Goodbye, House

I finally got a new camera yesterday! We looked at a number of different models, but I went back to the one I bought before (the lens got stuck after 6 weeks). This one is a newer model, and I'm hoping it was just bad luck with that one lens...this is a newer model, and it was actually a little cheaper than the one I bought back in March. (One online review said, "A cheap and cheerful camera that gets the job done." Yes, I do like my cameras to be cheerful. No grumpy cameras for me, thank you.)

It's a Nikon Coolpix S3100 with 5x zoom, 14.0 Megapixels.

I tried it out yesterday evening. It has all kinds of features I don't even know about yet, so these are just the basics. I'm already happy with it. Meaning: I can fit it easily in my pocket. I can pull it out of my pocket, turn it on, and take a picture. The pictures look pretty good. This makes me very, very happy. This is what I call a grandma camera.

(When we were comparing two different cameras yesterday, I asked the electronics-department-guy about the differences. He said he were basically the same. I asked him which camera he would buy, if he were buying one of them for his middle-aged mother--I didn't ask him if he actually HAD a middle-aged mother--and he pointed to the Nikon because it's simpler to figure out the settings. Sold.)

This will be my last post from home for a while. We're heading out on a l-o-n-g road trip tomorrow morning. We'll be driving all the way to the East Coast and back, stopping to see family along the way. Farewell, comfy bed and wonderful big kitchen!

Happy 4th of July!

Photo from my cell phone, mid-June

The foxgloves were just starting to bloom...

Photo yesterday, new camera

Wow! The foxgloves are SO pretty! 

They'll be finished blooming when we return from our trip.

Photo from my cell phone, mid June

We got the garden in late this year...such a long, wet spring. Here is Mark is tilling the garden after we added two truckloads of good organic stuff (one load of horse manure, one load of yard-debris compost)

Photo yesterday, new camera

Oh, I hate to leave the garden! 

I've told the neighbors to be sure to pick from it. We had salad made with garden lettuce last night, and we'll eat some more today, but there will be plenty here for others to enjoy. Plus 2 zucchini plants (one yellow, one green), tomato plants that already have green tomatoes on them, chard that is almost ready to pick...sigh...

I planted the beans late (they aren't even up yet), so I'll be able to enjoy those after we return home, and I can plant more lettuce later this summer. There will be plenty of spaghetti squash and potatoes to harvest in August, and the zucchini and tomatoes should still be putting out fruit, but I'll have to buy store-bought blueberries this year.

Good bye, house! I'll see you in a few weeks!

(In case you're a robber reading my blog, and thinking this would be a great time to burgle my sweet old house...fagetaboutit. We have a house sitter, who, along with vigilantly guarding the old homestead, will no doubt be gorging himself on lush green salads. Hahaha...fooled you, bad guys! But you're welcome to come by and share the lettuce. A little green salad would do you good!)