OK - on all of these, I used my 100mm lens - ISO was set for 200, aperture was f2.8, and the shutter speed ranged from 1/125 to 1/200. The softness or blur of the background was due to the aperture being wide open, at 2.8, causing a very shallow depth of field. These were taken later in the afternoon, between 5:30 and 6:15, I think - getting a little on the dark side - if I had been out there much longer, I would have had to bump the ISO up which would have made them more noisy. Sis

Jan, glad you're doing well! I hear you about baking supplies... I'm glad I had huge pantry reserves when this craziness started. The trees are looking like they're as giddy about the prospect of going outside than I am to put them there, LOL! I'm very new to hydroponics. The Krakty method just seemed the easiest one to set up, no air pump or anything. I ordered 2 hexagonal planters from gogrowplanters. I got them from Amazon because I have prime, so shipping is quick and free. I called customer service on he gogrowplanters website, and the lady, Cindy, is absolutely phenomenal. She explained everything. Amy, I hear you! I feel like I'm sharing my house with 2 mutants, lol. Laura, great to hear from you! Yes, I've noticed you typically don't have as many high and lows in Annapolis than I do in Havre de Grace, although we're not even two hours apart. Ken, glad you're doing well. Your post brought back flashbacks of groundhog day, and you made me laugh out loud with the frost roulette, LOL ! Mike, it's so good to hear from you! I hope you feel better, and that your mom is ok! I know with absolute certainty that my trees would have been rotted dead 5 years ago, if it hadn't been for you, your UNWAVERING patience and all your kind advice. I'm very proud to consider you my friend. To each and every one of you, gimme pictures! Let us all live and travel vicariously though everyone else's pictures, LOL! Hopefully this won't last very much longer. It looks like they really want to open the country back up. Fingers crossed! God bless, Atheen PS: I got my Covid stimulus direct deposit yesterday. Make sure you check whatever bank account you have the IRS to wire your tax refund to the last 2 years, and if you never gave them one, make sure you go to https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus-tax-relief-and-economic-impact-payments and put your back account in there!

"... what we have here is a contretemps between gardening/landscaping solely for a visual appeal from the street or following the best practices for the health of the plant(s) in question." What you're describing with caution is a general truth about the pruning of all trees: the longer one waits to prune, the larger the wound will be and longer it takes to heal. There is nothing particularly problematic about pruning Magnolia ... certainly not to the point that one should not do it. And the caution about flowering has more to do with pruning the top of the tree, not the bottom. And as long as one catches it within a reasonable time of bloom finish, they are going to be OK with next year's flowering. Nevertheless, how one views the tree from the street is certainly not the main or only consideration. Here's a tree in a grass lawn, which means that one needs to mow below it. What a pain to do as one would need to stoop or crouch for most of the job! And the tree's not enhancing architecture when it's obscuring it! There are no trees that we bring into our yards without deciding that some of their bottom limbs must be removed in order that their structural form comply with our needs (that there is space below them) unless we intentionally leave them in the shrub form, which we commonly don't because most yards are not large enough to have such monsters. The trunk system of a multi-trunk tree forms a cone-shaped trunk structure. It can be a wide spreading, flattish cone (as in the Magnolia here), it can be a tallish, narrow cone (as how many new crape myrtles come from the "factory") or it can be anywhere in between. The fact is, that it's up to the tree owners to create the spread and it is far better to do when the tree is young. It's not different than training a child or a puppy. One cultivates out the bad habits in youth so they do not carry on to adulthood where they are much harder to fix, and at some point, impossible. (I would not consider this tree impossible yet, but it's certainly approaching it.)

You both amaze me. Beautiful stored bounty from your garden. Annie, is your cold storage in a basement with stone walls? I remember walls like that in my grandparents basement. My parents and aunts and uncles all worked chipping off the portruding ones in one section of the basement to make it smooth and then put mortar on it to make it look modern. Now I would welcome seeing the natural walls. HU, those Seminole squash sound like good ones to grow in a hot location. They also look cool :) It's great that they can be stored so long. My "cold storage" is in the garage. If we get temps near 0 the garage will cool below 32 and I have to be sure to bring things in before then. I only have a dozen squash, two boxes of apples, and lots of onions so it will likely be eaten or cooked for the freezer before we see any really cold weather. Often they are stored in the bed of the pick up truck which we don't use often. We have to remember to take out the produce before using the truck :) No neat and orderly shelves here to show you!