Our web diary

Gardening

I finally got around to planting some of the plants I've picked up at various nurseries the last few weeks.
This is my second summer here and I had a better idea of what will do well, or at least what died in my last attempt.
I posted some photos in the gallery. Mostly for Tilly to look at, I know the rest of you don't care so much.
The rose bush we bought last summer survived the winter as did an ivy plant and what I think might be a chrysanthemum from last October. I replanted the rose into a larger container, hoping it will make it another year when we can plant in our own yard.
One of the few plants that flourished in a container last summer was the coleus, a bright red and green leafy thing that doesn't bloom but is very colourful. I decided to plant about a dozen of these plants, some red, some yellow outside our fence, hoping they will liven up what is really a drab area. The plants are small now, but I'm hoping to post some "after" shots in a month or two where these same plants will be big, bushy and lush.
Sometimes it's just fun to experiment. We really need a bench or some garden furniture to sit with a glass of wine and enjoy the hot humid evenings here in the south. Okay, well maybe we'll get one or two nice mornings to enjoy a cup of coffee. The photos in the gallery are linked here.
These are my tres amateur photos, so no comments please.

Visiting with Grandma

We spent this last weekend visiting with Grandma. It was good to spend some time together especially since the summer will get very busy.
We drove up Friday afternoon and hit some miserable weather just shy of Fancy Gap, Virginia -- a downpour in foggy conditions, unpleasant to say the least.
On Saturday morning the three of us went to a local nursery to pick out some plants for Grandma's baskets and front yard. I think I ended up with a few more than she did. Between the 2 of us we bought pots of cascading geraniums, mint, lavender, osteopernums, a pansy, and some greenery with funny latin names. In the afternoon Grandma and I tried to work on a crossword puzzle -- I have never been good at those.
My offer to cook dinner on Saturday evening was flatly refused, but when Sean suggested he would pan-fry a steak that was a fine idea.
On Sunday we had a pancake breakfast before Sean and I headed back to Charlotte to work on our prep for the Blowing Rock Art in the Park Festival.
It's hard to believe April is coming to an end and our first show is just 3 weeks away.

A couple of birthday notes: Susan Rivinus celebrates her birthday today April 26th and Arghi Yaqeen's birthday is this Thursday. I'm not sure how Susan feels about birthdays but I know Arghi will need someone to fix her a G&T to get through hers.

Embroidery

I had wanted to do up some polo shirts for the upcoming art shows. I started out wanting a simple white polo with my logo. So I started Googling.

I found thousands of results for embroidery. All of them wanted 12 piece lots or more. I need a few shirts, but certainly not 12. I finally found two companies that offered small lots. The first was Embroid Me. They quoted me $233.00 for four white polo shirts with my logo. $99.95 of that was the setup fee for the artwork. That was a little steep for my budget so I kept hunting.

I found a place called Little Creek Embroidery in Graham, NC. They offered a good selection of products with a VERY reasonable artwork charge of $25.00. The cost per piece was the price on their website plus $5.00 for the stitching. Not a bad deal since they had polo shirts for $11.84. At that price I may even just buy my polo shirts from them sans stitching. So I placed a request for a quote for 2 white and 2 gray short sleeved polos. This was on April 5th. I got the delivered price back of $80.25. Well at that price I might as well buy more.

I ended up ordering the original four shirts, plus 4 more in long sleeve, 4 caps and 4 tote bags. That got me over their 12 discount line and qualified me for a 20% discount. I could not have been happier. It ended up costing me $233ish for all 16 pieces. I received the order on April 18th which was two days before I was expecting it to show up. They will definately see more of my business and I am certainly going to pass them around. Maybe the camera club might want some shirts.

What is even better about this is that I feel good about supporting a local state business with this order.

Little Creek Embroidery in Graham, NC is a great outfit for someone needing custom embroidery. I highly recommend their product. See picture below.

I also got new business cards this week. These were from Overnight Prints and they were better than expectations as well. $39.00 (50 with shipping) for $1000 color business cards.

Update from Marlene

I've been meaning to update the weblog with some news or a letter, but inspiration or motivation seems difficult to muster these days. I found an email I sent to Tilly after Easter and decided to use it as a letter to all -- with some modifications.

