New Camera

I am so excited!  I have been unhappy with my camera for some time.  I even bought one of those fancy, new Samsung phones in the hopes it could replace my not so good camera.  Unfortunately, I can't load any of the beautiful pictures it takes.  I have gone in to Verizon, twice, to get help and even THEY can't get them to load on my blog.

I have been researching various cameras.  Even when it is working well, my camera won't take close ups with any clarity.  The telephoto will zoom in on a subject but there is a loss of clarity there, also.  After seeing some of the beautiful shots from two local bloggers ( http://bluecountrymagic.blogspot.com/ and http://www.theblueridgegal.com/)  I wanted to do better.  My $69 camera from Walmart was no longer good enough.  Granted, when I started this blog I didn't know if I was going to like it and I didn't know whether I would stick with it. Now that it appears to be a new obsession of mine, I want to step up my game, as it were.

I am not extremely proficient with a camera.  Back in my journalism student days, and that is a LOOONG way back, I took a photography class.  Then I dropped out of said photography class, so don't blame Cal Poly for my expertise, or lack thereof.  In fact, I dropped out of Cal Poly all together, so we can neither blame nor credit them with much of anything related to my writing.  And while I regret not finishing there, my move led me to FedEx and my husband so I can't regret that.

The point of this ramble is I don't want a fancy camera with f stops and shutter speeds to worry about.  I want clear close ups and gorgeous landscapes and that is about it.   I want the camera to do the thinking. 

Yesterday we ended up at Target to do a bit of shopping and I stopped by the camera desk.  I wanted to see if I could learn any more in my research on what kind to get so I could let Lee know what I wanted for Christmas. A sales person offered to help me.  Do you hear that???  A SALES person.  Wow.  That doesn't happen very often.

   

But he was personable and more important knowledgeable.  He takes a lot of close ups in his hobby of model building and puts them on YouTube.  He showed me a Sony camera that was similar to his.  He knew how it worked and could explain it to me.  And it was on sale.  Done.  I got me a new camera.

I have only had it for a day.  And part of that day was spent in charging the battery...and sleeping.  I am having fun learning about all the fun things it will do.

   

Crystal clear distance shots. 

   

And still clear when you zoom in.

   
    
Check out these close ups, Mr. Demille

   

 I love this one.


     

 

Panoramas

   

and black and white.

   

 

Don't you just love this effect?

   
   


   

I can't wait to make a new recipe and get some really clear pictures of delicious food.  So that you will drool on your keyboards.

This is going to be so fun!

 

 

Paulownia Tree

   

A few years ago our son and daughter-in-law brought us a small tree in a pot at Christmas.  It was about a foot tall.  They explained that this was a fast growing tree and left us with instructions that involved cutting it and replanting it.

Two years ago we planted it near our swing set.  (We don't have swing set age kids, but the previous owners did.  And there is always the hope for grandchildren or even random unknown kids to hike up here and swing!)   It was 19 inches tall. 

 

Now look at it!  Paulownia trees are not only fast growing ornamentals.  They are also good for furniture and veneers.  The leaves are used in some parts of the world for animal feed.  These leaves are huge.    Maybe I should give up all thoughts of planting fields of lavender or fruit trees and grow Paulownia.  Even with limited knowledge and a whole bunch of neglect, look what we got!

   

Business Cards

   

We are not currently operating a business, so I don't know why I wanted business cards.  But we MIGHT open a B&B, so we should be prepared, right?  Maybe I should refer to them as "calling cards".  I just did a quick search and all I get for calling cards are those for telephone calling.  Didn't people used to leave calling cards everywhere?  Or am I just reading too many historical novels?

So I went to a local graphic artist and she helped us come up with a logo and a picture for the cards/stationery.  I may never use it for a business, but I figure I could leave them at random places and increase the visits to my blog, if nothing else!  I don't get any money from it,  just the fun and the creative outlet.

   

Now for the problem.  I am not ready to BUY a bunch of business cards.  I don't really know what all I want on them at this point.  We may want different ones to say different things.  So we bought some blank cards and have been playing around with them.  Avery is the maker of the forms and the templates.  After a lot of frustration, I got some printed.  The thing that bothers me is that I can't get them even on the cards.  My biggest problem is that if some are centered and right, why aren't ALL of them??

