My New Camera

Penny has been lobbying for me to get a new more capable camera for about 6 months now. We already have 6 nice cameras but we haven't made the jump to a digital SLR.  I finally was convinced.  Penny had done wonderful research and  we got the last Canon D-70 our Sam's  had in stock.

I've had the camera a week now and I am very pleased. The camera has a mix of professional and enthusiast features and is quite user friendly. I've only been to the rookery and in our backyard with it so far but focusing on flying birds is probably the most difficult task the camera will have and so far it has done nicely.

Here are some pictures.

Buzz coming to dinner

Heron in flight

Penny's current favorite bird - a Green Heron

a dragonfly in flight

another flying heron with crummy background

GARDEN UPDATE

Here at the end of June the garden is producing as I hoped it would.  The blackberries have been coming in at about the perfect pace for us to eat them.  I had to over pick them before we went to Jax for 10 days and ended up throwing out many pounds of them that didn't travel well.  Next time I need to refrigerate them even though it affects taste.  They have been a wonderful sweet daily treat for the last month.  Today they are mostly picked.  I can only hope that next year will be as good.  I finally learned a few tricks about growing them.

The full size tomatoes are just coming in this week.  The grape tomatoes peeked this week.  I've easily got 5o tomatoes I could pick today.  I'm trying to let them ripen to their peak before I pick them but there is no way I can spread out the 50 plus over a long enough period that we can use them.  So it is time to give the neighbors some.

 

The netting I put up has successfully kept the birds out of the tomatoes and blackberries.  The irrigation system has worked well except for the few days it went out due to lightning tripping the circuit while we were in Jax.  That period essentially stopped my cucumber plants (only got 6 or 7 this year) and killed parts of some of the tomato plant's leaves.  Fortunately my containers have reservoirs in the base that can sustain a plant through a couple of days with no water.  So I didn't lose my garden.

The bell peppers and Japanese eggplant have been coming in at an edible pace and we have done better meal planning this year around what the garden produces.  We are eating lots of salads with tomatoes and cucumber.  That's good for our diet.  we also had pasta cruda (not as good), BLTs (turkey bacon - OK for the diet except for the bread which is a no-no),  eggplant parmesan (OK except for the breading and frying) and the blackberries provided one snack just about every day this month that we were home.

By the way the grapes are coming along nicely too.

Here are some garden pics

the garden right after planting

lots and lots of green blackberries

first harvest

first blackberries

first tomato

harvest before going to jacksonville

the way it looked when we returned from Jax

large tomatoes ready to pick

harvest when we got back

today's harvest