if you have one in your area)--has a whole framing section.
They also distribute 50% off any custom framing job coupons EVERY week
in their Circular. Mine comes with "junk" mail.

Michael's Craft store has frames as well. Not sure if they do the custom framing...

Also--moldings of all shapes and forms can also be used for making your own frame.
You will just have to paint them.

Doc--may I use your picture for my desk top?

Gita

Gorgeous!!! So very glad you shared with us

Those are great prices, sallyg. We can't do that in our little framing shop in our basement. But, then, Jeff mills his own molding, too. LOL. We are definitely cheaper than the big stores even when they have 50% sales, though. Heehee

Gita...........What ever trips your trigger.


Go right ahead per above post: It was nice to have this flower's "grandma" along on this trip. This image can be thieved and home printed up to 10 X 10. A problem is that the big box stores do not offer a square frame. Maybe a handyman could cut down a larger frame. Anyway enjoy it by playing with it if you wish. Note a small blemish easy to photo manage in the top left corner.

My poor internet connection won't let me open it but I will as soon as we are home. The pic looks just lovely even in the small size can't wait to see it in all its glory.

Wow, Doc great pic.

Geese I forgot to close this discussion. Here is an image showing three plants in fourteen inch baskets with double choir linings. The one in the center is a mature Night Blooming Cereus the subject of this opening and bloom discussion. The one to the left is Red Ippy. On the right is an infant one year old Hindu Rope planting of three green and three variegated in the basket. The green plants grew from twenty to thirty six inches the first year. The variegated brought some wildlife with them that slowed their even slower growth as I fought off the problem to save the whole planting. Knocking on wood now I believe success is in the making with a complete clean up using repeated every ten day applications of Merit which is definitely not organic but I know of no other way to whip the army when it is known to live most of its life underground chewing on the roots. The Hindu Ropes will grow as long as eight feet given excellent care. They will also split and fill the basket rim.

Each of these three plants are or will need three cupic feet of space both in and outdoors. Each when fully developed will weigh easily fifty pounds. We have that space and can enjoy them both inside and outside. Each is hanging on a block and tackle arrangement to make working with them a job with ease. This concludes my presentation. I am pleased that many have enjoyed the four images.

Doc, What's you take on these sweet potatoes? Did they grow that fast or what?
Thanks, Ric

Rick..........those are nice sweet potatoes. I could not grow them here because they were loved by my deer population. Loved to death. I never hated the deer enough to fence them out which would have been extremely expensive. Our area hunters have our population down to almost zero. I could live with out the Bambies. We enjoy them in one pound freezer packs best.

That's just the way I like them also. Have you ever seen sweet potatoes fissured like that?

No Rick I have not. What's worse I have to wonder if it was a variety not known to me or physical growth problems due to a dry summer with short periods of heavy rains that might have caused a start growth and stop growth pattern. I had evidence of something like that with my tomatoes showing multiple stretch marks that were causing open cracks. I had never seen multiple situations before. They all remained alright to eat but keepers they were not. We have more frozen tomato cubes than normal because they would not keep more than a day or two past early ripe stage. Hardly any grew to dead ripe on the plant or on our kitchen counter. This was a tricky summer in spite of our daily and sometimes twice daily watering of patio plants.

Remember the saying "The only consistency in gardening is the inconsistency of it all".

That was what I thought Doc. They are completely skinned over, so I'm thinking they may store OK for a while. My tomatoes as yours were not keepers, the potato tops were yummy, as usual, and I did have a bit of blight on the lower branches when it was so wet. I used a lobster mulch on my tomatoes this year and the added calcium seem to be good for them. My placement in the garden may have been a factor as they did not get early light. Have a good day.

Our Night Blooming Cereus has developed number two bud and number three buds this fall. They just showed up over last week when we were on vacation. They appear to be about a day apart in development. I just started up our humidifier because the heat has come on a few of the cool fall nights. This humidification and weakly weekly watering is what the plants need now until early spring when they put on new growth.

Our Hens and Chics are now all back in the house. Some of these were plant swaps from meetings a few years ago. We are to cold here in Northcentral Pennsylvania to leave any or them outside over winter.

