Spring?

Well, for once we don’t have freezing nights in the forecast. Can spring be here?
We made a trip to a greenhouse, bought some plants, worked on the laundry room decor, and continued converting VHS tapes.

Every year we take a trip or two to a couple greenhouses to pick up annuals and other plantings. This week we stopped at Zimmerman’s Greenhouse located about 10 minutes away from us. We enjoy walking the aisles, viewing the flowers, and enjoying the odor of green, growing things. I thought I would include a few photos of this trip.

We brought home a few plants, just enough to get started. Our selection included a fern, two peonies, a lobelia, and a flat of petunias. Rain is in the air today so they won’t get planted for a few days but are doing OK on the east porch for now.

An inside project was moved along when Pam added more wallpaper and decorative items to a laundry room wall. As a second project, the coat rack was removed, repaired, and relocated. The wall is so uneven that spacers had to be added to each end to make the rack sit flat. I replaced a broken door handle on the south porch and aided Pam by wielding the power screw driver when needed.

The bird feeder came down and a new bird bath put up in its place. I will try to get a photo of it in use for my next post. In the mean time, birds and squirrels continue to frequent the corn cob feeder and the small outside table where we place cracked corn, apple peels, and stale bread.

My VHS conversion projects moved ahead with a few more upgrades to my Macintosh system. I am trying to phase out my old (’90s) external data disks in favor of newer and more reliable units. To this end I have replaced my main data disk and the disk I have been using for the VHS project. Left to swap out is the disk I use for backing up the other two disks.

In addition to being more reliable, the new disks are faster than the old ones which cuts down on the time it takes to complete a VHS tape conversion. I appreciate this! I generally have one tape being digitized while I edit another, resulting in one completed tape a day and another ready for editing the following day.

To showcase the digitized tapes I have created a web-like page that introduces each tape and give a brief description of it, along with the run time. Some tapes feature Felicity, others feature Toby, but most are “family” tapes of events such as Christmases and birthdays. I have footage I had forgotten about and it is fun to re-live some of the footage such as Toby and Felicity learning to ice skate. I am about half-way through with about 24 conversions so far.

I may split some of the files into smaller single events. Christmas tapes, in particular, are more-or-less self-contained events that may merit individual attention rather than being part of a months-long session. I’ll have to see how much energy I want to put into that aspect of this project.

Photo Archive

From the mid-’80s. These are “frame captures” from video tapes so quality is not high.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

When I walked into the first Mennonite greenhouse yesterday, my breath was almost taken away by the color and vibrancy. In that moment, I almost forgot how dreary and colorless NE Iowa has been for most of the last four months. And then that damp earth smell hit me, like getting off an airplane in a tropical climate. It was awesome.

Let gardening commence.

Happy Trails.