Rehab.

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I can't hide the truth any longer.

I have an addiction.

I am addicted to the Flickr and Flock combo platter.

Without it, my blog goes empty.

I went to the forum this morning and found that they are having a similar issue that we went through last year. Flickr changed their code. Now Flock has to rework their whole interface to get the two programs to mesh again. That will likely take several weeks again.

My blog feel drab without photos. A picture is worth a thousand words and BOY! Do I love putting those in instead of coming up with a thousand words each. I accept the challenge, however.

We've done school for the day. Now we are mowing and working outside to try to get things in order before the next line of rain comes through in a few minutes. We've had regular afternoon storms all week. So grateful for moisture! But our canopy finally had to come down, and I miss that. Wish I had some photos of the canopy actually COMING down. You'd have LOVED it! It was really more like 'up' than 'down'. Para-sailing comes to mind. I've always wanted to fly, and we almost got our wish.

I've been canning, gardening, restoring the flooded end of the house back to normal. I got to sleep in my bed last night for the first time in nearly a week and a half. Ah. Bed is good.

Algebra. Have I mentioned I've not been a fan of algebra? But Michael and I are whooping it together. It's fun to do it with someone, hashing out differing solutions. Home schooling is so much easier to learn a difficult subject like that than in public school. Nearly unlimited resources are available here, while school is so structured and limiting. I may end up liking algebra after all.

We've picked about 10 gallons of blackberries from the canes so far this year.

(The wind has just arrived, announcing the soon onset of water.)

As a mother, this is an interesting time in my life. Michael is diving into manhood by leaps and bounds. He is taking over, making decisions, grabbing problems by the shirt and belt and tossing them out on their ears. What a blessing to have a son who chooses to grow up, yet still retains such an incredible sense of fun and adventure.

He may have his first bonafide job with his friends in a week or so. Cool. He has terrific friends so he'll also have a good time of fellowship while earning, and being a blessing to others.

(AGH! Rain is here!) running out to shut van doors...

We've been blueberry picking a few times. I think we are heading out again this weekend. You cannot help but think of Heaven when you are standing there, hearing birds singing, feeling the warm sun on your arms, watching the clouds drift by, popping big, fat, juicy berries in your mouth.

Most of you reading this know what I mean when I say we are all so blessed. There are incredible gifts all around us, raining down from the Father of Lights. All we have to do is look up, open our eyes, and say "Thank you!"

Thanks to the dear friend who sent me beautiful packages of vanilla beans! They arrived today and I'm so excited! I can't wait to try them out, they smell.... sniff, sniff, sniff....
...Amazing! I'll have to hit someone up for a base tonight.

Now I'm back to preparing some snacks for our get together this evening. I am determined to use leftovers so even I have no idea what it will be. I'm thinking something to do with Swiss Rolls (which I must get out of this house) and white chocolate or banana cream pudding.

My apron is a lab coat today.

~Faith

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Ha-HAH! It's fixed!!!!

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Happy dance! Happy dance!

Yes! My beloved Flock browser is fixed. I can't tell you what an awesome browser this is.

Look, I can drag and drop pictures once again, quick as a flash!

Drying more peppers.





Three gallons of blackberries in one day from our Doyle Thornless.





Figs, just beginning to form.





Fennel, with bulbs below.





And, IF I were so inclined, I could put pictures into several social networking places at the same time. But I'm not that social. LOL

Anyhow, thanks to the generosity of dear friends, we have moved up from 512 MB to 2 GB of RAM, and thanks to the job we did this week, we have on order a 1 TB external hard drive. So my computer will be happier, and my browser is patched.

I do like the borders and watermarks on the photos, I think I'll pursue that.

It's a good day. :)

~Faith

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Canning Green Beans

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Still working on getting photos up here correctly. As soon as Flickr works with Flock again I can quit all this nonsense, but until then I've got to figure out how to do it all differently.

Right now I'm batch resizing just a few of the pictures with Irfanview (Thank you for the reminder, Walter) and seeing if the smaller size will work with the TinyPic.com account that I have now set up in my Flock browser for drag and drop.

While I've not yet seen the results, I did discover a nifty feature in Irfanvew - I can put a watermark on my photos as well as give them a border at the same time I resize them. Kind of fun. :)

So one of my latest things is learning to can green beans. This are mostly from my parents' garden, but I made them a deal. They grow 'em, I'll can 'em and we'll share.

If anyone knows of another way to fix them, I'd love to hear your recipes. These are simply raw packed into hot jars, boiling water poured over them, and pressure processed for 30 minutes at 10 pounds.









Oh, and cherry tomatoes have begun to ripen this week! I've only been dehydrating them so far, but looking forward to some canning soon.



~Faith

PS ~~~ SUCCESS !!!

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I Am Up and Running!

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Last night while many of us were prepping food in the kitchen, one young man was kindly sitting here at my computer desk making some sense of this mess.