This week the begonias must be harshly trimmed back and brought in for the winter. After this about all we have left to work will be half a dozen miniature dahlias. The begonia trimmings/cuttings will go to my gym where the ladies love to find them as freebies. I get an average of about two dozen begonia cuttings from our three large pots. Then we dump the pots and mix the medium into our compost pile. It will be melded into the total by our worms plus freezing and thawing. Next spring we fill our pots two thirds full of this mix worms 'an all and plant with ProMix used as first growing medium and mulch over our home made potting soil using last years medium. This has been more or less our practice for well over fifty years of potted gardening. I think my success could be attributed to hardly ever reading or talking with those that say their ways are much better. The only thing I ever bring into the compost pile is ProMix and a bag of commercial potting soil once a year. At this small pot gardening pace an occasional bucket of real manure arrives here as the best gift of all from any other source.

Ric
saw your deep crevices in your sweet potatoes..Our white potatoes have done that this year. We have grew potatoes for over 50 years and have never had them get crevices like that. Haven't dug our sweet potatoes yet. Hope they don't look like that. Have no idea what the problem was this year.

Ho Ho Ho...............There are those who preach to satisfy the big chemical companies and put down the serious and forever growing organic movement. All of our land grant colleges, all of the organized farm agents and the many volunteers they train and sometimes hire all preach the chemical companies support. Trace the dollars. Most of those grants are provided by the chemical giants. That being fact what would results tend to show? The chemicals do grow the farm crops using more and more chemicals as yesterdays miracle product wears out or in a very few cases is taken off the market. Most all of those chemicals kill the very soil life that could grow and help build better healthier growing mediums.
Overwhelming is a very modest term for the only wayers. They mislead and rarely have any purpose other than supporting commercial large volume growing while putting down the simple organic process of building and maintaining healthy soil. When I bought my property more than fifty years ago the organic content by test was just over two percent. The land had been heavily used as a commercial apple orchard. All kinds of orchard chemicals were in that soil.
For the past fifty years almost no harsh chemicals have been applied to our property. We used almost nothing but good solid organic practices. I closed the gardening areas five years ago showing a tested sixteen percent organic content. The soil was just full of worms and still is. I have said the conversion on our little half acre was good. To this day anything I add to my soil is compost or elements of compost plus manures, trace minerals and light applications of certified organic fertilizers. Our flower beds and foundation plantings are mulched with three to five inches of ground tree trimmings. These beds have been under continued mulch for thirty five years. We have only turned the soil in planting new plants. None of my neighbors choose to follow my practices. My grass is still green and mowed twice a week. Their grass has been burnt out most of this summer and fall. Their soil tests about two percent organic content.

I'm so impressed by your organic content, doc. In your soil, I mean. I know you are organic.

Congratulations on your placements in the County Fair photo contest! I beleive I saw two? Grandmas apples...and a barn photo? sorry, it is late.

Heh heh, I'm totally the opposite of those chemical touters, I tend toward the fanatic side of organics. Heck, we don't even sell miracle gro at work. It's amazing how many people don't realize that the soil is alive -- well, or at least it should be. Feed IT, and it will feed your plants. It's how it was all created to be in the first place. I cringe when customers come in and start telling me about how they "feed" their plants with mg.. IN THE GROUND, no less!! I have no qualms about telling them "Well, when you put those awful chemicals in the ground, they completely ruin the soil by leaching all the nutrients out of the soil and killing off all the beneficial bacteria, so that's why your plants are suffering". =) Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. What can ya do, eh? Me? I'm a compost fanatic. =) I'd love to make my own, but I just can't seem to get DH to understand that - NO! - making compost does not automatically mean attracting rodents. I do the best I can... I have "hidden" piles of mowed leaves and grass tucked away here and there that I don't tell him about.. I go out to play with it every so often (turn it etc).. then later I use it in the beds. =) LOL!!!!!!! (having a wide tree-line around 2 sides of the yard sure helps to hide those piles!) < =D Sssshhhh!! Don't tell him!

Sally, I saw that barn in the County Fair results too! Congrats Doc, a lovely photo indeed! =)

Thank you both. Now that I have been informed I shall go see the others that won or placed. Honest I did not know .......cause I was not informed. Duh.

Yes Doc, congratulations! I'm also very glad for you to be posting again .

If you have a minute or two I would really appreciate it if you would tell me your way of overwintering your hens and chicks. Thanks

Hey folks the photo contest with a popular vote was fun to enter. Popular votes get sometimes strange results like in the barns category. The excellent photo first place I believe is a mill. Second and third are not barns or out of focus poor photography, In the whole category there were only three or four barns entered. Popular votes normally go to popular people who more or less are expected to draw votes not necessarily all about subject. Yet this is often how winners are selected. The method of administration here was similar to a real county fair where audiences are groups of friends voting for the popular vote winner. I think it is great that Dave's Garden provides this opportunity to showcase it's members. I would certainly continue with the activity if it is continued in 2014.

I have a hunch that the picture that got #1 place (the Mill) had been posted a few years ago...
It just looked really familiar......

I vote on all the contests--love seeing the good, the bad, and the spectacular.
I make my decisions in less than a couple seconds....it either IS--or IS NOT.
G.

coleup....HOW I OVERWINTER HENS AND CHICKS
Well now this year I found and purchased a sixteen inch dish like pot that looks more like a small bird bath except it has a flat bottom and the lip is about two inches. $9.00 at Lowe's. The medium was 50% potting soil and 50% sand. I filled the center with a 4" round plastic pot. Using the same medium I snitched a cactus cutting and poked it in the center. It looked naked so I snitched five low growing sedum cuttings and filled the barren centerpiece pot. Simple set the pot in the center of the large dish like pot. Filled the large dish with my medium and stacked it up tight against the centerpiece plastic pot. I then added a fine crushed limestone cover over all. To plant the hens and chicks all I did was poke a hole for the transplant and firmed the medium up to the plant. Added a few more fine crushed stone. I watered with pint of water or maybe a little bit more. These plants do not need much water in real life. Inside be careful. The only way you can hurt them is overwatering or over fertilization. Never ever add any fertilizer. I am not sure yet but it seems like watering lightly every two weeks will be enough. Given time I will photograph tomorrow for you to see my creation. I think you might agree it looks like at least a $39.00 flower shop display.

Thanks Doc. Looking forward to it.

One year I left mine outside, one year on an unheated porch and one year in an unused station wagon with lots of sun. The station wagon worked the best and becuse it was such a small space, there wasn't much drying out at all. I think the extra light helped. too. That's how I kept much of my sedum. too.

The roots of the hens I've purchased go down more than 2 inches, but I suppose if you work with chicks, the roots will adjust. I have several large clay saucers but with out drainage, I can't put them out for the summer.

Oh Judy, what happy pretty faces they all have!!

Funny... about the voting thing... when I voted for the barns (and all the rest of the stuff I voted for), I don't recall seeing any names of the submitters, so I just voted for the photo itself. As for the barns... well, I was only interested in actual barns... I could tell some of them are not actual barns at all. Perhaps I just don't pay close enough attention, but I had no idea whose photos they were. Maybe my idiocy was helpful to make it more fair? < =D

speedie- you won't see the submitters name when you vote- but some people can recognize submissions by certain others. Or they could tell their friends which one is theirs.

It IS fun that anyone can enter almost any picture. Its not fun for me if there are too many poor quality or totally not the right category pictures to go past. The invasives contest is pretty bad in this respect- people don't stick with 'non native invasive species' Oh well.

Sometimes the caption helps decide my vote- like the quilt by the woman up in her 90s and still quilting.

What bothers me in the voting is the people who feature their babies
and children holding a pet (for Ex.) To me--that is an automatic "NO".

Here's something that may not be, totally, above the board--BUT-------
IF I really, really like a picture, as i am voting, I can save it (save picture as)
in my picture files for use as a desktop picture.
Since NO names are given in the voting--there is NO copyright violation.

I am ONLY using them on my personal computer...G.

Sallyg, if you and I had entered a garlic bulb each in our County Fair this year we would have vied for a Blue Ribbon even though we both lament the generally poor harvest this year, as there were no entries in that category! In fact, entries were about half of previous years most notably in livestock division.

The only increase in participation was in the "tractor pull" where many souped up lawn machines (now called 'tractors' I guess) pulled away for two days!

