Digital Scrapbooking

My latest obsession is digital scrapbooking. Of course, as with any new endeavor, my librarian training kicks in and I start with books.



My interest is less in scrapbooking for its own sake and more that it's an easy path to making art with my photos and my new Photoshop Elements software. Here's my first work.

I'm putting new pieces up in my gallery at Scrap Orchard.

Sunday Transcendentalist Quote

From "Sermon CXXI" by Ralph Waldo Emerson as printed in Transcendentalism: A Reader, edited by Joel Myerson.

The true heaven is, in the raising of this poor sinful soul to His love, knowledge, and likeness; to purity, to humility, -- to kindness, to truth, to trust; to the possession of the treasures of unbounded truth; the fellowship and cooperation with all good minds in all works of love; and the enlargement of this soul to the great and increasing capacity for virtue. This is heaven.

Happy Earth Day!

Here's what the earth is giving me today:

Lettuce

Chard

Collard

The Garden

We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden today with my brother and J. I took just my small camera -- but it doesn't take much of a camera to make a pretty picture from blooming bulbs, azaleas, and phlox. I even managed a leading S curve that would make my photography teacher proud.

The case for a freezer

It looks likely that I'll buy a small freezer next week during the Show-Me Green Sales Tax Holiday. Among other things, I'll freeze applesauce and pastured butter, two important ingredients in one of my favorite treats: applesauce bread. I mostly follow the recipe, but find that I can make it more of a whole wheat bread with 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 3/4 cup of bread flour. I also use Grade B maple syrup instead of the sugar.







This is the last of the applesauce I made from locally grown apples in the last six months. This container is from apples I bought about a month ago. They were #2 apples, with a few extra bruises and worm holes. But I got a 1/2 peck bag for only $3. That made enough applesauce for half a dozen loaves of bread.


I buy the butter from Whole Foods. The cows live in Wisconsin, so they only eat grass seasonally and thus pastured butter is only available from May through September. Last September, I bought five pounds and froze four of them. This is my last pound, so that worked out about right. But given the health benefits of grass-fed animal fats, I'm starting to find more ways to use this butter like biscuits for special occasion breakfasts. So, I may want more butter in the freezer by the end of September 2009.

The Missing Brush Pile

For some reason my two-year-old picture on flickr of our brush pile was viewed five times the other day. I don't know what that was about, but it reminded me that I should probably take an "after" picture because that brush pile is completely gone!

So, here is Rick where the brush pile used to be.

Most of the brush pile went through the chipper/shredder. We've been really happy with the chips for making paths. The pieces that were too big to chip went to St. Louis Composting. They have pictures of some of their really big machines on their website.

If you want rabbits, one of the things you do is build brush piles. Since we don't want rabbits (see this post where I planted lettuce seeds), we were hoping the elimination of the brush pile would discourage their presence. It may have worked -- we haven't seen a single bunny in the yard all year.

When I took the picture below, I thought the whole rabbit thing might be a moot point, because it didn't seem that any of the seeds were sprouting. But, later, when I looked closer as I watered the bed, I discovered some very tiny sprouts. I would have to get my macro lens out to get a picture of them, but they are there!

Azaleas

The first azalea blossoms opened up on the bushes north of the garage.

Here's a close-up view.