Daffodil Hill

Spring is a bit early this year - about 2 weeks according to the nursery people. Last year Anne Marie and I went to a couple of nurseries looking for hardy ferns only to be told that we were too late. Not wanting to make that mistake again this year we went a couple of weeks ago only to be told we were too early! Seems like I'm not destined to have many hardy ferns. Well, last Saturday morning we went to the other side of the world to find Gardens OyVey. We found it after a bit of riding around an a cell phone call. It is a wonderful place that specializes in native plants along with a good assortment of others too. They don't have a greenhouse so they grow in our climate and in our soil most of their plants. Yes, they have some hardy ferns but they were not grown enough to tell just what they look like. We will go back later and check them out again. We did purchase a Lenten Rose and a Lace Cap Hydranga. Anne Marie has already found a home for them.

Tulip Tree Blossom

We went over to the Botanic Gardens early last week and took a few pictures. The Daffodils were in full glory, the tulips were not quite ready, but the tulip trees were also in bloom. I don't know the true name of these trees but this is what I've always called them. They are not all alike and some I understand are some kind of magnolia!

It now has been 3 consecutive weeks that I've been able to get out and fly one of my models. Yesterday it was perfect - warm, broken clouds, and virtually no wind. What more could you ask for. A new record has been set! I managed to bring the plane home unharmed for three weeks in a row! The practice time with emphasis on landings in the wind have paid off. I can 'grease' them in now!

The last city leaf pickup is scheduled for this week. I managed to get the front yard beds all blown out last week so we should be good until fall when it starts over again. Yes, the trees are now putting out new leaves for us to work on in November. I still have leaves under the deck but hope to get a grandson out to help with them an a few other more minor jobs. It would be great if we could get a nursery to again do the mulch job. The beds could really use it. Hmmm! All it takes is money!

One more picture and I'm gone ---

Witch Hazel

What a frustrating week! In an attempt to upgrade this computer since the hard disk drive was getting pretty crowded as well as pretty old I purchase a much bigger drive with all the modern bells and whistles. I downloaded a program that is supposed to make it a snap to clone all the stuff on the old drive over to the new one. Did it work? Well, almost. It did clone everything over without a whimper. BUT (isn't there always one in the computer world?) the new drive wouldn't boot. In other words, when I made the new drive the master controlling drive and tried to turn the machine on, it would not go into Windows or much of anything else for that matter. Grrrrr!

I have spent an inordinate amount of my time, as well as my patient friend Charles' time trying to solve this problem, all to no avail! We have tried many different settings and techniques. I've even resorted to going online to various forums seeking outside help and tried some of their suggestions. Still, the drive will not boot. I even called my guru grandson and he is stumped too. Well, on to Plan B.

I'm presently using the old drive as the boot drive and have moved over to the new drive all my data, photo, and music files. This is working and should continue to do so until the old drive gives up the ghost! Then I'll have to create a new bootable drive or boot from a CD! Fortunately, I have room on the new drive to backup everything remaining on the old drive. Who said computer's are not fun?

The weather this week has been wonderful. This inspired me to go up to the shop and work on the newest plane. Much has been accomplished but it still isn't ready. There are a few remaining jobs to complete before the maiden flight. Today, I'm going over to the field with the plane I was flying last year and give it a try.

Yesterday, Anne Marie and I went to the Spring Fling put on by the Master Gardeners. We heard a couple of interesting talks and saw a lot of new plants brought in by some of the local nurseries. Anne Marie noticed this morning that our azaleas are getting ready to bloom and that our fern appear to need water. I've turned on our drip system for the first time this year. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Our flower beds are in dire need of mulching but the last time I had it done they used 25 yards of mulch. That got expensive considering the labor required to haul and spread all this.

Welcome to daylight savings time!!

Peace.

I choose red for today's post as this would symbolize my feelings with regard to this computer today!!

Storage room on my wimpy 40 GB hard drive became a scarce commodity. This was probably due to the huge number of pictures that I have stored there in the last year. So, the purchase of a new and larger drive was in order. From the unlikely source, Zip Zoom Fly, a 120 GB drive was ordered and in just a couple of days received in good order. Gads! I distinctly remember when I paid almost 10 times as much for a measly 10 MB - that's right 10 megas compared to 120 gigas! You do the math!

Next came the installation. Mechanically this was a no-brainer. I had downloaded a program that was supposed to migrate all my old stuff over to the new drive and at the same time make the new drive bootable. This seemed to be the way to go. The old drive has some age on it and is subject to failure at any time. I felt that it would be best to use it for non-essential backups and rely on the new drive for day to day work.

Everything went fine - until! Yes, until I switched drives to make the new drive the boot drive. It wouldn't boot, in fact the machine tells me it couldn't find any boot files at all! Three full days of monkeying around with this using all my meager brain power and with the help of a technically minded friend I decided on Plan B. I will continue to use the old drive to boot and relegate the new drive to storage.

This plan involves moving folder by folder all the Data, Photo, Music stuff over to separate partitions on the new drive. In the process, I removed a lot of old programs that are never used and did a general clean up. Sounds good doesn't it!

The process gave birth to several Registry problems which I hoped that Registry Mechanic could solve. There is still some garbage left over - an error message every time Outlook Express is run and some program trying to update itself via the Internet on each boot. I don't know what program it is but I think it is Norton's Ghost - Hmmm. That is an appropriate name.

I am now quite weary of the whole thing as you can probably tell.

Saturday morning Anne Marie and I went into the AgriCenter to hear a talk on Potting Plants for the Garden. The building where it was held was not heated and it was cold. The talk was not what we expected and we left after about an hour. Bummer! Anne Marie then treated me to one of my favorite lunches - a Wendy's Chicken Fillet with lettuce and mayo, small fries, small frosty!!