I never thought of roasting cauliflower. Check out this blog. Keep scrolling…the recipes get better and better!!  As I have planted caulis this year I can look forward to trying some of them.

 I have been looking into this, as I thought I didn’t get scapes because I was too far north.  But it seems it must be the variety of garlic that is the factor, not so much the latitude.
I have found a garlic grower in Nairn, Scotland (farther north than Edinburgh, where I am). They are the Really Garlicky Company .  Click on the “More about the products” button to have all your garlicky questions answered. Including all about scapes.  It is the hard-necked garlic that grows scapes, not the usual soft-neck one.
Here is what they say:
“Technically, it is allium sativum ophioscorodon. Unlike the softneck garlic grown commercially, especially in Spain and China, this garlic subspecies produces a hard, woody flower stalk. The flower (topset or umbel) often contains bulbils. Many varieties develop partial or full coils in the stalks (scapes). We have to remove the scape in order to increase the size of the harvested bulbs.”

What a fascinating subject! This certainly is new for me!

I had never heard of scapes before today. But it seems they are tasty, versatile, free (if you have planted garlic!) and a garlic-lover’s paradise!!

They are a shoot that grows from mature garlic, though I have never seen it in mine. Perhaps the weather in Edinburgh isn’t hot enough, or maybe the scapes are more common on autumn planted garlic (mine usually goes in the ground in February or even March).

You can learn about garlic scapes here.

How about making scape pesto? Sounds delicious!

And if you want links to more scape recipes and stuff go here.

I love garlic, so will look forward to trying out some of these recipes.  This year I may try to get the garlic in the ground in the autumn and look for the tasty scapes next year.

Can you believe it? This is amazing – Deke McLelland really knows his stuff!
I am learning little by little how to use Photoshop and this video is a fun challenge to use the tools.

I met a lady who runs a garden centre in East Lothian (damp Scotland!). She was telling me that her dahlias had been badly hit by slugs – in previous years, that is. But this year she is trying a new remedy – garlic water! It sounded good to me, and she said it seems to be working so far. 

Here is Cilla’s recipe for Slug Deterrant.
Take two heads of garlic. Peel and crush them.
Boil for 4 or 5 minutes in 2 pints of water.
Strain, and make up the liquid to 2pints
Leave the liquid to cool and bottle.
To use, take 1 tablespoon of the garlic water and add to 1 gallon of water in a watering can.
Water over your plants and leave to dry. Apparently this works best on a dry day, as the bitter liquid dries on the leaves. The slugs must not like the taste as Cilla’s dahlias are the best they have been for ages!

 This I will be trying on the allotment. We are over-ridden with the wee slimy beasties!

The Root blog has a fascinating page on this very subject of slug control, copper and garlic here .  We can learn so much from each other.

As I use my eyes all day at work (mostly on the PC) I find reading very taxing.  That is why I am especially delighted to have discoivered a wealth of audio books – free to download!

There are several sources, but the one I found for Cranford is here.  Librivox has many of the out of print books already  available, and more are being prepared all the time.

The Gutenberg project gives links to other sites which I may explore later.

I have begun listening to Cranford and am enjoying it. Mrs Gaskell’s writing is more appealing to me since I have watched the excellent BBC adaptation of Cranford. It is intriguing to see how, from a few sentences in the original, the BBC adaptors have built rounded characters, and the actresses have added reality, flesh and heart to them.

Regarding the audio version, it is of note that the readers seem to be mainly American.  That does not detract too much from the enjoyment but I did at first find it a little surprising to hear such English literature read with a Trans-Atlantic accent!  But these downloads are free, and that bargain is not to be sniffed at!

This season my friend and I are trying a new method of slug control. I am much more squeemish than she is.  Slugs and snails that she spots are humanely dispatched – using a rock and a breeze block!

This, coupled with the fact that she crushes any eggs she finds, has depleted their numbers. But the cabbages and other baby seedlings will prove a big temptation form the remaining ”slimies”. So we are going to plant some tender things like pak choi, lettuce and chard in containers – maybe some strawberry plants, too.

We like to use as few chemicals as possible, so were delighted to learn about a method of slug control to suit the organic gardener. The containers will be stood on “Shocka mat”.  This is  a barrier fabric treated with copper. Apparently it gives the beasties a wee shock if they go on it, so we shall see what happens.

