Ana,
You are so right...those of us with fast connections tend to forget that there are still many areas that don't have that option. It must be quite annoying to wait for those photos to load!

I'll send a message requesting the gallery, too.

Emily

Great idea! This also allows you to upload a photo directly (if I remember correctly) and lets you bypass Picasa or webshots if you don't have a web server where you can post your photos.

Solana we must be on the same psychic path because this am as I was uploading photo's I thought WE NEED A GALLERY so I checked out all of the other regional forums hoping to use one as an example in my pitch to GW but oddly enough I did not find a single forum with a gallery!!! PNW has a separate forum for exchanges but no gallery. Hmmm curious any old timers (to GW, not in chronological age of course) have any insight as to why the galleries seem to be limited to certain forums. It might be wise to know GW's position before we try and state our case. In the mean time I will keep you up to date on this weeks standout plant less photo's. kt
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Posted by runktrun z7a MA (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 9:06

I thought we could use a thread to post photos/descriptions of plants in your garden (new introÂs or old classics) that are real standouts in your garden this week. In my garden it was a hard choice but I am going to go with Kniphofia pumila that earlier in the spring many of you kind soles tried to help me edit out of my shopping cartÂbut what can I say I am a compulsive shopper. A few things I will add about this plant is to date I have been very happy with the foliage, the flower color is actually more chartreuse than the photo reveals, this is a full sun plant that I have in part shade and seems to be doing fine. So what is the standout plant in your garden this week?

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Posted by whitegarden Z5 MA (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 9:31

For me I would have to name my echinacea "White Swan." Not that it is giving off such an extraordinary display, but just the fact that they made it through the winter and are showing signs of giving me July bloom in the white garden. Yay!!!

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Posted by cdo_and_doug 5 (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 10:01

runktrun - great photo
I'd be happy with that!

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Posted by ego45 6bCT (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 11:35

Undisputedly hydrangeas here,
Nachtigale (more like a z7 plant overwintered perfectly in a sheltered spot)

and Grayswood (serrata, perfectly hardy in z6, fairly large, 5x5' easy. Not sure if picture capturing well its perfectly deep violet (not purple) fertile center and white with a slight hint of pink sterile outer flowers. Fall color show of it will be even more amazing)

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Posted by mskee z6 MA (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 11:47

OOOOh, I love the idea of this thread...hope more people post photos.
This is a Thomas Edison dahlia, which bloomed this week. I've never grown a dahlia before with such huge blossoms, which makes it stand out even more. The colors seem to glow.

Emily

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Posted by ginny12 z5 MA (My Page) on Mon, Jul 9, 07 at 12:07

Stachys monieri 'Hummelo'. It is a type of betony. I have grown big betony, Stachys grandiflora, for years but just discovered this species last year. Vigorous and lots of growth for only one season in the garden. Tall stems with hot purple-pink spiky flowers. No staking. Nice foliage. In full bloom now. I will definitely be buying more of these. So sorry about no photo!

I do sympathize with not having high speed. Can't even imagine it anymore. But I do get lost having multiple related forums to check out. I used to peruse some galleries, but it got too confusing for me. I think the gallery conversations are not searchable too and I try to find my threads by searching.

Picasaweb makes it easy to post thumbnail links. I use those sometimes. I will try to more often. Are they a problem for dial-up?

I am just wondering how many people this affects. Do most of us have high-speed connections (as I do)? Are there a lot of people on dial-up? I for one don't go to the galleries on the few forums I visit that have them and so would prefer to keep images here. But if it is a problem for a lot of people, then I'd vote for the gallery. So how many of you out there are affected? Can we get a sense of the general opinion?

I thought I was the only person left in the world who still had dial-up when I switched to DSL a few months ago. To be honest, I don't see a huge difference in the two, although when on-line shopping, the catalog page *do* load a bit faster than they used to, and I suppose the same with the photo-heavy threads here too. But then again, I had several people who used my computer, including my computer fix-it wiz-kid, comment that I had the fastest dial-up they'd ever seen.

