Amnesia or dementia?

 

I am back from warmer climes and no longer singing the praises of technology. I am a very patient individual, but over the last few months my patience has been sorely tested. After the problems of recent months with a tired laptop, erratic broadband, problems commenting and third party cookies,  I  had hoped that a new all singing and dancing laptop would solve the problems that I was experiencing, but no. This shiny new laptop cannot/does not want to/will not see photographs that were taken before some arbitrary date in September 2014. I do not know if this is due to Windows 8 (the previous laptop was Windows 7), Blogger, which also seems to be a different version to my previous laptop or Picasa, which seems to delight in being a law unto itself. The photographs are at least still in my camera and I can remember taking them. It just seems to be the laptop that is suffering from amnesia or dementia. Well whatever the diagnosis this latest difficulty has given me a bit of a headache. When I started to have problems preparing posts I decided to opt for subjects where I could use several photographs as a quick means of generating the post, as putting in text was proving very time consuming. For a time this approach worked. However, the post Last Month had to be prepared using two laptops - the new one and the old one, as the old one will at least see my photographs, although it has other problems. Loading the photographs onto my old laptop did not please husband who had started to wipe my old laptop. Clearly I cannot continue to operate in this fashion and in any case it was very time consuming.

The consequence of all this is that I shall not be able to write some of the posts that I had planned to write where photographs would have been key to the subject matter. For a time I was thinking of throwing in the towel, but I have realised that posts can be written without photographs and the schedule of posts that I had planned is not set in stone. I needed to do some lateral thinking and make some changes. However, all is not lost as when I did some forward planning I loaded some photographs onto the draft posts and they are still  there. It is disappointing to say the least and just goes to show that change is not necessarily progress.

Happy New Year

Technology is wonderful when it works and if you are reading this then it has worked, as I scheduled it a few days ago and should now be enjoying myself in warmer climes than the frozen UK. Our week away will go all too quickly and we shall soon be back home in Chester. Alternatively I may be spending New Year at Manchester Airport if the weather is bad and we are not able to fly.

Wherever I am I wish you a Happy New Year

Season's greetings

 I had not intended to leave it this long before I got around to posting again. Life has been rather busy doing nothing special or worthy of posting about. The last few weeks seem to have been a marathon, but at last most of the necessary preparations have been done. The tree is decorated, I have made my final visit to the supermarket and the presents are wrapped. I just need to ice the cake. But before I go off to do that

   Happy Christmas everyone

Last month

Recently the weather here in the UK has been wonderful - dry, warm and sunny.  However, I can not pretend that I like this time of year when the days get shorter and the evenings draw in, the leaves turn and fall off the trees, the garden looks permanently untidy and the new series of Downton Abbey hits our television screens. I will admit that I am a fan, but alas Matthew is still dead. OK, the early Autumn colours are good this year, but we are desperately short of rain and I am having to water some of our established shrubs, that are struggling with the dry conditions. The prospect of Winter being around the corner is depressing. Yesterday morning in the post office I saw a pile of boxes of mince pies for sale and then  in  the afternoon I saw my first Christmas tree!

Regardless of all this the garden continues to be a source of colour. I have been making the most of the good weather and spending time in the garden, so rather than bore you with another post about a holiday here are some photographs taken in our garden during September.

The first photograph is the only one from our front garden and is of a fungus which I think is honey fungus. It is growing out of the stump of an ash tree which was cut down several years ago. Since I took the photo the fungus has disappeared.












Round in the back garden we still have lavender in flower.

Along from the lavender is Dahlia Bishop of Llandaff

and Crocosmia Lucifer which grow along side one another.

In the bed that we call the shrubbery is this perfumed rose whose name we do not know.

Then if we turn back in the other direction we have Dahlia Melody Gipsy

 

and a peony in its Autumn colours.

While further down the garden the sedum is coming into flower and it looks as if the wasps are enjoying themselves.

Finally in my white border the Japanese Anemone are looking very graceful.

In the vegetable garden we have had a good crop of mange tout, runner beans and courgettes. The tomatoes are now doing well. These are a trailing tomato that I have not grown before. They have been very easy to grow requiring only the minimum of attention unlike conventional tomatoes.

And we can not forget the apple tree which is still holding on to its bumper crop, despite the fact that there are wind falls on the lawn every day at the moment.