I can't really give a desciption either. I found the seeds in my seed box and thought I know I wanted these, but I can not for the life of me figure out what they look like. I planted the seeds and so far they are growing slowly and seem to have fern like leaves, kind of lacy. That is all I know about it. Maybe I will pot a few up and overwinter them just to be sure, and can get more info on them then, when they bloom. Thanks for trying. Sorry I can't give more info. :) Fran

OK, everyone, send your kids to me, that barn will be cleaned in no time, LOL, and I won't charge you very much for the honor. (grin) Ellen, I can guarantee they'll get appropriately dirty. They probably won't smell very good either, but they'll learn about rinsing off in the horse tank, one of life's little known pleasures in the summer when it's about 85F. (The stock drink from the pond in the summer, and a 50 gallon horse tank makes a decent "swimming pool", or at least a wading/rinsing/cooling off pool). Sally, I don't have very big hands and I grew up milking, so I'm not sure hand size has much to do with it. :-) We had a couple of cows for "family milk", we didn't pasteurize or anything, we just drank it raw. I got up at 4 a.m. every day to milk, came home and showered, got on the bus for school. When I came home I milked again, had supper, did homework and went to bed so I could do it all over again the next day. Dad always did morning chores with me but I did evening chores before he got home from work. My sister hated the farm and the barns and had only "inside" chores. I hated housework (still do) and would far rather be mucking stalls than mopping floors. Michael, you're right, any kind of animal is an everyday job. It doesn't matter if you're sick or on vacation or if it's Christmas or your birthday, animals must be cared for. If you want to go away, you'd better line up reliable "help". Fortunately, Amanda and David are right across the street and Amanda will check Valentine and Suzy every day, make sure there's food and water, that the tank doesn't freeze. She'll check on Red Cow too, to make sure she doesn't have a calf early, and keep on eye on the horses to be sure the hay feeders are full. That's one of the reasons Elery isn't so keen on farming, it IS a 24/7 responsibility and keeps you pretty much at home, or close to home. Ashley's fine, although she did get her jeans dirty, LOL, Valentine's little hooves are still flexible, not even hard yet. In spite of the work and the responsibility and the expense, I love it. I want to plant blueberries and raspberries, a few more fruit trees. I think I'm going to raise a couple dozen ducks for the freezer and I'll be waiting for Valentine's "little sister" or brother. Hey, it keeps me off the streets, LOL. Annie

The short story? Upload your photos to photobucket using the "800 by 600" pixel upload option. Done. You'll get a small file size but a photo that will display well. To answer your questions, here's the long story. And I'm not kidding. It's long. Way too long: "What I'm also trying to understand is the whole process: I take a picture with my 6.1 Kodak camera. The picture size is therefore________" Your file size depends on the settings on your camera at which you are taking photos. Most cameras offer a couple of choices, like "Image Quality: FINE/NORMAL/BASIC" and/or "Image size: LARGE/MEDIUM/SMALL". Those choices will define the amount of jpeg compression that your photo undergoes and thus they will define the size of the file that comes out of your camera. Generically a 6MP camera is probably putting out jpeg photos in the 2-3MB range. "Jpeg" is a compression program. It's a program that reduces the MB file size of the program by discarding redundant pixel color information from the photo's file for similar-colored pixels in the photo. It does not get rid of or discard any pixels. It just "averages" out red/ green/blue information assigned to similar colored pixels. jpeg looks at the photo's individual pixel information and says "these reddish pixels that are next to each other in this photo are so close in color, I'm going to consider them the exact same color". So it keeps the R/G/B information for one of the pixels, discards the RGB info for the other two, and assigns that saved RGB info to all three pixels. That allows your file to be smaller without destroying the overall visual integrity of the photo when you view it. If a file were to be over-compressed...too much information thrown away...then it can get ugly looking, very blocky. "When I upload it to Photobucket it remains 6.1 or do they change it as they "store it"__________" Using the default settings on PB it'll be uploaded as a small file. A MUCH SMALLER file. You've discovered the "Customize Your Upload Options" and you can use that to get a larger and more usable file size uploaded to your PB account. More about that later. "Of course talking about a picture in terms of 800x600 vs MB is confusing. " Your photo is made up of little dots, or to simplify, "pixels". If you have a photo that is "800 by 600", that's 800 pixels or dots wide by 600 pixels/dots tall. That's how "big" your photo appears. 