I too don't visit the galleries too often, and would prefer the photos here, but would certainly vote for a gallery if others have problems here.

:)
Dee

I have high speed access too. I wouldn't mind at all if we had a gallery for people who have a problem with photo heavy posts. I do find that I don't frequent galleries either. I used to visit them a lot, looking for photos of plants and gardens, but I found that at least those I was going to, were pretty sparse and often out of date. I think people forget they are there and there are more photos in the Discussion threads as far as I have noticed. So if we get a gallery, it won't help if the photo heavy threads are still in the Discussion forum. Right?

pm2

I have dial-up, but probably wouldn't visit a gallery very often. I'd rather have the photos here, and just deal with the slow loading in some fashion (wash the dishes, mow the lawn, paint the house,... just kidding, sort of).

I would love it if people controlled the size of the photo files they post, and started a new thread when the number of posts just get astronomical. I remember one thread when I had to wait over a half hour just to get to the bottom so I could post a request to start a new thread.

Claire

Hi Claire :-)

I was wondering, are you able to view the 'Standout Plant' thread on the forum? There are only 32 posts on it so far...is that too long to load for you? Also, if you are able to view it, how are the size of the photos? I see a number of people using picasso to post these small thumbnails recently and that looked like a good idea to me, but then when I click on the thumbnail to get a larger photo, it doesn't always give me a larger photo. The last time I did, it brought me to that person's picasso page but then I had to search their albums to try to find the photo they had posted.

pm2:

The Standout Plant thread is slow but not too bad for me - I don't know about other dial-up users since speeds vary so much.

I really like the thumbnails - in some cases I clicked on the thumbnail but it just took way too long to load the big photo so I just stopped the loading and moved on.

I also noticed that there's a fair amount of text on that thread. It gives me something to read and by the time I've read all the posts I can go back and look at the photos.

Claire

Well, that sounds pretty good Claire. Maybe the thumbnail photos are helping. Actually, after I posted here yesterday, as I continued to check that Standout thread, the rest of the thumbnails worked fine for me. It just takes a minute for the larger photo to load even for me with high speed.

I think it is still worth it to request the gallery for this forum for people who will use it.

:-)
pm2

pm,
On Picassa support feedback I recently told them that their performance has been getting slow lately. I suggested less bells and whistles and more and faster servers. fwiw.

I also find that if I use the larger thumbnail size, that sometimes that is sufficient and the large picture doesn't necessarily need to be opened. But I suppose at some point, there's a load issue there too.

curious what thumbnail didn't link right. was it mine?

Now that I'm using Picasa, I think that's going to solve this problem. They provide the code to include a small image in your post and a link to the larger photo. Maybe we should start a separate thread about Picasa, and encourage people to use it, and mention the link on the Picasa page that provides the correct code?

We might also ask our FAQ author to include this in the "how to post photos" section of the FAQ.

Wendy...

the photo of Special Edition daylily...if you click, it goes to a yellow daylily.
the photo of the lollipop lilies went to a sundown echinacea?
The Dahlia was correct
The boxes were correct
The echinacea was correct.

Mayalena's salvia was correct
tina's petunia was correct
kt's prairie blue eyes daylily went to a peach daylily
both kt's vine photos linked to only the second photo.

Doesn't seem like anyone is doing anything wrong but rather Picasa must be causing errors?

I have to say that I use tinypic.com. They have made it very easy to use with updates recently. I keep a folder on my hard drive with photos I want to post and tinypic comes up with a browse, I choose the photo, it has a copy button and you are done. I paste it into my post and I haven't had an error or a problem in the past year I have used it.

They don't have thumbnails though. I do have to resize the photos myself before I go to tinypic, but my photo program makes that painless and you can resize a whole folder of photos all at once. I could choose smaller sizes, but how small would I have to go for it to make it easier for dial ups? I think the thumbnail size is too small for viewing.

I hope those who use Picasa can figure out why the thumbnails are going to the wrong photos. I might consider using it if the size I have to go to with my own resizing is not good for viewing.