Yes, my suspicions were correct, my PC is full. As Walter said, it had just run out of the fumes it was running on. LOL

111,065 images are currently taking up 66.8 GB; approximately 1/2 of my memory. I knew my pics used a lot of room, this camera records a lot of info. Another 57.6 GB are taken up by music. I had no idea music took up so much space! I had put most of my CDs on here so I could quickly play music whenever I liked. I may have to go back to using the CD player, except for those of which I no longer have the discs.

I am going to have to make executive decisions on what to delete.

But I want to quickly share with you a great program Walter downloaded for me that showed this information. VERY helpful!

www.WinDirStat.info

It visually shows your computers files. I wish I knew how to take a screenshot of my WinDirStat window. But it shows every single file, labeled, in boxes according to size, so you can have a perfect visual of what is in your computer, sorted and organized.


This is not mine, but an example of how it looks.

OK, so I'm temporarily back in business, but have to eliminate a lot of files before having some security.

Thank you, Walter!

~Faith

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Double Trouble

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( EDIT - Having issues with my two main browsers, so had to go through IE to post pics on last entry. Whew! Took me 1/2 hour. )

I had just decided to put my pictures on manually since the browser coding issue had not been resolved yet, but discovered that I cannot even do it manually.

Here, in my editor, all the html icon links above are working.... except the "Add Image" icon. Is anyone else having this problem?

So I don't know what's up, but I hope the issue is resolved soon. Without pictures my posts are way too wordy.

Yesterday we weeded and tended the herb, strawberry, and flower beds. I ended up with two large bouquets of sunflowers. The June bearing strawberries are laden with green fruits, that the birds are even eating now. We harvested another large basket of basil.

We began gathering branches to make bean teepees, as the corn did not come up sufficiently to do so. We will do more this morning.

Last night, until about 10 pm, we cleaned out the tool shed. It's done but we need to find a place to store all our sports equipment. The year before DH left us, was the year Michael and I focused on his sports. We spent several hours each day doing a variety of sports as part of his school. We had the back of the minivan packed with equipment and just carried it around with us.

However, we've not had time for sports at all any longer, and are hauling all kinds of farm stuff around in the van, since our truck doesn't work. LOL So the sports equipment has been in the tool shed, taking up a good deal of room. We've got to find a place for it all.

I am selling a tennis ball throwing machine that I had found thrown away and had wanted to repair.

Still have a box of cukes, a large basket of summer squash, and the basil from yesterday to process today. And go up on the hill to cut and strip red cedar saplings for bean poles. Perhaps we can get to cleaning out the studio today as well.

I haven't even got to the pool yet.

And this is too wordy. ;)

~Faith

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Sea Monkeys!

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Michael has been sick since Thursday. Yesterday, being our usual sabbath day of rest anyhow got him to thinking about our tradition of pulling out a craft or activity from the studio on Saturday afternoon. His choice was to grow another batch of troips, or what I used to know as Sea Monkeys, from the backs of comic books as a child. They should be hatching by Monday if they work. I'll post pics. Try not to fall off the edge of your lawn chair in suspense. LOL

I have figured out how to drag and drop pictures in a larger format here, using my Flock browser. I do like this browser, though I've heard that Firefox has an extension that is almost the same. I don't want to try another extension. My computer has about (__) this much room left...

Gardening successes and failures are coming to the forefront.

We started the last herbs we had in seed last week and these little guys are coming up. Aren't these German Chamomiles cute?




I did do a quick deadheading on my one fragrance-free peony by the studio.




Thanks to Tracy at Peaceful Acres We are trying to save a little money by finishing out our potato bins in straw. I'd heard of growing in straw but didn't think of applying it to potato bins. The bins are new to me, so it's an interesting experiment.




Blackberries and grapes are all pruned and tied up.




Flowers on the wild blackberries are white, these Doyle's are very light lavender.








The sunflower cutting garden. We're succession planting.




Not confident in our first pumpkin planting, in which we followed instructions for a 12" high hill in the garden, we dug a spot in a well fertilized area of the pasture and replanted. The stakes are high now in our competition. If we win, the other family has to dress up for the Christmas Ball.




An overview of the garden. Really a slow start this year.




Our first flush of Sugar Snap Peas.




Our second and third plantings.




We put in new melon seed one week ago. They are actually coming up this time. I think our spring was just too cool and moist for them. I'm so glad we are getting melons!




The summer squash are not doing well at all. The weather kept us from planting and I've read that if they stay in the pots too long before transplanting they will bloom far too early for their size. Just like this.




Michael gets 30 minutes a day for computer games. He doesn't use them up sometimes as we are so busy, but he got to use some saved minutes while sick on Saturday.




Where we went outside to enjoy perfect weather and work on our seasonal to-do list.
You can see, the front yard has had nothing done to it. The soil is awful. Some day! :)




Me, sporting that bruise from falling down while chasing the filly.




Seth, the Faithful Doggy.




Our initial lists, to be added to as we find the need. Don't know if you can read them. I'd like to put a list at the side of my blog that I can cross off here, if anyone can tell me how to do that.










Now that my list is done, I'm a lot happier!

Faith

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