Thank you guys! Chas I'm always open for suggestions:) about where the soccer ball is I envisioned doing a stacked water fall which would be what you view when you stand straight on with the pond and maybe a stream coming away from it and coming around the right side of the pond and spilling into a different area (if that makes any sense lol) we'll see. pcan, Thank you! I won't finish nearly as quickly as my brain wants me to. with two toddlers I only get about an hour to dig at a time lol. Lotus are so easy!! I have a blug actually from last year I'll include the link...it def. needs updating tho. I'm really thrilled about the blue and pink lilies that have sprouted from seed my mature plant just poked its 1st bud of the season out of the soil yesterday! Here is a link that might be useful: lotus seed step by step

Oh my. You've really set off an avalanche of memories with that post, Sharon. Much of it is about my late brother who was far, far more advanced than I with electronics and had a degree in photography as well. He was several years younger, so it was I who initially sparked his interest with my modest sound system and radio projects. He then went on to surpass my electronics knowledge by a huge amount and convinced me to get my ham license. My brother and I started listening to short wave broadcasts on my Grandmothers floor model Zenith whenever we visited. I still have that radio. My brother, who was a private pilot, liked listening to aircraft and also various utility bands such as the shipping ones you mentioned and ones used by railroads. Too bad so much is encoded these days. That takes a lot of the fun out of it. You must have heard those mysterious "number stations" where someone reads lists of numbers in groups of, I think, five numbers. I never found out what was going on with those. Do you know? Some people speculated they were for transmitting information to spies. Whose spies that would be, I have no idea. BTW, as a Canadian you may be interested that I, my brother and one or two of my sisters were dedicated listeners to the CBC. Their programming was far richer and more varied than any U.S. radio at that time. We were always comparing notes on what had been broadcast on various programs. I was very up-to-date on Canadian politics back then. You met your husband via ham radio, eh? That's quite a story. Yes, CQ is still published. I picked up a copy recently to catch up on what has developed during my hiatus from ham radio. I'm glad we met up on this thread. It may be the spark I needed to practice my code and pick up where I left off. I have a nice HF rig which ought to be put back in use and I have a Heathkit HW-9 (hot water 9) for QRP which I acquired with the day in mind I could operate CW. I always thought it would be fun to operate from a beach with a portable mast and solar power on QRP. Yeah, present day transceivers have new, advanced features but I think I can be very happy with what I have. Jim P.S. So as not to be so rude to non-hams, here is a glossary of a few terms: CW - Morse code DX - Distance DXCC - DX Century Club (for those who have made and confirmed contacts with 100 countries) QSL - a contact QSL card - a post card with information confirming a contact (or just reception in the case of SW broadcasts) QRP - low power (5 watts or less) CQ - calling anyone who is listening (also a ham magazine by that name) HF - high frequency SWL - short wave listening YL - young lady (a female of any age) OM - old man (a male of any age) SSB - single side band (one of the modes of transmission, along with FM, AM, RTTY, etc.)

I started my interest in photography while stationed in Germany from 1968 till 1972. i came back from Europe with two Pentax Spotmatics & 19 Takumar lenses, plus a Minolta C330 Twin lens med format camera, a 4x5 century graphic press camera, and a complete color darkroom but unfortunately a year after i returned it was all stolen. When i retired in June I decided i wanted to get back into nature photography as a retirement hobby, however I had no equipment and being on fixed income i had very limited financial resources. Needless to say, at $1000 and up, a DSLR was way off in the future, but with the advent of digital the price of 35mm film cameras has dropped to peanuts. With a little research I discovered that the Pentax DSLR's are compatible with nearly all Pentax lenses ever made so I decided to get a good Pentax 35mm film camera and collect a few lenses and accessories to get me going. I found a website for an online auction sponsored by Goodwill Industries and in reviewing the site I discovered that they have loads of photo gear, and it generally goes for a song. By example, I bought a Pentax ME super with a 50mm normal lens, 28-70mm zoom, 70 to 300mm zoom, a flash unit, camera bag and a long list of misc. goodies for the whooping sum of $62 +S&H. i continued watching for those combined sets and within three months I had acquired 5 cameras and 11 lenses including as 1000mm tele, plus an auto bellows, a ring flash for macro, and on Ebay i got a nice padded luggage style case. Total investment to that point was under $400. Three weeks ago I was checking Craigslist for my area, and by mistake I hit a tab for a neighboring state. When i looked under photo gear, what did i see, a Pentax *ist body in like new condition for $200. Now I will admit that i dont have auto focus, but that is the only feature of the DSLR that i don't have, and considering that when i learned photography through the lens metering was still in its infancy, i am fully comfortable with using depth of field and manual focus. Now i have the full enjoyment of the hobby and i can set a few dollars aside each month until i can buy a Pentax K20 or K7 in the spring. Oh yes...today I bought a Pentax 35mm film camera that has auto focus so when it arrives I will have two auto focus lenses too, not bad for another $45 investment.

poppabird, the EXIF data was stripped from those two images for some reason when I uploaded them. IS was on for both shots, and both were hand-held. Here's the EXIF for the first shot: Date/Time 29-Nov-2004 12:16:43 Make Canon Model EOS D60 Flash Used No Focal Length 400 mm Exposure Time 1/400 sec Aperture f/6.3 ISO Equivalent 100 Exposure Bias White Balance (-1) Metering Mode matrix (5) JPEG Quality (6) and the second shot: Date/Time 26-Sep-2004 17:53:57 Make Canon Model EOS D60 Flash Used No Focal Length 200 mm Exposure Time 1/350 sec Aperture f/4 ISO Equivalent 100 Exposure Bias White Balance (-1) Metering Mode matrix (5) JPEG Quality (6) Here is a link that might be useful: Butterfly Gallery