It takes forewer for me to see a larger image when I click on Picassa thumbnail.

Okay, just trying something here. I have Webshots, and I'm trying to see if when I post a thumbnail, it will link to a bigger photo...

{{gwi:1084491}}

Hmm, I guess not...

:)
Dee

I'm not sure how a gallery works so I just looked at one. It looks like a bunch of photos grouped into different categories. How do you know which photos go with which threads?

I used to have dialup until about a year ago. I would open multiple browser windows with different web pages, so that I could be reading one web page while another photo-intensive web page was loading.

Now we have cable internet with a wireless network. What a dream! I mostly sit on the couch with my laptop and surf at leisure. The couch is at least 75 feet away from the router but the download speed is impressive. I also take the laptop outside on occasion.

Btw, Claire, I use the Mozilla browser. There is a preference that I can set that will prevent all images on a web page from loading. If you simply want to load a thread and post a reply without the photos, perhaps the browser you use has a setting so you can do this.

dtd:

I can't specifically recommend Picassa in the FAQ - no commercial references allowed. I wanted to add tinypic.com but knew I couldn't. I may try to just talk about thumbnails.

terrene:

Excellent information about Mozilla blocking images. I use Safari and I'll see if I can block images there.

Claire

It seems like I'm in the minority here with a really bad dial-up connection. Even when the Standout Plant thread was only 5 replies long, after 20 minutes it still hadn't finished loading.

I appreciate all the thoughtful replies and have noticed the increased use of thumbnails which helps a lot. They may not show the full glory, but give a hint and allow me to choose what to view full-size.

I think the trick to using a Gallery is twofold: if you know you're about to start a photo-heavy thread, post the photo(s) first in gallery using the same subject you'll use in the discussion side (or something close, e.g., "My Standout Plant"), then cut & paste a link to that gallery thread on the discussion thread using the Optional Link URL.

I also hang out on the Cottage forum which does have a gallery, and what seems to work well is to post one pic in a conversation or discussion thread, but for something like "my vacation" or "our renovation" use the gallery.

Just for kicks, I opened Standout Plant, now at 40 replies, with nothing else accessing the internet, as I wrote this offline at a low-use time of day on my ISP server. Took 45 minutes to see all that inspiration.

Yes terrene, that Mozilla tip is great. On old computer I had Opera which had a convenient 'Show Images' toggle on the toolbar. On new laptop, I use Mozilla's Firefox, hadn't yet found that option (Tools-Options-Content-Load Images) Thanks! It'll take a few more clicks to turn off and on, but will allow me to keep up with what's going on. Meanwhile, it really helps when posters include a brief description of their photo in the text portion.

Thanks to everyone for keeping the overhead size of pix in mind,

Ana

Ana,

So glad you were able to make use of that tip about shutting off the images loading. I hope that will help too.

That is horrible that it took 45 minutes to load the Standout thread. As a contrast, I just timed how long it took me to load that thread and it was less than 4 seconds. That is quite a difference. I feel so bad for you. The photos are the part of the thread I look forward to the most. [g]

Hope things change for you soon, that you can get faster connections.
:-) :-)

Hi-speed here but would be OK with a Gallery if it helps others. I don't frequent the Gallery pages too often. It can just get to be too much...clicking through all the various Forums. I like our New England forum being all in one place. It's quick & easy to follow & my favorite of the gardening related places. But, again...I'm OK if those on dial-up would benefit from pictures being on a separate page.

Tricia

I am just curious last week I wrote GW a letter supporting Solana's request for a gallery and have not received a response from them. Of course my GW mail has not worked in nine months so who knows. Has any one heard a response from GW on this matter and I am wondering why some folks have no problem with their mail accounts while the rest of us are out of luck? Any one have any suggestions?? kt

The usual way to get a new forum is to post the request on the Suggestions? Forum. Then you ask other people to post on that thread supporting your request.

That's how we got the New England forum in the beginning (except it was "Suggestions and Comments" forum at that time).

In the last year I saw the Lighting forum established using that method.

Claire