A day of garden planning!
The weather on Long Island had been predictably rotten; first snow then rain and then back to snow flurries. What's a gardener to do? Plan for next year's garden, of course. I have one area in my garden that gets a good amount of sun - a premium for me among my oak woodland. It's also very wet. Last year I planted Mme. Theresa Hydrangeas in front of some cast off hydrangeas from a client's garden in hopes of absorbing some of the water. I had a corner spot in that space that was potentially experimental. I had just finished a thesis on a Victorian garden writer Jane Loudon and was caught up in elephant ears, cannas and hibiscus; so naturally I planted a few. Come November, the cannas and elephant ears needed lifting and storing. (I think the cannas were of the Humbolt strain and the elephant ears of straight species Colocasia esculenta. The elephant ears easily out grew their stated 36"/3 foot expected limit. Hey, they were happy!) Today I checked on their status in my unheated basement. They looked fine. I've posted some pictures of first, the lifted corms - how beautiful and colorful (cannas in the background). The final pic is of the colocasia today in my basement, packed in moss. Now I know that my three crates of tubers and corms are viable, I can plan an even more over the top tropical garden for this year.
I am still having trouble inserting pics within the blog - any help out there?
8 comments:
Hi Kathryn,
How nice to open up my morning mail and see a message from a fellow Huntingtonite :-) It took me a long time to figure out how to put the photos on my blog, I'm not computer savvy at all. My photos are stored in several formats, for the most part I use a program called Picasa. It allows you to upload right to your blog but I can only get 4 photos when I try it that way.
My new solution is that I down load my photos into my computer at their highest resolution. Then I export each whole file to my external hard drive. If you don't have a hard drive, it's worth the $100, we lost thousands of photos last year when our computer crashed.
Now when I type my blog, I click on the little photo icon, it allows me to browse my computer, I go to the external hard drive and click on the photos I want. If this doesn't make sense, I can try to explain this in person, the next few days are crazy but it will slow down around here again soon.
Welcome to Blogging!
Hi: I've been taking a look at your blog and I know I have found a happy place. I have been gardening in Florida for all my life. Until I started blogging I hardly knew the names of anything-- I just learned what worked for me in this heat and stuck with it. I am going to love learning from all your knowledge and experience.
I really like your blog title too.
I'm no expert but I remember the troubles I had as well learning to get things lined up on a post. As for posting photos within your text? Like Melanie my files photos were too big and they took forever to upload until I compressed the ones I wanted to upload.
There are a couple of things you might try in addition to Melanie's idea. 1)When you are in the browse window (add an image from your computer) for adding photos to your post ---prior to clicking the 'upload image button' to upload the photo you have chosen...
a. click on NONE for choose a layout
b. unclick choose this layout every time
2)Within the 'create post' window -place your curser right under a photo and click the enter button to create spaces (just like you would in text if you desired spaces). Then type your text under the photo.
Sometimes I type my text after I've loaded all my photos but many times I cut and paste my text to place it under the photo where I want it.
3) Sometimes there are settings issues.
a)Go to your 'settings' tab then click on formatting. Scroll down to 'enable float alignment' click yes- but if you are still having trouble or if yes is already clicked blogger suggests you click 'no' - I would play with that to see what works best for you. Blogger can be a bugger sometimes.
I hope any of that makes sense.
Now to the heart of your post:
One thing that amazes me is the patience of northern gardeners- pulling out all your corms and tubers and storing them. In Florida we leave them in the ground year round and they pop right back out for us. But I do love the look and feel of corms, tubers and bulbs - like in your photos when you first pulled them up.
This may be the longest comment you will ever receive- let's hope so right?
Have a great day! Glad you have joined the blogging world... warning- it's very addicting.
Can you believe - it's me again? How could I have another thing to say? Just wondered if you noticed you can put a title into your post? That way when your feed goes to Blotanical folks can see the title of your post which would tell a bit of what you have written about that day.
Just a thought.
Thank you all for your comments. Merr, I am having trouble connecting to your link. Could you re-post it? Melanie, I have an .mac account where I can upload my photos on its web gallery. An external HD is an excellent suggestion, though.
Meems: I will try your suggestions - all are excellent. I have been trying to add the photos last. I'll start with them next time.
I discovered your blog from the new listing at Blotanical.
I have been planning my garden for ages. Half the problem is that I keep changing my mind and the other is my limited knowledge. Both I hope to improve upon. I'm looking forward to watching your plan come alive, and checking out the blotanical link you set up.
P.S. on the pic front. Some software program like photoshop have a 'save for web" option where you can downsize your pic's for ease af use on the web.
P.P.S. I see I've somehow changed my sign off to hb.
Heloise
Welcom to blotanical!! Looks like you already discovered the smart folks so I'll stumble along with you and we can morph our pages together. Every time I learn something I go try it out on my blog. Keep up the hard work. Looks like you don't fear hard work with all your storing and writing about plants. Looking forward to your blog.
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