Gorgeous Larissa! Hang in there buddy! Reds are so illusive to the camera it seems. Anything from Red Lion to the deepest of Red Amaryllis blooms somehow appear the same to most cameras...it is a bummer! At least you get to experience the full glory in person. I have noticed similar results with pinks too. Dark pink especially... Anna- That Black Pearl does look to have very deep coloring and the blooms look huge! You captured them very well! I thought I purchased that one this year, but when I got home and looked, the tag says Red Dragon instead. Happy accident and I was very pleased! I already have a Royal Velvet that was very dark also, but in photos it and the Grand Cru and Red Lion look mostly the same. In an earlier post, Ryan was giving advice on how to help your camera when photographing reds. I can't remember which post it was, but it had something to do with using something gray to focus on first or something of the sort. I will try to find it or maybe he will see this and offer more advice. Regardless, it is a very pretty bloom and it looks like the fun has only just begun there! -Frank

Thanks, Raven. I'm sure he's behind on lots of stuff. Early in 2009, I had him change his update settings to notify him of updates, but not automatically download. That was to hold off on sp1 (at a time when I think I read here that folks were having trouble with it - but I didn't follow that topic, so didn't realize sp1 had become a good idea and that sp2 followed). We also set it that way bc. his computer was automatically updating and then rebooting when he was in the middle of doing other things. So this was to allow him to time his own downloads and installations. But he just never thought of it - and I didn't think I needed to keep track for him. I do keep track of his Avast, superantispyware, malwarebyte and spywareblaster. Every now and then when he's done surfing I have him leave out the laptop and go ahead and update and scan. I'll have to keep track of more than that, obviously. I got foxit reader on my ancient laptop in my office and love it. It takes so little room and does what I need quickly. Do you like pdf-xchange viewer more than foxit reader? Or does he need to use firefox to use foxit reader? I installed firefox for him - and set up tabs with the places he likes to go (did that in the summer) - but he hasn't used it. He's a bit resistant to tech changes. He balked when I got Tivo's - although he loves it now. He's a musician - and I got him Protools so he could record the music he wrote. That was over 1 1/2 years ago - and he hasn't learned it yet - he's barely scratched the surface. Last spring he bought an Imac bc. it was better for recording music. And now he's finally setting up his den and equipment. I'm hoping he'll actually learn the software this year. I'll take care of the rest for him so the only learning curve he has is Protools (certainly the most challenging of them all). But I digress. I'll check his other updates and run Secunia - I'm pretty sure I already put that on his computer last year. Thanks. Lynn.

I'm hoping the computer was powered down correctly before pulling the plug as that can sometimes result in registry corruption. Try a simple restart of the computer, if that fails check your connection status by Right clicking the small computers or computer icon in the task bar down by the clock. You should have the option to do a repair. If all else fails you may consider doing a system restore to yesterday. Click Start all Programs, accessories, system tools, in system tools chose the restore my computer. That will simply restore the registry and system files as they were before the computer was unplugged.

I've been pulling it up for 40 years and each year it's as if it's never been touched. I've smothered with cardboard and bark mulch, newspaper and bark mulch, better top soil (although it's much easier to pull out from good soil than the clay it seems to thrive in. Truly, the only solution is to move. :-)