I thought your 'plate of veggies' that you used as a thumbnail for our veggie thread would have won a prize. Maybe you can enter it in DG county fair next year!

Many people enjoy the county fairs. Ours is thirty minutes from home. To enter one has to deliver the item during a specific time period. Winners pick up their winnings at the fair office. Then one must go back and pick up the items at specified time periods. Our first place winners normally get about $3.50. and a ribbon. Bragging rights have to be the pay off. This has to be compared with on line contests some of which have thousands of dollars on first place. Hundreds of dollars is common. This of course is a whole different situation. The quality of workman's ship is amazing. Even in the higher levels of competition it is sometimes hard to understand the why in winning.

Testing a download procedure. I'm posting a pretty flower or attempting to do so proving or disproving a problem I may have. I tried this earlier today and the picture would not get entered. Yea the problem seems to be fixed.

COLEUP ......The promised Hens and Chicks image will get here sometime this weekend. I did not think of no drainage holes. The display lacking drainage could have a piece of cotton rope or toweling on the bottom of the pot hanging out over the sides. The rain water if to much would syphon out of the pot. I keep my covered bird baths dry that way all winter when the cover tears and lets in rain or snow. You could drill drainage holes then plug them in winter or use a 14" inside a16" to deal with a bit of water that goes through in winter. You could make a pot with catch basin out of cement and peat moss. That would be nice. For now I could use a garbage can lid cover for the rainy days as a temporary answer. In fact that lid drilled would make a nice planter sitting down into your mulch.

Congrats, Doc!

There were lots of fun entries this year. I'm never sure of the intent of our DG fair categories (not specified in the rules), but I tend to vote for entries where it seems like the farm animal belonged to the submitter, or that the submitter probably grew the veggies, etc.

I haven't "done" the fair in the past, because we had a conflict with a fall family gathering... but last year, Joyanna and I had a long, wonderful day at the fair (we spend most of our time with the animals). This year, we entered 2 plates of cookies... and both ribboned! First place for Grandma's Gingersnaps, second place for Snow Day Cocoa Cookies. I'd been telling Joyanna we weren't likely to earn even a 4th place ribbon since it was our first year... she spotted that first ribbon and said (loudly), I TOLD YOU our cookies would win!!

Cool thing about exhibiting at the Frederick Fair... $10 pass lets you enter up to 3 items and also gives you a pass with one entry ticket for every day of the fair. If you plan on going more than once, that's the way to do it! Next year, Joyanna wants to enter some garden stuff as well as some cookies of her very own, plus maybe the pumpkin bread we've been working on, plus an art project... I can see I might need to buy 2 exhibitor passes, LOL.

Jill--et al...

Here is an awesome, seasonal cake to make at this time.
Prep is easy--even kids could do it.
It is amazingly delicious.

*********************************************

PUMPKIN CRUNCH
( From: “Buttoneer” Carlisle, PA)

Here's a wonderfully rich cake that everybody loves.

Ingredients:
1 package of yellow cake mix
1 can (16 oz) Solid pick pumpkin (not the one for pies).
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
3 eggs
1 & 1/2 cups sugar (you can substitute brown sugar, or use both)
4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (***see Note***)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, or mix them both.
1 cup melted butter
Whipped topping (optional)..like "Cool Whip". NOT necessary.

Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F.
Grease bottom of 9 X 13 inch pan

To Do:
Combine: Pumpkin, eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, pumpkin pie spice & salt
in large bowl. Mix all. (I used a mixer on slow). Pour into greased pan.

Sprinkle dry cake mix evenly over pumpkin mixture. Top with chopped nuts
Drizzle melted butter evenly over the top.
(Optional—you can sprinkle extra Allspice or Nutmeg or Cinnamon over all).

Bake for about 1 hr. and 15 minutes until pick inserted in the middle comes out
clean and top is golden brown.

Cool completely, but it is also great when served warm.
Maybe with ice Cream on it??? Or--Serve plain or with whipped topping.

Refrigerate leftovers, if you have any leftovers, that is.

***Note****
If you do not have Pumpkin Spice, you can substitute:
2tsp. Cinnamon—1/2 tsp Nutmeg—and 1tsp ground Allspice.