I would like to thank the following sites that have liked my photos enough to present them on their site:

16th July 2008
Schmap for iPhone - Gastown Steam Clock

6th March 2008
Canoe Days Out - River Stour Nayland

2007
Schmap Vancouver - Gastown Steam Clock
I See Tech People - link to ginger-kittens photoblog

And the photos are:

When: 13th July 2008
Where: Columbia Street, New Westminster
URL: Royal City Show ‘n Shine

I absolutely love avocados, I would eat them everyday if I could. Growing up in South Africa and Kenya meant that avocado trees were part of the landscape.

I’ve treated myself to an avocado four times this year. They mainly come from Mexico and are a lot smaller than what I’m used to. Since leaving Africa I’ve dreamed about having my own avocado tree. So I saved the four pits and have been trying to encourage them to sprout. Visit Garden Web to find out how to grow an avocado tree. So far three have rooted and one hasn’t done anything, of course I started the process at different times so they are all on a different schedule.

Today I photographed my four avocado experiments. The images are a little dark, I didn’t quite get the exposure and white balance right. Still learning!

The first picture was the first avocado I ate this year and has two very healthy looking leaves. The next two I ate within a week of each other. I tried two different methods one I potted as soon as it rooted and the other one I left in the water. The one I left in the water has successfully sprouted, the potted one is showing a few signs of splitting but no sprouting. The last one isn’t doing anything, it has been in the water for over two months now.

Anyway, I’m happy that I have one that has leaves and it may just turn into a healthy tree.  The only draw back would be space, if it ever grows over 7 feet tall it may cause a few problems inside!  The climate in Canada just isn’t suited to avocado trees, so I’m not sure what I would do if it actually got to that size.  No need thinking about these things now, it will probably take a few years for it to grow 7 feet.

My mouth is watering with all this avocado talk!

Some time last year (2007) Ryan and I purchased a printer. We spent quite a while in the store wondering which printer we should choose and what features we liked. Finally, we choose the HP Photosmart D5160. So far it has satisfied our printing needs, which has mainly been printing my Canadian permanent residency application and supporting documents (this was one seriously huge package, so much for saving paper!). One added bonus is it’s photo printing capabilities.

Today, I finally printed off some 4×6in photos to place into a four photo frame we received as a Christmas present. I used the HP Premium Plus photo paper that was included with the photo print cartridge. The results were quite pleasing for a home printer worth $70. The only feature that I will most likely never use again is the ‘white border’ option. I tried this on one of the photos and found that the white border was too small, width was different on all sides and you could tell that the photo paper wasn’t completely aligned.

Here are the photos I chose to print: