Good going! I remember a prof in one of my night classes. The first class, he commented that he preferred teaching adults who were working full-time and going to class part-time, because they knew how to apply themselves to the subject at hand. I understand that comment better now than I did at the time; I think it may the idea behind the joke about if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. The other thing I learned from him was that if I didn't "get it" the first time, it was always possible to go back and review, even if the review took place a year after the class.

Ok I will do some before after shots. I remind you , I love to push photography . It is another obsession I have besides gardening. I will work the details. But I am still learning my camera also. I hate to RTFM. TRoth garden taken in failing light at sunset After I addressed darkness, lightened the shadows, and burned the highlights, and the addressed the overall blue tones by adding yellow. A cactus group shot that had a beautiful beam of light. I like light and I am always photographing it and it is always making me tear my hair out. This one I found flat compared to what I saw. After punching lighter the exposure all over and darkening the exposure values , I elevated the definition to accentuate the contrast in the textures. de blued it and de-greened it I think. I did take liberties with this next picture of the Kalanchoe Luciae be cause I wanted the viewer to be surrounded and swallowed by the plant. I am not always driven by reality. Usually I am, but sometimes I gotta do a "Georgia". I felt that this one was washed out from how I felt it was. This one I did go a little overboard on it. So Sue me. Here is another one from the K. luciae series. The differences are sometimes not that starling, but subtle , but the overall will be worth it. Notice the highlights have an indistinct texture and I just want to make things better even though the picture is fairly alright. I just like to fiddle. Things just seem a little fuzzy. I feel air and I don't like it. I popped the exposure lighter then darkened the exposure value, burned the highlights. I want that rich sense of space amongst the leaves and the red to pop and show the light coming through them. I wanted the texture on the leaves. I am a little distressed with the out of focus on the back highlighted leaf. The highlight is still reading as blown.. I should have gotten my tripod out so I could cut the F stop down but then the sun would have been gone. I got the fuzzy out of there . the air is clear. I can breathe now . OH god, now you know I am obsessed. You know what is weird. I can do this for peoples portfolios and I do for some artist around all over. They send me full sized files and I see if I can work them.

Thank you all for the nice comments. maryl,Yes I have coral fanasy spelled wrong in the photo,sorry about that. mantis, no secrets, just a lot of T.L.C. on the daylilies and all of them are in 2.5gallon pots ,I don't see how any of them are growing to be honest, with all this rain we are having here.Sun has been shinning today, and part of yesterday, too, so I thought we will have a few days of nice weather now, but, just got a alert on pc just now, to take cover as anoter bad storm is heading this way. Thank you Julia,I will have to try and fiind out who this one is.My Youngest daughter helped with moving a bunch of pots,and really didn't want to do it.her sister told her to come help us,and afterwards I have found a lot of pots with wrong labels in them,and a bunch with none in them.She was handleing them all very rough,and I don't know if labels was lost or fell out of pots, or jst what happened, since I didn't see everything going on that day.but, know I have a lot of pots that I need to find the real name on them. billi,I am not sure who it is either, if this one s wrong.Thank you for telling me. ruthz. Yes,I am growing all of my plants in pots now.Theydo much better for me in pots, and now that I am more disabled then in the past, they are much easier for me to take care of them, weeding, dividing, feilizers,etc. Nancy;I have about 8 hosta's in pots and they do very well in them.One of them has been divided 3 times in last 5 years and it was just divided again about a month ago.It gets very huge.I gave some to a daughter and some to some one else, then repotted it,and its almost the size it was before giving some way.Its in a 3 gallon square pot. jean

My aunt has the newest version of the Thermador speed/wall oven combo and loves it, worked great for her. I decided to buy the same for myself May 2021. Was delivered in April 2022. It smelled like burning rubber/plastic every time I used it. They kept telling me all new ovens have stuff they need to burn off, but it was still doing it in both ovens 2+ months later and wasn't getting better. I had them sent back (took me a while to convince them) and ordered Wolf instead. Could have just been a lemon, but I won't be buying Thermador again. Have a Wolf induction cooktop and hood that I love!