   

Some are even, some run over into the other card and cut off tops or bottoms of the information or pictures.  If I was a printing company I could complain to me.  So, now I have a bunch of blank forms that I don't like.  And some printed ones, too.  I don't want to print too many that are offset to figure out what I am doing because the ink is pricey.  I did print in black and white on regular paper and then hold it in front of the blank forms and up to the light, but that really wasn't helpful.

   

At this point they are just for fun.  (Are we having fun, yet?) So I don't want to stress about it too much.  If we ever get serious about a B&B I will go to a REAL printer and get them done right!

  

At the very least I will SOMEDAY change the photo at the top of my blog.  In the meantime I am waiting until we no longer own the horses.  It looks like that will be a long time coming...

Upside Down Apple Tart

   

I was sitting in a waiting room at the doctor's office and found a Southern Living magazine from 2010.  Really?  This is a new office that wasn't even BUILT in 2010.  So they packed up and carried an old magazine to the new office.  I guess it's because it is a Southern Living magazine.  Someone must have brought it from home because it was the only one there.  And the label had been removed.

I read it even though I had a book.  But then I always have a book.  It is a good resource for new recipes.  They had one for an Upside Down Apple Tart.  I took some notes and stopped at the store to get some apples and a pre-made pie crust.  I made changes to suit me and here we go.

Upside Down Apple Tart

4 large Granny Smith apples  ( I could have used more, but wanted to keep it small for just the two of us. We could have fed four, but we will just have it for tomorrow)
1 pre-made pie crust
3 Tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 Tablespoon sugar
sprinkle of cinnamon

Remove one of the pie crusts (two come in a box) and set it on the counter to come to room temperature.

   

For this recipe you will need a pan that can go in the oven.  I used a medium ( number 5) cast iron pan. 

   

Melt the butter in the pan over medium heat.  Peel and slice the apples and quickly add them to the pan.  You don't want to let them sit or they will turn brown.  On the other hand you don't want to let the butter burn, so if you are slow at peeling and slicing, turn the butter to low.

Add the sugar and the cinnamon to the apples.  Just dump them right on top.  Then gently stir and turn to get all the apples coated. 

   

I turned the heat down, but if you already have it low then you can just leave it.  My burners always run hot, so just make it hot enough to cook gently without burning.  You want the apples to cook for about 30 minutes.  This will allow the apples to cook and the moisture to be reduced.  It will be mostly dry with a thick cinnamony ( yes, spell check.  I am sure that is a word.)  sauce. 

   

The lovely people at Southern Living wanted me to make a slightly sweet pie crust.  I, however didn't want to.  Remove the pan from the stove and turn the oven to 425.    Unroll the pie crust and place it over the warm apples.  Tuck the ends in around the apples.  Because I didn't make a slightly sweet pie crust, I used a bit of milk and brushed it over the top of the crust.  Then I sprinkled 1 Tablespoon of sugar all around.  Sprinkle cinnamon over everything.  Now I have the sweetened crust and it was very easy.  I highly recommend easy.

    

 

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until slightly browned.  Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.  Then you want to invert the pan over a cutting board.  Because I didn't trust the tart to stay in the pan, I used one hand to hold the pan and one hand to hold a spatula over the tart while I flipped it.  The crust is now on the bottom with the sides of the crust holding everything in.

A few apples were still in the pan and I just scooped them up and added them to the top.    Slice and serve with vanilla ice cream.  I intended to, but it seems like the CATS have been raiding the freezer, so we used some Cool Whip.

 

   

Cinnamon apples are always good (unless you are Tara and don't like that flavor combination for some reason) and the crust on the bottom was still nice and crispy and slightly sweet.  Cool Whip added a creaminess.  Of course, ice cream would have been nice, too.  I think.  But I don't know for sure...because of the cats.


 

It Was COLD This Morning!

Spring and Fall in Botetourt are glorious.  There is one thing I dislike about them and that is that they are too short.  I could do with less summer.  The winter is OK if you have stuff to do inside and don't feel compelled to do stuff outside.  The nicest thing about winter is that nothing grows and so you don't have to cut anything back.  Of course SOME of us don't feel compelled to do anything at all.  They are just fine chillaxin' on the couch.

 

    

 

 

The humidity gets to me though.  Working outside on a hot sweltering day means it is a two bath day.  Well, even if you are clean, you have to take one to go to sleep, don't you?

   

But this morning had a chill in the air.  It was 48 degrees!  This was the first morning where it was too cold for breakfast on the screen porch. 