800 dots wide. 600 dots tall. Each of those dots or pixels is a color, all those little colored dots together make up the photo. If each of those pixels is a different color, then the file size (the "MB" or "KB") will be large because the file has to store red/green/blue information for each and every one of those tiny pixels. If you take a photo of a piece of red paper, then theoretically the photo's jpeg file size will be smaller because so many of the pixels will be the same red color. The file doesn't have to "remember" as much red/green/blue information even though the number of pixels in the photo is the same. So if you take your glorious 6MP photo that's 3000 by 2000 pixels and upload it to Photobucket at the 320 by 240 pixel option, PB is going to throw way a lot of pixels. You uploaded a detailed file with 3000 times 2000, or 6 million pixels, and Photobucket is going to throw away and discard over 5.9 million of them! Gone forever! It'll display that photo small, 320 pixels by 240 pixels, so to the eye it will still look okay at that small size. But if you try to blow up or magnify the photo, pixels will have to be created to fill in the "holes", and the color information for those created pixels will be guessed at based upon what the neighboring pixels look like. You'll end up with a blocky looking photo. So the picture can have a physical size defined in terms of how many dots or pixels make up the picture. 3000 x 2000, 800 x 600, 320 x 240, etc. The pixels define how big or small the picture will be represented on your computer monitor or on a piece of paper when printed out. The photo file size, in MB or KB, is how much information is assigned to remember the color information of the pixels that make up the photo. 6MP is a large photo and will take longer to upload than a 1MP file. It's how much space the photo will take up n your computer's hard drive. I'm going to run you through a few examples, I hope this helps to clarify: I have a 2MB photo on my computer. I just uploaded it to photobucket, during the upload photobucket automatically reduced the file size from 2MB down to 38kb. Ouch! It reduced the pixel size (or the number of "dots" that make up the photo) from 3341 x 2217 (3341 pixels wide by 2217 pixels tall) to 310 x 212. That was done using the default upload setting of 320 by 240. This file is tiny, only 38kb, so it'll upload fast. But the small file can limit the quality of the photo seen by the viewer. Here is the quality of the 320 by 240 photo: By adding a "Width=" designator to the HTML code, I can make your browser display the photo larger. Previously it showed at 320 pixels wide, because that's it's size of the photobucket file. I'll add "Width=800" to make it display 800 pixels wide. Again, it's a 38kb file size, 319 x 212 photo that's being forced to display 800 pixels wide. Where did the extra pixels come from? They were made up, their color information copied from neighboring pixels in the photo's file. Since they had to be guessed at, the photo looks blocky due to the groupings of exactly-colored pixels all clumped next to one another: The photo shows larger, but it's blockier. Now going into photobucket's upload settings I chose "Best possible quality (while staying 1mb or less)". A large file size...but not ridiculous. Photobucket uploaded my same original 2MB, 3342 x 2217 pixel photo as a 745kb file that is 2301 pixels wide by 1527 pixels tall. At 745kb it's a large file size so it'll upload slower, but with all those pixels the resolution will be quite good. When I now have gardenweb show this new photo file at its native resolution, it looks like this: Since most people have their computer's screen displays set at 800-1200 pixels wide, this 2301 pixel wide photo causes you to have to scroll left/right to take it all in. It's not viewer friendly. So now I'll limit the photo by adding a "Width=800" to the html code and it'll show better. A better size, and with nice resolution: There actually is a point to this post, and it's this: Photobucket has an 800 by 600 upload selection. If you want a "bang for your buck" upload selection, use the 800 x 600 choice. Uploading my 2MB file using the 800 by 600 option gave me a 134kb file with pixel dimensions of 800 wide by 530 tall. A very manageable file size that will upload quickly, and a pixel size that will display nicely: Still awake? Not me. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Nadia, without wishing to hijack this post, references to Laura present us with various possibilities. I have found four roses given the name 'Laura'. The first is an 1843 Centifolia, the second MEIvousplix, a yellow HT, no dates of origin or introduction. These two I think we can dismiss for the purpose of our discussion. The third is the 1969 'Laura', the one that I purchased in 1975, with the creamy-yellow reverse (why do you say it hasn't?), quite distinctive, orangey but ageing pink (common amongst some vermilion roses. This was introduced by the Conard-Pyle Company, Pennsylvania, USA. The fourth, MEIdragelac has two synonyms, 'Laura '81', it's given name, and 'Natilda'. This is described as "orangey-red, lighter reverse, large dbl, 30 petals, slight " (none) "fragrance; foliage small, dark, semi-glossy; medium growth. GM Japan, 1981. Meilland family seem to have a fascination for the name Laura, as it has been trademarked right, left, and centre. Your question about rose seeds. Nadia, it's not a dumb question, and makes for a stimulating change of topic. I believe (haven't proven it for myself) that only true species will reproduce themselves from seed, that is, when they cross fertilise themselves. Other crosses, whether natural or man-made, can result in seeds, each of which may produce a different seedling from others taken from the same hip. It's complicated, and I won't go into the genetics that make this so. This I can say with certainty though from my own experience. I am aware of only one instance where a rose has crossed genetic boundaries and cross-fertilised with a plant of another genus, Hulthemia, and resulted in R.hulthemosa hardii, in 1832. Jack Harkness obtained plants of Hulthemia and also successfully crossed roses with it, to produce 'Euphrates', 'Xerxes', 'Tigris', and 'Nigel Hawthorne'. Of these, I have only 'Euphrates'. On my website, there is a story about Hulthemia, or you might prefer to see my contribution to Heritage Roses in Australia, recently published in the Summer, 2005 edition. Here is a link that might be useful: