I only got two buttercup squash off of my large plant but they were good. I waited to pick them until the stem was shriveled up which seemed to be the right thing to do. It came easily off the plant. The squash was firm. I cut the top off of it and scooped out the seeds.
Then I chopped up a white onion, some mushrooms, a couple bay leaves, a couple springs of rosemary from the garden finely chopped and a couple of poblano peppers and fried them all in frying pan with butter, salt and some ground pepper corns.
I filled the squash about half full of this mixture as the oven was preheated to 350 degrees and then put a layer of ground tillamook chedder cheese and then another layer of this filling. I covered the squash with the top that I carved off and then cooked for an hour. After that our I put another layer of cheese on and cooked for another 45 minutes. It was scrumptious!
It was nice to go to Yosemite – a place I go to quite often and discover a little gem I haven’t seen before. It’s just a little spot along the side of the road called Fern Spring that runs all year round. Below are a couple shots taken with a tripod at ISO 100, F5.6 & .8 sec exposure to get the blurred water.
Below is a nice little video from Burpee seeds on growing lettuce. They have a special of no shipping this weekend if you mention weeknfree on checkout of an order of $40 or more. They mention in this video that lettuce is a cool season crop so they would like you get started on your Fall planting. However I have been quite successful in growing it right during the hot part of august thanks to using something called salad tables and shade cloth. More about that below the video.
Below is a photo of my salad table growing a nice crop of loose oak leaf lettuce. Every week I have been able to clear cut myself a new batch of fresh organic lettuce! You can read about how to construct a salad table here. Basically the concept is drainage, drainage, drainage. It doesn’t require much soil and is at waist height so no bending over. I made mine not at the same dimensions as this link because I wanted it to fit nicely next to my clawfoot bathtub pond. This whole area is covered with white shade cloth that blocks about 25% of the hot August sun. This allows me to still grow lettuce even in the dead heat of the Summer without it bolting. I plan to replace a lot of my ornamental plants in here with loose leaf lettuce. Not only is it tasty to eat but it’s pretty to look at as well! What a great way to accomplish two objectives at once!
Oak leaf lettuce broadcasted in a salad table next to my pond
Gotta show off my water lily as well!
and my baby blue plumbago mixed with my bubble gum pink suptertunias!
I will be teaching 6 hours of hands-on training in Adobe Photoshop CS5 at the Antioch Recreation Department. You’ll start with a basic introduction of the interface to feeling comfortable with many of the tools. You’ll fix photos and create your own artwork from scratch.
Below is the king of my poodle pack (at least in body weight) and following that is how I made a little more kingly…
King Burt
Original
I am lucky to have a great little poodle who will gladly do anything I ask him to do as long as he can have jerky treat at the end. For this photo I draped an old cape from a Halloween costume I once wore. I picked up a little crown from the .99 cent store. I frizzed up his hair a little so it would hold it and set up a couple strobes. I shot with the light box to the right and a reflected umbrella to the left a little higher. The shot wasn’t perfect and needed a little help so I did a little photoshop as you will see the original below:
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I used “content aware” to take out the edge of the black curtain in the background.
I used the patch tool to fix his hair.
I added sparkle to his crown using the star brush tool with white as the foreground color
I used the clone rubber stamp tool and sampled light hair with opacity of 50% and set the blend mode to lighten to clean the eye stain under his eyes
Lastly I used the glamor glow from Nik Efex to give a softness and I masked his face so that it didn’t apply to his eyes and nose.
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About 5 years ago I got a chance to visit Glass Beach and try my hand at hunting for different colored glass.
Glass Beach is one of the most unique beaches in the world, not because nature created it that way, but because time and the pounding surf have corrected one of man’s mistakes.
Beginning in 1949, the area around Glass Beach became a public dump. It is hard to believe these days, but back then people dumped all kinds of refuse straight into the ocean, including old cars, and their household garbage, which of course included lots of glass. Finally in 1967, the North Coast Water Quality Board realized what a mistake it was and plans were begun for a new dump away from the ocean.
Glass closeup
Now, over 30 years later, Mother Nature has reclaimed this beach. Years of pounding wave action have deposited tons of polished glass onto the beach. Every day people come to hunt what old bits of treasure wash to shore. You’ll still see the occasional reminder of it earlier life, such as a rusted spark plug, but for the most part what you’ll see is millions of pieces of glass sparkling in the sun.
I came home with several bags full but after gathering all these bags of different colored glass the question remained as what do I do with this pretty but unusable stuff???
a colorful selection (click above to enlarge)
So in storage for 5 years it sat until I had an idea for a use today. My little old lady cactus was getting a bunch of weeds around her. I was going to put some boring old bark around her when I remembered the white colored glass I had collected from Glass beach. The old lady cactus has such a soft blueish white appearance to her that I thought the colored glass would look so nice around her base. To add a little interest I added some blue glass pebbles from my fish tank.
Currently this cactus is not in bloom but it has reddish pink flowers that grow in a crown long the top. I think the blue will set this off nicely.
I almost put some of my clear glass pebble but soon realized it magnifies the suns rays and could burn the plant. The glass from glass beach is tumbled though so it’s almost opaque with a natural etching from the tumbling process on the beach.
So there is my gardening tip. You don’t have to stick to just what the garden store sells. Recycle even if it’s many many years later!!
Below are three pictures of the cactus outside in my garden and then a couple more where I brought the cactus into my studio and played with the side lighting a little…
Sitting outside in direct sunlightStudio lightSide lighting
I only got two buttercup squash off of my large plant but they were good. I waited to pick them until the stem was shriveled up which seemed to be the right thing to do. It came easily off the plant. The squash was firm. I cut the top off of it and scooped out the seeds.
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