Wordless Wednesday - Sunset on the Boat

Sunset on the Boat

August 18, 2010

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Wordless Wednesday - In The Red

In The Red

August 17, 2010

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Evening Splendor

Evening Splendor

August 4, 2010 

My apologies for a late post today.  I was up until after 3 AM canning a beautiful batch of organic green beans.  Much of the morning was spent finding my kitchen again.  It was a bit more tedious canning session than normal because I am testing Tattler reusable canning lids so I was quite concerned over seal failures.  At any rate I ended up with 7 L jars and 24 - 500 ml jars of gorgeous canned green beans.  The canner made three runs in order to process all the beans and if you know anything about canning is the processing times and cooling times can't be rushed. It was a productive evening and early morning that has left me doing a bit of catch-up but during the busier canning season that is to be expected.  Oh and while waiting on the canner I did check for the Northern Lights several times but did not see them :(  It would have been a nice sight!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Interesting Camera Arifact (Sunset)

Interesting Camera Artifact (Sunset)

June 24, 2010

We have been experiencing some rather turbulent weather in our area recently.  The result of this has been several great photo opportunities.  My husband snapped a few pictures of the sun shining through rain clouds a few days ago.  The appearance of sun itself was a fluke due to the fairly heavy cloud coverage.  It did not appear as a break in the clouds or as a beam, just simply as a bright, white sphere and only very briefly for not quite 2 minutes.  In two of the pictures the sun actually appears a rosy pink as pictured.  The above photo has not been altered other than adding the copyright mark and frame.  Essentially a couple of lucky shots captured the sun shining through rain breaking down the white light into colours the same way a rainbow forms.  In this case only one colour of the prism was caught by the camera's lens.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Wordless Wednesday - Fire in the Sky

Fire in the Sky

May 20, 2010

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Wordless Wednesday - Shades of Red

Shades of Red
March 25, 2010

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Golden Evening Sunset

Golden Evening Sunset
January 30, 2010

This is a wonderful time of the year to enjoy beautiful sunsets. Hints of frost, fog and snow capture the sun's sinking rays adding a fairytale quality to the sunsets. I think they are gorgeous so tend to take a lot of pictures of them. What do you think?

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Wordless Wednesday - On the Water

On the Water
August 31, 2009

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

BYBS - Cooler Summer

This year Mother Nature has thrown us a bit of a curve ball with the cooler summer temperatures and a lot of rain. I think the cooler, below average temperatures have been on everyone's mind this summer and they certainly are the topic for conversation. It's so easy to complain about the weather even though we can't do anything about it. But let's put the cooler summer temperatures in perspective. It is as if Mother Nature knows there is a recession and has stepped in a bit to help out! Despite a late start getting my new raised garden beds in they are looking quite lovely. I have a bumper crop of salad greens that usually by this time of year would have bolted (pictures here). I will also have peas this year later into the summer thanks to the cooler weather. At the same time with the cooler temperatures and rainy weather we have done less boating saving us a bit of fuel money. This has also resulted in a bit more time at home to get work done around the house and gardens as well as do a bit of troubleshooting. We've had more time to sit on the dock to marvel at the beauty of the water while enjoying the company of our neighbours. The stormy weather is not all that pleasant but it sure has saved on watering the gardens and as a reward Mother Nature has provides some of the most amazing sunsets yet! Cooler outdoor temperatures combined with cool breezes and lower humidity levels have kept the main lower living level of the house at a balmy 19ºC (67ºF) pretty much the same temperature we keep the house at during the day in the heating season. We are now half way through summer and have yet to turn our air conditioning on! So in many ways the cooler, rainy weather has been quite the blessing this year! Mother Nature sure is a smart, old cookie :)

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

The Learning Curve

Evening Skies
July 7, 2009

Virtually everything we do in life is a direct result of learning. Learning involves a learning curve which is simply the time it takes you to move from not knowing anything about performing that task reasonably well. The steepness of the learning curve depends on the complexity of the task as well as the intelligence level of the individual. Thanks to technology we are bombarded with ample opportunity to expand our knowledge on a daily basis. That doesn't make the learning curve static!

Several years ago I got my first digital camera with no flash or memory card. It simply took 8 to 10 pictures then I had to download them in order to use the camera again. The learning curve for that camera was by today's standards very minimal yet it was there and it formed the knowledge base to go onto the next camera. Over the past few days I have been put back onto the learning curve with the new Panasonic DMC-TZ5.

