Garden status

The garden is continuing to produce. Cherry tomatoes are coming in regularly and the peppers are ripening. Tomatoes in general are doing awesome.


Both went into the food dehydrator yesterday and today they came out tasting delicious!
I had already dried some of the cherry tomatoes in this way and while the little tomatoes are wonderful for snacks or salads they dry into raisin sized kernels which I don't like despite adoring the taste. With the first Roma tomatoes to go in the food dehydrator I decided to simply slice them a little less than a centimeter which still turned out a bit thin for my tastes. So far the old K-Tel machine that was my mother's is doing a great job!
I've also got access to plum and apple trees so will be making jam this year after all. :)


I still have plenty of salad and Swiss Chard. S.C. is a wonderful plant that just keeps on producing. It has a slightly salty flavor and is awesome in or as the main ingredient for a salad. Ditto for spinach but that's pretty much gone now. I have 3 cabbages that survived first the brutal summer and second the cabbage butterflies. Lots of carrots. 2 broccoli plants that I am awaiting going to seed. Corn is SLOWLY growing bigger. Some radishes that I doubt will make it before winter is really here.
There are a few cucumbers still lumbering along, some pumpkins/squash plants which will probably not produce anything...beans in the front are a joke but the one's in the back do awesomely as do the tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, birdhouse gourd and pepper plants.
The potatoes in the 4 buckets are still doing well while the ones in the front of house (the main garden) will soon be harvested as they are browning and breaking down. The strawberries are being transplanted (so far the one's that have been moved have survived) and in their place shall be moved the compost pile. (Now done)



The nettle patch will be growing elsewhere and the grapes will just have to deal with it.
The plan is to have the entire main garden in the back of house next year because it's more sheltered and better suited to it despite the fact that it's much smaller in size. The boat will obviously be brought to the front where there is room to park it on the trailer- just a matter of securing it.

I still get a few surprises. What I thought was a bean that had germinated late turned out to be one of Mama's morning glory seeds. There is one purple flower there to remind me that I was to hasty with giving up on those seeds. Where it's growing will become a gravelled seating area with possibly a pond in the future. The whole front of house will be dedicated to perennials and herbs, particularly the native plants that form the basis of my organic teas. More on that in a future post but here is a picture of what 10 pounds of rose hips look like:


In other matters I am selling post cards fairly steadily, getting some of my work published in one place or another and am reworking my web site ( it's amazing how that has become so all-consuming ).

Fallout

The fall fair has come and gone and with it the 51st Nicola Valley Pro Rodeo.

I got some nice pictures of the cowboys risking their behinds but the weather wasn't too great for photography unless you had a really large aperture lens as did many of the photographers who were in attendance. There were more than last year and the main booth for v.i.p.s had been enlarged...I think this is a good sign for rodeo.


Speaking of which, it was a picture of mine- a cowboy that took first place in the 'action' category of photos as the fair.
I also got firsts for 'Boxing Marmots' in wild animals, 'Duky-Katze' for domestic animals, and 'Ferris Wheel Love' for People/open category.
My dried floral arrangement (A European theme with grain, poppies, and cornflowers) got second place which pleased me although I believe it was the only dried arrangement in the show.
My panorama got second place which was kind of disappointing. I know it's not all about winning but when I think of the work that went into it- having a tripod out on that windy hill and slowly panning across the landscape to capture around 20 pictures and then painstakingly putting them together manually on the computer- to say nothing of getting the file ready and finding a new printer to print out the image in a different city.
Contrast that to the small image of a bridge during sunset taken from near the base. Oh well. Mine probably looked too professional because of the watermark at the bottom that wasn't hidden too well. I say that as a matter of fact- I made that image for personal pleasure but to the highest standard I know I can do.

A disturbing thing at the fair is a lack of participation by the artistic community...and possibly an absence of artistic interest in certain fields altogether. There were maybe 4 pieces in the digital art category for my age group and it was no contest getting first and second for my two entries.
Likewise for the fine art- there was only my stuff and maybe one other. Nothing takes the joy out of winning a ribbon than to know you won it by default since there were no other competitors. That's really what it felt like. Last year there were far more entries- I can't believe that the price increase of 25 cents a piece made it so difficult for people to get involved. I will have to address this as a meeting of the VVA next month.

That's it for now. I will have to write about the fishing trip another time.

Fall Fair Time

It's that time of year again. I've submitted 9 images to the fall fair; 2 art pieces and 7 photos. I wish more people (artists) put stuff into the fair...I don't know if they can't be bothered, think it's beneath them, or plain forgot.
I do this because I like sharing my stuff and for the exposure. Ribbons are nice too but i want my name to become familiar to the community. Although I do professional quality assignments in portraiture, design and so forth and am slowly building up my portfolio of published work I do not consider myself a 'professional' yet in that I have not yet registered myself as a business. Probably next year...but for now since my opportunities for photography are the same as everyone else I don't feel bad about trying for the aggregate prize!

I've also put in a dried floral arrangement that I stupidly did not take a picture of. It's theme is traditional European (grain, poppies, cornflowers) with the addition of a weirdly curled onion stalk and embellished with a bit of sparkly pipe-cleaner bent in the shape of the poppies the pods came from. Opium poppies. That's right...a lot of people grow Opium poppies as an ornamental flower in their gardens although they may call them 'bread seed poppies'.

Just recently the police 'busted' an opium poppy grower in Chilliwack, B.C. who was on the verge of harvesting 8 acres of pods to make an Asian tea additive- lol! It's kind of ludicrous but I guess they had to since it's a controlled substance...8 acres isn't exactly a flower bed! Anyway, I got a few nice compliments from the people running the fair over it and it's mostly because of the weird onion. Will post picture later.

For Digital Art/Open:


An older piece for a dramatic Digital Art contribution:


My specialty has a category; Panorama. This particular image(s) is Kamloops, B.C.


For People/Open:


Again in the People/Open category:


Boxing Marmots- a fairly recent picture for wild animals category:


My little soul sucker for Domesticated animals:


Fine arts...an unashamed Trekker I am!:


For fine art a portrait of the che-F:) :


A cowboy in the action category: