bits and pieces

Too much to catch up on all at once.  Bought a house November 2009, moved January 2010, and here it is May 15, but I have been busy.  Had new gates put on backyard fence and now Zander and Mitzi can go outside.  Zander ran out the front door once and returned within an hour, and Mitzi almost made it over the back fence (6 ft, wood) twice, but I caught her and now watch her like a hawk.  They are getting used to all the smells of our plants, the various areas of yard, the hose, the house itself, etc.  And Mitzi seems less prone to scaling the fence, but …. . 

I’ve gone to two native plant sales and a couple of lectures and will try to have a grassless back yard and do without fertilizer per se in the front yard too. The soils are terrible, but I have a number of bags of organic conditioners and will eventually get the yard in shape.  Key word: eventually.

Of course, other events have taken place since I last wrote on this site, not the least of which was my first (and probably only now that I have a house) trip to Europe last May.  Photos and blurb on that another time.

This may take form some day. Not being used to blogs (I’ve never read any except in quotes), I’m befuddled by the backwardness of this posting business.

Today I formed a new gallery, “Generations.”  I finally set up the scanner I haven’t used for over a year, and three old photos appear in this gallery.  I love the one of my parents, probably taken the year they were married, which I think was 1912.

Now that I’ve finally started scanning predigital photos my humungous job of sorting cartons and cartons of them may get underway in earnest, and some of them will no doubt find their way into these pages.

To see individual photos, first click on a thumbnail in the “My Photos” section to bring up the entire gallery, then click on an individual photo to see a larger image plus the photo’s title.

I’ve Just added the Relatives gallery to My Photos.  My three children are Michael, David, and Naomi.  I have no digital photos of David’s children Jonathan and Jennifer or of Naomi’s daughter Annie, but I’ll  get scans of film photos one day so I can include them here. Marni is the daughter of Len’s daughter Amy, but though she has none of my blood she has a sizeable part of my heart and will always be my grandchild along with my children’s children.

Since Len died in 2005 and my sister Maxine in 2006 I have spent weeks at a time  in British Columbia, where I usually stayed with my wonderful McKinley cousins in Tswassen, just south of Vancouver, while I cleared Maxine’s locker of stored memorabilia.  (Unfortunately, I had much too much of it sent south to Maryland so must now spend even more time on it while my own begs for attention.)  If I could get Medicare in BC I would be happy to spend the rest of my life there, it is such a beautiful place.

Besides moving twice (August 2006 and July 2008) I’ve visited Michael’s family in Kansas twice, toured for almost two weeks in Costa Rica, and visited Naomi and David in their New Jersey homes a few times each year.  My sister-in-law Paul (Pauline) Lewis lives in Chincoteague, VA (the home of Chincoteague ponies and the entrance point for Assateague National Seashore) with her brother David Baga.  We delight in each other’s company, and it’s just slightly over an hour’s drive from here, so I try to get down about once a month for at least a few hours.  Although I have no recent picture of David I have two rather nice ones of Paul that will appear here in due course.

Naomi and her husband and sons have moved to Switzerland for a few years, and I plan to visit them there next summer combined with a visit with my nieces in England.  Quite an exciting prospect, especially since I’ve never been to Europe!

Before I write again I hope my webmaster will teach me how to decrease the size of the posting titles!!

Namaste.

it’s Sunday, August 31, 2008.   It’s been a struggle, but I’ve put some photos in my album.  I’ve also put some on Photoshop Express but have not yet made any of them public.  I have to read their terms of ownership first and check on whether a photo published there (or here, for that matter) can still be entered into a local contest.  Not that I have many that have any chance of winning  a ribbon, but that always depends to some extent on the competition, doesn’t it?  Today I put in the Outdoor Scenes and Sunsets galleries.

So far this looks pretty pretentious, doesn’t it?  My world isn’t all that big, but I must say it is growing,  not day by day or even month by month, but maybe quarterly.  This site is a gift from my son Michael, The Webster, so I feel compelled to use my aging brain learning how to use it.

Today is my birthday, the beginning of my eightieth year, and trying to blog is a lot more fun than getting a root canal, which is what I did with part of my morning!

I’ve never kept a diary or a journal for more than a few days at a time, so don’t expect daily posts.  I do tend to write long emails, which I’ve come to realize is my form of journalizing.

Much of my time the past couple of weeks has been spent reviewing the photos in my computer, my first intention being to choose a couple to print to show at a meeting of  the local camera club. Now my primary need is to place some in a gallery for this site.  Of course, the critical eye that approaches that task is more critical than when it was simply putting them in computer files, so the josatloff.com gallery will be quite limited in extent for 2008.

I’d better stop jabbering and get to work on the gallery.  Please be patient and y’all come back, y’hear?

Cats

3 Photos

Outdoor Scenes

3 Photos

Sunsets

3 Photos

Relatives

3 Photos

Generations

3 Photos