I use normal and macro for close-ups and that's the beginning and end of my wisdom. The time of day and weather conditions are very important, as Masha has mentioned, and another feature I use a lot is not on the camera but rather on my laptop, and that's the ability to crop pictures. So often it's only after you look at the picture on the computer that you realize how many extraneous things are present. Cropping has so often given me a better finished product. Very nice pictures, Silverkelt. What a thrill it must be to have found a better way to take pictures. Ingrid

Helen I think you're right about my mystery flowers being Spring Beauty. Thank you! If I planted that, I've forgotten. I planted Jane five years ago and I'd guess that it's 6 to 8 feet tall now and still not blooming heavy enough to call it showy. It gets some competition from a Tulip tree so it might be doing better by now if it was planted in a better spot. I'm ashamed - I finally broke down and bought the Canon that has a 50x zoom lol. I got a good deal on it. Best Buy matches some dot com prices now. Amazon is one and they had the lowest price so I showed them that price at the register at Best Buy and they matched it. I also had reward zone bucks to take off of the price plus another 20 for applying for a BB charge card back before Christmas so it got the price down to 340. That's more than I intended to spend but I still had some Santa cash and I "needed" a good camera. : ) It seems to be working great for macro or zooming either one, but if the camera is zoomed all the way out, it's difficult to keep the subject centered. If you move the camera even a little, you've lost sight of it. I haven't messed around with macro much yet but this one is of buds on my Mohawk viburnum and the lens was very close. I need to try it out on some bugs or butterflies.

Congrats on the 46 pounds. I agree with you about the fact that we overweight types need to watch and count what we are eating, and that's a permanent thing. I just ran across the Hacker's diet, by John Walker. Not much really new in that book, but being an engineer, I could relate to his way of explaining it. Anyway, what he says is that we lack the feedback mechanism that some have to naturally control their weight. It's like being nearsighted. If you are nearsighted, you have to wear glasses. If we quit wearing glasses, we won't be able to see, and if we quit watching our weight, we will get fat again. So you accept that you will have to do things differently, make that adjustment, and move on. Here is a link that might be useful: Hacker's diet

Cori Ann, I was able to root other roses, not florist roses. I only ever got one florist rose to root. And yes I understand there is something they treat the roses with that probably does inhibit the rooting process. But I know it can be done. There was a lady on the Forums several yrs ago who rooted lots of them. I haven't seen her on here in a long time. Ya know, last night I looked at that video you posted about growing roses from seed. It's funny, I kept watching all sorts of rose propagating videos on YouTube. Some are hilarious. And some are very informative. And some are interesting, but incomplete. They don't show the end results. Anyway, in one of the videos, I saw a rooting product that intrigued me, and I ordered some from Amazon last night. It's called "Clonex gel." It's a super-concentrated rooting hormone that seals the end of the cutting. The reviews sounded great. Most people got well over 90% success. That's of course many other types of plants, but some that were difficult to root otherwise. I can't wait to try it now!