You could put it on the ground and plant through it (strawberries, maybe). But it is also ideal for cutting into mats for pots and other containers.

After looking around for the best deal, we found it on an economical roll at http://www.greengardener.co.uk/slugextra.htm.

Keep scrolling and you will find it, as well as other methods of slug control.

Heres some piccies from their site – used by permission.

I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out a solution to a Photoshop problem -  how to put a white border around an image .

I tried all sorts of things, but every time I drew a rectangle it filled with colour, instead of being an empty frame for the picture to sit in.

Then I found a great tutorial - clear and well illustrated. In there are instructions for setting up a border layer.

Allotment gardeners often have some strange sounding ideas, and some odd solutions to problems. And “Tony the Hoe” has written about a cracker of an idea – Spraying plants with diluted aspirin to boost their immune system.
I once knew an old lady gardener whose motto was “Try anything once, dear.” So I may well give this one a go. Tony points out that aspirin is derived from willow and helps boost the natural immunity of plants against pests and diseases. He has used it to counteract onion eelworm.
He has heaps of other interesting information and I plan to have a good root through his excellent blog. The category list looks very tasty!

Isn’t it fascinating how many words have changed their meaning over the years.  When I first dipped my toe into computing it was a whole new language. Mouse, driver, wallpaper, copy and paste – everything seemed to be old words with new meanings.

The word I found hardest to use was avatar [ the little picture that accompanies a post and is a logo representing the poster] .  I had known this term before, but its only meaning to me was the Hindu concept of a higher god-like being. So it kind of jarred with me. This is because I am a Christian and didn’t want to call any representation of myself an avatar. My belief is that there is only one God, supreme, unique.

Now, of course, I realize that in addition to the original use avatar means something else.  I use the words mouse and wallpaper without even thinking of the original meanings, so now use avatar in an equally untroubled way.

All this has come to the front of my mind as I’m setting up this blog and tweaking a few things. I would like to use the option given here at WordPress to upload an avatar. That’s another design challenge for another day!

Wow! Am I chuffed!  I managed to embed the YouTube video in the previous post.

I had tried a few times a couple of weeks ago – but got no joy. I don’t know what I was doing wrong. But the process is simple enough.

When you see a video you want to embed (rather than merely give a link in your post so that the reader can leave you to go and view it … and get distracted and spend the next hours viewing YouTube instead of reading your great posts!!) look to the right of ther YouTube page.
There you may see a box marked “Embed”. In the box is some code.
Click inside the box and the text inside it will be highlighted.  This is what you must copy. The keyboard shortcut for that action is Ctrl+C on a PC.

Now go into your post and hit the tab that transfers you to HTML view. In the place in your post where you want the video to show, click and paste in the copied coding (Ctrl+V).
Save your post and view it to see if all is working well.

When I’m previewing a web page I’ve made or, in this case, a post with a new trick in it, I imagine I feel a bit like fishermen do when they are waiting to see what is on the end of the line or in the net they are hauling. It’s a good expectation. And even if I’ve failed to do what I wanted, there’s usually a reason, and finding it is the next challenge.

What is RSS? What are feeds? Why should I use them? These questions were all answered for me when I found a great wee video on YouTube.

Learning about blogging makes me want to visit other blogs and learn from them how things might be done. Having found Technorati, and visited a few blogs today, I realized the value of subscribing to an RSS feed. Now, at last, I can get my head round it a wee bit.

If you watch the video which I am going to try to embed in this post you will see a great teacher and communicator in action!

I have just discovered Technorati. What a great way of getting to know what other blogs are out there!  they offred me a way to “claim my blog”, so that it can benefit from the tools available at Technorati. Writing this post is part of the process. It will be fun to explore and learn more about how to use Technorati to find cool stuff, and also to enhance this blog. Next I’ll need to fins out how to place the little badge thingy on this blog.

I see that many blogs have a little orange feed icon. The theme I am using (Pressrow by Chris Pearson) has only a text link to the feeds. But if you’re like me, you’ll hardly know what to do with them! I aim to find out.

I just love InDesign CS3. After all the problems I had getting the new CS3 suite installed I am delighted with it.