I'm one of those people who does read the manual. There is a lot more to this camera as far as settings go in comparison to the Canon A540! I am quite impressed with the quality of pictures I'm getting already but hopefully they will improve further as I learn more about using the camera's features effectively. Pictured is the sunset from Tuesday night and it really did look like that (without the frame and signature of course)! The Panasonic captured the colours in amazing detail and clarity which I attribute to the high mega pixels. I'm excitedly reading through the manual to learn everything I can about this camera. Now I need to find a forum where I can ask questions!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

My View on the Toronto Civic Service Strike

Beautiful Skies
June 27, 2009

It's now day 8 of the Toronto civic service strike. By far the media focus has been on the garbage piling up in temporary dumping areas. Of greater concern is the city of Toronto has hired a firm to come in a spray insecticides nightly to "ward off insects and rodents". Worse yet in the midst of this type of problem the residents of Toronto seriously are behaving like babies! Heck even Economic Development and Trade Minister Sandra Pupatello called Torontonians a "bunch of babies" in their response to the garbage strike although she later apologized for that. Well, I do think they are being a bunch of babies and I'm not going to apologize for saying so!

Less than 24 hours after the strike began there were reports of garbage piling up in Toronto and illegal dumping. What the heck? Give it a rest! I'm sorry but I just don't understand why Torontonians couldn't be a bit more prudent with their garbage production especially in these times when so many are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. What are they doing? Spring cleaning just because?

Heck, we could easily go several weeks and do so in the winter not putting out garbage. We average 1 bag of garbage weekly and it does not include organic waste. Organic waste can be composted so is a valuable resource. We put our recyclables out biweekly and while that is more that a garbage bags' worth it is still less than the average household because we follow the first rule of being eco-friendly and that is to reduce. We still have a long way to go. A few years ago I saw a rather interesting documentary where a family of 4 was able to reduce their garbage output to 1 grocery bag for the year. Now that is our goal!

Torontonians need to start taking responsibility for themselves. All those bags of garbage do not just magically disappear when you put them to the curb. They go somewhere else where they are someone else's problem. Now they are finally realizing it is their problem. This is a perfect time for each and every Torontonian to do their part. Get involved and reduce your garbage production!

I'd like to address the issue of the insecticides being used by the City of Toronto. This is an environmental nighmare! Insecticides do diddly when it comes to rodents or other small animals that get into the ever growing piles of garbage. What they do is get into the ground water and make their way to Lake Ontario causing possibly irreparible environmental damage affecting all the Great Lakes waterways. They are already putting humans at risk as one being sprayed causes respiratory problems. Yet we have the Ontario Pesticide Ban and Toronto was a leading city getting that through the legislature. Residents can be fined for using these pesticides but NOW. the city of Toronto turns around and uses the very same pesticides banned without regard to the future health of their residents. For shame Toronto!

For shame Toronto on so many levels! And yes from a fellow Canadian you are being a bunch of babies!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Behind the Scenes of Blogging

Promising Skies
June 4, 2009

This past week I've spent working on my blogs behind the scenes tweaking some of the code. The biggest change I made was adding meta tags. This is code that tells the search engine bots what the blog is about by adding a description and keywords. Sounds easy, doesn't it? It turns out that there are character limits for each of the meta tags. If they are too long search engines will ignore or ban your blog. The meta tag for description must be worded properly, under 150 characters and cannot be just a list of keywords. The meta tag for keywords must be under 874 although you should use considerably less than that with no keyword repeated more than 3 times. Trade and brand names should not be used in your keyword tag unless you own them. Keyword spamming or using keywords that have nothing to do with your blog will get your blog banned from some search engines. I used an online meta tag analyzer to make sure my tags were correct. With that done I stumbled upon a site that explained back links, why they are important and how to check them.

Back links are those links coming into your blog from other websites or blogs. Ideally you want more back links than out going links on your blog. You get back links by leaving comments on other blogs or in forums and groups. You also get back links when your blog is referenced by another blog or you are added to their blogroll. However, I quickly learned that there are dos and don'ts for both back linking and out going links. Out going links should not go to a site that has been blacklisted by one or more search engines. Some out going links should have the 'rel=#nofollow' to tell the search engines not to check that link but you have be careful with using this as what it can also tell the search engines is you don't trust that link. There is also indication that one major search engine is going to start treating nofollow differently penalizing those who use it too much. This isn't much of a problem for my blogs but for someone writing a 'make money' blog there are some links you definitely should not use. Some back links cannot be controlled as anyone can add a link for your blog on their blog. Search engines understand that. You can control your back links with respect to which blogs and forums you comment on so choose these wisely. These types of comments must not be comment spam simply to get a back link!