Easter --
We spent Easter in Winston-Salem with the Vanns. We celebrated Easter and Grandma's birthday. On Saturday morning we got up rather early, much to Sean's despair I think, to get going on this trip. I knew I would be in the driver's seat and I just wanted to get going before it got too busy. So at just after 8am, the car packed up with goodies, we stopped first for some flowers at the grocery store, than for some gas, and then we were on the road. Butterflies under strict control I merged without any difficulty -- onto a thankfully un-brutal interstate -- and off we were. I did just fine, even managing to exit Hwy 77 and switch to Hwy 40 -- another merge without panicking.

We ended up having a really really nice time. Visited with Grandma et all, than I went to Target with Jenny, Diane and Ellen (Sean's aunties), a nice diversion, while Sean went for a spin and to check on the truck he has up there (TCW work stuff). Dinner was good: Cream-cheese stuffed celery, olives, roast lamb, barbequed pork, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, warm rolls etc. Dessert however was tres beau. Sean is still rhapsodizing about the cheesecake I made. It was good but personally I think next time I will try and find a substitute for the graham cracker crust and there is something about Tante Hulda's cheesecake that is just different but better -- more baked or something. I wish I could find that recipe. I had pureed strawberries to serve with it and covered the dents made by the tin-foil with some fancy fanned-out slice of strawberries. Clara, Sean's cousin, had brought a lemon meringue pie, chocolate chess pie (kind of like a baked chocolate custard) and a coconut topped cake (sort of a banana cake like version). I had a slice of cheesecake and the coconut cake which was very very yummy. I did not have room to try the pies.

Afterwards Grandma opened gifts -- candles had been put on the coconut cake and we sang happy birthday to a quietly-delighted lady. She kept handing her cards to people "Read this, whose it from?" while I quietly giggled to myself.
Sunday morning we stopped by for breakfast. Jenny had put the cinnamon rolls I baked into the oven to warm and they were pretty darn yummy dripping with buttercream icing brought to schmeer on them. A good visit overall -- it was nice to spend a holiday with noisy family people. Almost like home. And lastly, even though it was cloudy, I drove us home. We figured if it started to rain I could pull into a rest area and Sean could take over. Again the highways, especially the first one, were very quiet and I drove us from Jenny's door to our parking lot without stopping. The drive was just under 2 hours and most of it was at the posted speed limit of 70mph -- that's about 110 km per hour. I "plan" to go get that driver's license thingy before the onset of summer.

After the Easter weekend it's been back to the Farmer's market. So far so good. The market itself has still been fairly quiet, but we only need a couple of sales to make our day.

We are planning to make it up to Roanoke for a quick weekend trip next week and then May -- and the first of the Blowing Rock Art shows -- is around the corner. It looks like the summer is going to be very busy. I am already planning a spa day in October after the last show as a reward to myself (from Sean) for my good-wifely-support.
I'm sure Sean will be writing soon about the studio-lighting course he is taking. It's like a kid let loose in a toy store......
Just in case you missed it earlier the photographs from Easter are on the website.

The Riverbanks Zoo Columbia, SC.

The Charlotetcameraclub decided to take a field trip to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. Marlene and I had last visited the zoo in 2003.

It was funny when 10 or so of us went to get tickets. It looked like the photo crew from National Geographic had shown up. I had brought along my 70-200L 2.8 IS zoom with a 2 x telelconvter. There were a few people out with 400MM plus lenses. We got a lot of attention through the day.

The pictures are up in the Gallery. Marlene has added some as well.

Farmer's Market 2005

It's April and that means we are back out at the Charlotte Farmer's Market with the photographs. Saturday was our second week back. We sold one print the first week and two yesterday. I feel pretty good about the sales to date.. We changed the materials for this year and subsequently raised the prices. Getting three out this early in the season at the Market is a good start. I have also sold three prints and one framed image from the gallery in Charlotte. Hopefully we can keep it up for the year.

Here is a picture of our display stand at the market.

Easter

The photographs from Easter are now on the website.

I have also added three new photographs to the photography website.