Sherry, when I received the email notification that you had commented on my blog, the address line of the sender (you) was this: sherryocala [noreply-comment@blogger.com] You get email replies to your comments from me because I already have your email address. I just get it from my contacts folder. When setting up your Blogger profile, you have to actively check the "show email address" option, otherwise your email is hidden. Many folks do this on purpose, thinking that providing their email will be a wide-open door to Spam City. My email is available on my blog, and here on GW, and I can't say that I have noticed any increase in spam because of it. It's all in the way that I blog. I skip around reading blogs ... many of which come from sidebar blog lists of other blogs I enjoy ... and I lose track of where I've been. If a blogger uses the comment section for a reply, chances are that I will never see it. (You can subscribe to comment replies on blogger blogs ... I did that once on a very popular blog, and my inbox was inundated with everyone's replies.) I think of personal comment replies as Thank You notes ... it's just what I do, and I feel bad when I can't send a personal reply. Just this morning, I had two lovely comments from folks that I couldn't contact personally. I commented on the blog, and I hope they see it. Other readers got personal replies, with our dear Professor Roush receiving a continuation to a comment conversation that started between the two of us on his blog ... which is FABULOUS, BTW.

Hey all bloggers, if you want a GREAT, FREE photo editing software you must must must try PhotoScape. It is so incredibly easy to use. Start at view. Click your image to bring it up into the main tray. Do your changes down at the bottom. It has unlimited undo. When you get it like you want it just click save and it will save to your hard drive in JPG. Then you can just grab it while you're in blogger directly from your hard drive. To add text and other very cool things like frames, texture etc to your pictures it's just a matter of clicking or typing it's that easy! I tried several photo editing sites to do my Header and what a PIA. This was so simple and I'm so happy! Just thought I'd pass it on. Check out my new header! http://quiltedhills.blogspot.com MeMo - who is going back to play with it some more! Here is a link that might be useful: PhotoScape Free Download

Coming to this thread a few days late, and NOT a market gardener. I used to go to farmers markets when I was in a Vegetable co-op (10 families contributing X dollars every 2 weeks, 2 moms go every 2 weeks to buy vegies for all, then distribute them back at home.). THE very best selling tool was a farmer w/ a sharp knife and a fresh fruit ready to be cut and sampled. I almost always bought! Even if I didn't buy, it was fun sampling the new tastes. Now tomatoes don't cut as easily as a crisp apple or a firm peach, but you could keep cut up samples w/ toothpicks in them on a paper plate nearby, maybe ontop of a plate of ice. Cover the plate with one of those cool screen things, look like an upside down colander, that keeps bugs off of picnic food. Someone on this forum months/yrs? ago suggested having printed recipes on how to use your "new" heirloom, or herb, or anything else you'll be selling. Make sure you have LOTS of recipes, and hand them out w/ each purchase! Occassional "free" ones could be available,too. Bake up some cookies, or muffins, or what have yous as samples of how the food will taste w/ your product in it. (always assuming baked goods given away are Legal at your market). I work 2 days a week in a nursery and we grow our own tomatoes. My work days don't usually coincide w/ seeding days, But, this past winter, I worked beside one of the men while he transplanted the baby seedlings. It was a sight to behold! We seeded in 500-800 cell trays, so natch, the babies are TIN=EEE! All of those babies went into six packs, 36 plants to a tray. He would fill up aprox 10 flats at a time w/ potting soil, go outside, water the dirt real well, bring them back in. Then he poked holes in each of the 36 cells, on each flat. Then he took a pencil or other sharp object, and poked the transplant out of it's 500 cell and into the prepared trays. He finished off each tray with another dousing of water (which I thought was too much), then on he went to the next group of 10 or so flats. He must have transplanted something like 5000 tomato seedlings in that one day! That's the only greenhouse we heat, and we kept it at 60 degrees for 1-3 weeks, til the weather warmed up and the plants were big enough to handle the unheated greenhouses. "Old Codgers" are our primary customers, some yuppies. The old codgers, in particular, gripe about everything. The plants are too young, too tall, too short, too yellow, too old, and of course, WAY too high in price. LOL! And, whether it was tomato, pepper, greens, cauliflower, cabbage, potato, onion, eggplant, herbs, or anything else edible, whatever we had, WAS NOT what THEY wanted! They always want what you don't have, then harumph a lot about your failings! I wonder about the sense in starting tomatoes in Feb in TX when they won't be weather or ground hardy til April sometime, or later (which is when they start looking too old, too yellow, etc...), but start them then is what we do. Obviously, you're probably not going to start 4000 + plants, yet! But you'll probably need to start WAY more than you have room for, and figure out lights or outside heating somehow, just to have enough for your four day event. And, if you want to hand out taste samples, obviously those tomatoes will have to have been seeded early enough to give you fruit on the event days. So, you'll have to do some serious sequential planting if you want fruit AND plants on selling days. Good luck--sorry this was so long. SusiQ in NE TX

I have this same problem. I feel like I look very ugly in photos. I would consider myself to be fairly attractive. Not a model or anything but I think I'm pretty but I hate every single photo of me in some capacity or other. It doesn't help that I have a mild pitosis in one eye that seems to be captured in many of the photos. It makes we look like I'm drunk or on drugs. I feel like I am not photogenic at all, but there are some photos I will go to delete and my husband won't let me. He tells me there is nothing wrong with that photo you look great. So I know it's something in my head, but I don't know how not to be critical. I do feel like when when age a little or gain some weight it does take getting used to ourselves. Along the same lines when I was a teenager I would look in the mirror and think I was super "ugly". I wasn't even an awkward teenager so I don't know what was going on. A few years ago it came up in conversation with my husband and he said he had felt the same way as a teen and actually thought he was the ugliest person ever. My husband is a very attractive man, so it surprised me to hear. Both of us "grew out" of that but I obviously carry some form of it with being overly critical of myself. And I am being overly critical. What I try to do know is delete the obviously super bad ones with droppy eye or mouth hanging open or "b" face. Seriously how many pictures of myself do my future generations need anyway. LOL Selfies or ones taken by others, it doesn't matter. If pictures are with other people and they all look great I don't touch them. If I am just mildly turned off by the photo I leave it as well since it's probably a decent photo and I am just being too critical. Everyone has flaws and we often accept other people's physical flaws but have unrealistic standards for our own. I think there is a learning curve and I know for myself I am much better than I was about it even 5 years ago.