All of my blogs have a lot of images but the search engines don't see the actual image so the image content does not get indexed. To get the search engines to index the image content I found out you have to use the alt"" portion in the image code. For example in the image above I changed the alt"" to alt"Promising Skies sunset". Now the image content will be indexed so if someone searches for sunset this image will be included in the search results.

Looking back over the last few day, I learned an awful lot about search engines! There are a surprising number of search engines each with their own way of evaluating your content. Your blog may appear as number 1 or on page 1 on one search engine yet on another may not appear until page 3. The ever present concern over page rank (PR) is Google specific so while it tells you how your blog is viewed by their bots, it says nothing as to how other search engines see your blog. Without meta tags the chances of search engine bots finding you are greatly reduced. You increase your chances of being viewed by search engine bots if you submit your blog to them. That is an invite for their bots to crawl your blog content and index it. I also found out that you get more attention from the search engines by regularly adding content to your blog but changing your template too often will get you less attention. Tweaking your template is better than doing a dramatic overhaul of your template. The best you can do is have good meta tags, submit your blog to search engines and keep creating good content on a regular basis. Once you've done all this focus on having fun blogging!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Wordless Wednesday

Fire in the Sky
March 18, 2009

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Wordless Wednesday

Evening Splendor
March 18, 2009

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Wordless Wednesday

Golden Skies
March 12, 2009

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Wordless Wednesday

Evening's Promise
October 13, 2008

Garden Gnome

©2006-2008

Wordless Wednesday

Evening Beauty
Oct. 13, 2008

Garden Gnome
©2006-2008

frenzy

Sunset's Glow
March 14, 2008

I think I was on the green wagon long before being green was cool. Energy and the use of energy with the resulting costs of using energy has been an interest from as long as I can remember. It has always been an environmental thing with me. So I tinker with alternate power and am constantly looking at greener ways of doing things in our day to day living. If I can get the same desirable results using less energy I will. Union Gas announced the price for natural gas would be increasing April 1, 2008. That sent me into another sealing frenzy. Now anyone looking at our gas bill would scratch their head because since July 28, 2007 to the current billing our natural gas usage cost $576.67. The price increase in natural gas will add an average of $6 per month for an average family. Trust me our energy usage is well below average and I intend to keep it that way. Natural gas in our home includes: hot water, furnace, fireplace, dryer and grill. Given our location that is quite low since some will more than likely spent a good portion of that amount on heating alone for January. Our house is kept at a comfortable temperature during the winter months.

As soon as we moved in here one of the first things unpacked was my caulk gun and caulk. I scoped out possible locations for solar heating and hot water then installed solar outdoor lighting and turned my attention to sealing the house. Sealing air leaks is always the first line of defense. It is the most cost effective, easy to do, DIY project there is but it needs to be ongoing because houses settle and new air leaks can arise. Ok, so back to my frenzy. My trusty caulk gun awaits!

Garden Gnome
©2007

Pondering

Sunset from Kitchen Window
January 3, 2008

I have to be the first to say we are so very, very blessed to live where we do. This is a typical view from my kitchen window many nights. Washing a few larger pots and pans couldn't be more pleasant!

I let things bother me more than I should. I know that and yet it happens especially with genealogy. Last night in the wee hours of the morning worried about medical tests to be faced today I poured over the ships manifests images. It would have been so nice to have my great great grandparents reveal themselves. They didn't. My eyes were getting very tired yet I couldn't sleep then I came upon an entry. This was a family from England - father 41, mother 38 and children 19, 16, 15, 13,11,4, 3 and 3 months. In perfect script beside their names was the notation "to be deported". That meant the family was going back to England but to what? Not only had they travelled 7 days to get to Quebec they would have to travel 7 days back to England with nothing to go to. They had already given up their home, their jobs (if they had them), sold off most of their possessions so they wouldn't have to move them and raise money for the trip, and likely spent the last penny they had to buy tickets for the family to go to Canada. Once there all the hopes and dreams were dashed! I can't help but wonder what happened to them and I couldn't help shedding a tear knowing full well that things likely did not turn out "peachy keen" for this family.

Back to the search...

Wordless Wednesday - A Beautiful Sunset Over the Water

Sunset Over the Water
October 23, 2007