   

We were surrounded by fog.  AND it was not humid.  A good day to get stuff done outside.

   

I only expected to do a bit of cutting.  But then I got involved and did more.

   

 I obviously didn't dress for the kind of work I was doing.  I am going to give myself a few weeks off so I can heal up for the wedding we are going to in England.  Don't want to look like the common laborer types from the States.  We ARE the common laborer types, we just don't want to LOOK like them.

Guess I'll go bake something.

Doggie Prison

When we first got our dog, RJ, we would leave him on the screen porch if we had to go out.  The weather was nice then and we didn't quite trust him alone in the house.  Outside would have been OK, but we are not completely fenced and he might follow us out to the road.  So the screen porch was "Doggie Prison".

  

Then Lee discovered that doggie prison was being slowly eaten by said doggie.  Sure, he had chew toys and a wonderful hammock to jump up into and sleep.  He had fresh air and 180 degree views.  We started noticing that the edges of the support posts were developing gnawed sections.  So doggie prison moved to the basement. 

   

Now we trust RJ for long periods in the house.  But we still have the chewed parts.  I ignored them for some time, but yesterday I decided to fix them.

   

I wanted to just sand them mostly smooth and then paint.  This is a "outdoors" room, after all.  Some of the gouges were just too deep.  So then I had to get out the spackle.  Spackle is basically plaster to fill in holes and then get painted over.  It has to dry and then you sand it smooth.  Don't make the mistake of putting on too much and then figure you can sand it off later.  This will be way more work in the long run.

I use a small putty knife to get it out of the container and a large taping knife to smooth it if you have to cover a large area.  I have a hint to pass along.  Instead of sanding, you can usually get a smoother surface and better result if you use a damp sponge.  Plus, you don't end up with a lot of dust everywhere.

 

The hard part is matching paint.  There are fifty bazillion shades of white.  I counted. We have some white paint that is close to the trim color for this house and that is what I used.  I decided to remember this is an outside room and not to stress about it.  Easier said than done.

  

Here is a painting hint.  Don't just cover the spackled part.  Feather it in.  Brush over the repaired section and then go over it lightly and lift the brush quickly at the end of the stroke.  You don't want a line where the new paint starts and ends.  It should be unnoticeable.

   

I like a sponge brush for this kind of job.  They are great for feathering in and when you are done there is no clean up.  For less than a dollar you can just toss it!

You may notice that the animals like to "help" us when we are working in the house.  I expected RJ to feel VERY bad that he had caused me so much extra work.  So I asked him if he felt bad.  This is his feel bad face...or maybe just his bored one.

   

Second Coming of the Second Cutting

  
If you grow and hay and you are very lucky, you can get two cuttings off your fields.  The first one is usually the best and the last one is about half as high.  We have a farmer that cuts our fields.  He does it for shares.  Some for us, well for the horses, and the rest for him, well his cows.  Different guys use different percentages, but he is always fair with us.  We have always gotten enough hay from our share of the first cutting and he gets all of the second cutting.  A win-win for us both.  Plus, the more land we clear, the more land he mows for us!

The horses are currently up at a trainer and for sale, so the hope is I won't need any more hay for us.  We have our share from the first cutting stored in the barn and we will give it to our friendly neighborhood hay baler if we no longer need it.

Our fields are usually the last ones cut.  At least as far as the ones around here.  It may be because we are up on a slope with mountains behind us and the hay matures slower.  It may be because he has a schedule and we are last.  At any rate our second cutting started a few weeks ago.  He cuts a lot of fields near us and sometimes he just cuts half of our property on any given day.

  

I know that farmers have to keep an eye on the weather forecast.  Rain can ruin, or at least lessen the value of a crop.  So sometimes I think he only cuts that which he knows he can safely bale before it rains.  It usually rains 3 inches every month here.  You have to find a window where it is safe to cut and let it dry.  Then bale the next day.  On the other hand, if you wait too long, the grass is no longer as nutritious.  So it is a juggling act every year.

And this brings us to today.  There is a three day window when there is no forecast of rain.  And now he is out there cutting grass.  Now farmers around here don't just have one job.  He works a full time construction job elsewhere.  Then he raises cows.  And cuts grass all over the county.  During hay season he can be out cutting until dark.  And then he gets to pick up the bales a few at a time and load them on a trailer, drive home and unload.  Then do it again.

 

So don't complain about your long hours or low pay to a farmer.  And don't complain about the cost of beef.