The upgrade from CS2 has been well worth while and I am discovering new benefits every day. So far the best thing for me has been the new tool panels (or are they palettes? I always get mixed up because I think the different programs in the suite call them different things). They dock perfectly, the icons are easily recognized, they fly out and slide back very elegantly. And the new effects pallet/panel is great. Applying effects so quickly to fill, stroke, text or objects – the versatility and usability is far better than CS2.

There is still heaps to learn about InDesign, but I get great help from the podcast done by David Blatner and Ann-Marie Concepcion. They speak so personally to us listeners; as a noobie I get a lot from it, and yet don’t feel they speak down to me, or over my head. They are not only very knowledgeable and informative, but also personable and humorous. Their podcast (InDesign Secrets) is the highlight of my week-eek-eek-eek (You have got to hear an episode to get that reference!!)

It was an excellent production, and thoroughly enjoyable.  Every episode was loaded with cracking narrative and stunning photography (the lighting was a particularly joy). I viewed them in the evening, and all the following day pondered on the latest episode.

I was reminded of a remark made by a character in a Miss Marple story. He said something to the effect that she viewed the world through the prism of her small English village.  I think Mrs Gaskell has done the same with Cranford. 

When I speak of Miss Marple I mean, of course, the Agatha Christie character. My flat mate and I bought the boxed set of Miss Marple mysteries. She is captured impeccably by Joan Hickson, a fine actress. There is nothing that jars about her performance and after watching an episode, I always feel relaxed and uplifted. I cannot say the same about modern crime drama, which I find I cannot watch any more, because of the violence and harsh reality.

Escaping to an idyllic village – whether Cranford or St Mary Mead – is my idea of a chill-out zone!

I had known of Mrs Gaskell before, but never read any of her books or seen any film of one. So this was new for me.  I’m looking forward to the promised Cranford Christmas special at the end of the year.

Last week I hit a bad patch with my computer software.

I had been using Adobe CS2 for a while, and now I was to upgrade to CS3.  As always, I did a web search of any known issues and discovered that some people had hit bad problems – all the programs in the suite loaded without difficulty, except Acrobat and Acrobat reader 8.

I imagined that I would be one of those who had a trouble-free install and pressed ahead.  It wasn’t to be.  All went well – Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, InDesign all loaded smoothly; then, just as the green bar had crept almost to the end, and just as Acrobat was loading, the installation stopped and a message told me that one element had failed to install - Acrobat.  Forty minutes to install and almost an hour  to uninstall the whole suite ate into that evening. I tried again – twice! Install…get stuck…uninstall.

Drastic measures were called for, so it was a late night spent scouring the web for a solution.  Finally I found it, in the shape of post by Larry Riggs. This analysed the problem, explained a solution and then led me by the hand through the inplementation.  Adobe CS3 is now fully installed and operating sweetly.

Larry’s solution led me “to boldly go…” into the depths of the registry.  It sounds really neat in Larry’s words: “drilling down to CLSID at the fifth level.”  !!!

The lesson I learned in all this is to stay calm and follow instructions.  This guy knows what he is talking about, explains in a crystal-clear manner ( even I could understand it), has helped hundreds to resolve their computer problems and gave me confidence to go ahead and do it.

I prayed for God to help me and as I set off following the info on Larry’s page, I realized that what he was asking me to do would not crash anything – indeed it was reversable. So, having read carefully the whole thing, I followed step by step and ticked everything off as I completed it.  IT WORKED!

If you have this problem, or are contemplating upgrading to CS3, you’ll want to see Larry’s masterly piece .  

Today I discovered Cranford.  Not having seen the original BBC series, based on three novels by nineteenth century writer, Mrs Gaskell, I bought the boxed set from Amazon. The reviews were very favourable and I haven’t been disappointed. On the contrary, the humour had me laughing out loud; the acting was brilliant and the costumes, scenery and photography were outstanding.

I’ve finished episode 1 and can’t wait for the free time to view another succulunt chunk! 

Mum always told me: “You can learn something new every day.” I’ve found that to be true. Most of what I have learned has been known by others before I even heard of it! But it has been new for me – whether an idea,  a skill, or even some little item to drop into what my dad used to call “My compendium of useless facts” -which, in dad’s case, were far from useless.

This blog will be as much for my benefit as for others, as I chart the  things I find which are new for me.