Or even easier.. Download, install and use Picasa. It's a free picture management software. Also sign up for a Google account. Once Picasa finds all your pictures then hold the control key and click on the pictures you want. Now click on the 'web album' button at the bottom and it will ask your Google credentials. Once you put them in, the selected photos upload to http://picasaweb.google.com/YourUserID You can browse the pictures you uploaded and to the right of each picture is a link that says 'Link to this Photo'. Click it and then select the size of the thumbnail (800X is a nice fit for this website). Right above the thumbnail dropdown is 'HTML to embed in website'. Put your cursor in there and cut . Paste the link right into this forum with no alteration necessary. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't once you are setup. It will make it super easy going forward to show off your pictures on this forum without having to do any HTML. Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa Download

Well, since it's been a little over a month since I started this post, I figured I would chime in with some updates. The garden has been extremely prolific in all its glory, providing an overwhelming amount of vegetables the last 3 weeks or so. I have harvested dozens and dozens of zucchinis, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a great assortment of veggies. I have stuffed zucchinis and cucumbers, canned tomatoes and made homemade salsa and given baskets of vegetables away. The garden has thus far been extremely successful. I went away for vacation Jul 28th-Aug 4th and took with me any vegetables that were the slightest bit edible, including several small zucs and cucs and five of the first large tomatoes that only had the slightest color of red to them. I was fearful that while away the deer would enter the electric fence and/or climb the 6 foot horse fence and destroy whatever they could while I was gone ( which they have done in the past.) The evening before departing, I surround the woods and garden in fishing line and chairs, ladders, buckets and whatever large objects I thought might deter them. I also tied up over 30 pie pans and used LIQUID FENCE and several sweaty shirts that I had wore the previous week. I also set an outdoor stereo on a timer from 8pm-8am. I did all this in hopes that I would return to a great harvest and not that of sadness. I arrived home on the 4th, just as the sun was setting, and was ecstatic to see my possibly "extreme" measures had been a success. To my delight, dozens of ripe tomatoes, large peppers, zucs and cukes galore. For the last week I have been harvesting a dozen tomatoes minimal daily. In the pictures below, I picked nearly 4 dozen tomatoes in one day. I also spent this evening canning some tomatoes and making salsa and 4 loafs of zucchini bread. While in the garden this evening, I plucked 7 tomato hornworms off my plants, 4 of which had the parasitic wasp cocoons on their backs. It makes me happy to see the good bugs (the wasps) are helping me out since I'm proud to say I have not used insecticides. The hornworms and squash bugs have both been bad the last week since arriving home from vacation. It seems while I was gone the bugs have come out form hiding. I have been hand picking and destroying daily and it seems to be helping. The only other real issue I have been having is powdery mildew. I have used 2 homemade remedies to try and control but to no prevail. The first remedy of baking soda actually killed all the leaves of my crooknecks and for a short time stunted any vegetable growth. But in the last 10 days or so they started growing nice and green again and once again are baring fruit. The mildew has spread to the cucumbers and zucchini in the other part of the garden and I attempted to control with a milk remedy, but that seems to have done nothing. With temps in the high 90s and extreme humidity, this is more than likely an endless battle. Truthfully I have gotten such a wonderful crop of cucumbers and zucchinis that if they poop out now, I won't be disappointed. I look forward to my planting of a fall garden in the next couple weeks. Well, I apologize for going on so long but as a gardener knows, there's always something going on in the garden :-) Hope you enjoy my pics from today's harvest!

Sadie, I looked at the photos, read the comments, then went back to the photos to see what everyone had seen. I would echo many of the comments. First, lets remember that 'instant' does not happen in gardens such as ours. Even though we know that, I still repeat that thought to myself even after many years of gardening. It's a work of art which we are creating in partnership with unknowns such as the weather, conditions of the soil, and other living things such as your groundhog. (Unfortunately the groundhog does not see it as a partnership.) I must say that I do like the look of your garden. You comment that the Mullein must go, but I have to agree with Stage Rat - it provides a place for the eye to go, height, and is a statement in itself. At this point I'll also mention that it appears the groundhog does not eat it?? A plant I would definitely keep growing since this appears to be the case so hopefully you have seedlings to keep it going since it is a biennial. Don't be scared to move the Peonies. Consider that they are something you want to see when they bloom and their foliage lasts all season so they could be used as foliage fillers for the rest of the year. Again, Stage Rat's recommendation that the crowns appear on top of the soil is crucial for bloom. The Asclepias is nice! Again, another plant the groundhog won't eat since it's poisonous/toxic to them, so you might like to try some Incarnatas or other varieties. There are other plants which they won't eat for the same reason so do a bit of research and see if you would like them in your gardens. I have a deer issue and Monkshood are great plants, Poppies, Foxgloves and others. I've stopped fighting the battle somewhat and now plant things they don't like. Your Yarrow also appears undisturbed and there are many varieties with stunning colors out there. So take a chair and go sit a few feet from your garden. It's actually quite beautiful. :O) That's not to say that everything is where you want it, but consider the plant and what it is doing for your garden then make a decision as per moving/culling based on the adversities you face, bloom time, whether you like it or not, foliage staying power, purpose, etc. Oh, and consider that next year it will all be different whether you change anything or not this year!

Wetsuitor: The only ones I dug up this year were 4 washies and a sago palm, each of which would take considerable protection here including heat. I will be leaving those in when they get 2 big to handle, but the washies seem to take root distubance very well and overwinter well indoors. There is of course some set back and it is slow to get growing in the spring, however I'm not ready to get into an elaborate heating system yet. I'm trying to work out my kinks this year on a trachy. Plus my wife would kill me if I had Jim's setup! I live in maybe the coldest winter 6a in America. This will be my 3rd winter here, the lowest low each of the past 2 years is -2, and -8F, HOWEVER, it is the norm to go 3 weeks at a time never getting above freezing. Last December and January, we had 9 days that got above freezing during the day, and most of those were in the 33-38F range for highs. We also had 2 3-weeks seesions of consecutive below freezing weather. The other problem is that I generally don't see grass from Dec.1 to mid-March, it never gets warm enough to ever melt the snow. Last year I lost 2 decent sized trachies and a sabal palmetto, and my minors and needle that survived received considerable damage, the minors burned 98%, the only things left were the emerging spears. Needle had spear pull with surving pups. That was with frost cloth wrapped unheated leaf cages, which provided 0-30% damage and no losses the year before.