Balcony seen from centre on October 1st 2013

With a ground floor balcony you get that extra space. I bet you can grow plants that need a bit of protection too. Looks great in a small space.

Looking great ! :o) Added to GoYpedia.

Still looking good... :))

Thanks for your compliments! :-)) There is change afoot for next week!

can't wait to see!!

I've bought a few Pansies to put in the pots on the railings last Saturday from a stall in the market square. They cost me twice as much for only half the amount I get in plug plants from the supermarket where my wife works. I paid £6 for 24 plants when at the supermarket I pay £3 for 20 plug plants or get two trays for £5!

On the other hand these are full grown plants - not plugs. But it was that or face another winter with empty looking pots & troughs! Though they are all full of spring bulbs there is nothing on the surface & obviously no colour. I like Pansies & Violas because they give a few flowers ALL winter & give a show during milder periods. Then their main flowering period in April-May covers the gap between the spring bulbs finishing & the summer planting. As I lost ALL my plants for two years in a row I know what it is like to look out on an apparently bare balcony! :-((

Supermarkets can do cheaper, but better?? I would assume that the stall would have fresher stock, since they don't have the storage facilities.

that's the prob with spring bulbs etc; the troughs look a bit deserted the rest of the year. *s* I've got a garden book that gives lists of plants by season, so you could have something in flower all year round, but most of them seem to be shrubs, which would put them out of the running for spaces such as ours.

My niece once had hanging baskets all year round, courtesy of plastic plants! they did look fairly real from a distance, and no watering problems. lol tried that myself and the first bit of wind sent them down the road

I finally got around to planting the poor things today! I did as I said I would, i.e. I underplanted them with species Crocuses & mini-Daffs. I'll upload a couple of photos I took once I had finished but they should look better in a few days time when they have had the chance to settle down a little.

All year colour is what I get - if the Pansies survive! These winter flowering Pansies will throw out a few blooms all winter when we have mild spells & then the main flush in April/May. At the end of May I change them for summer bedding. So I get some colour all year round!

can't wait to see the pics - several, I hope, as they progress - maybe a blog of the season!

Today I bought a couple more boxes of Pansies & one of Violas. Most of these will go in the three white troughs on the balcony floor. I'll plant the Pansies in the two end troughs & the Violas in the middle one. First I'll remove the 6 Pansies in the middle trough & plant the 12 Viola plants in their place. As the other two troughs already have 6 Pansies planted in each I'll leave them where they are & put 6 of the new ones in each. The remaining 12 plants I'm thinking of putting in 3 of the 5 hanging baskets.

They haven't brought any more Pansies plugs to the supermarket where my wife works. :-((

"- maybe a blog of the season!"

You've given me an idea! But that will obviously have to wait for another 6 months - at least!

Great Look.

lol the wait would be worth it, I think - to see the development of baby plants into full bloom - bit like those wonderful BBC nature time-lapse sequences.

I had some sort of idea of doing it here when I bought new plants, but I have the memory of an elephant - wiht anmesia

These plants are not baby plants but fully grown & flowering! They are not plugs like I usually get from the supermarket. They may get a little bigger when they start their main flower season in April but I don't expect an increase in size over the winter.

I like to take photos from as near as the same position very time - just as you say, to get a time lapse feeling when seeing them. When I name the files I try to use as near the same wording as possible, again with the idea of getting them as similar as possible. I like to order them by date taken, other times by name, I'm too lazy to order them myself!

lol that's the prob, to find the exact spot and stand at exactly the right angle each time. I can't even get "panorama" pics lined up - take a pic, turn slightly, take another, so when the pics were printed I could join them into one. Never coul get an exact match, one was always a bit higher or lower or even a different colour from the other one!

Maybe you could find some way to mark the spot somehwo? lol tie a rip to each end of your balcony to make a long loop; then step back until it makes a perfect triangle,a nd there's your spot!

I do have a couple of spots that I can remember each time. They are manhole covers & so they are easy to find each time.

There is one cover just outside of the balcony & it is from there that I take the photos that are marked "from right of balcony". These photos often have a piece of the railings that surround the garden & where I often write a caption that runs obliquely across the right hand corner.

Another place is again a manhole cover but this time in the grass in front of our kitchen window. It's at just the right distance for me to take a photo "seen from the left".

The centre one is the most difficult to always get right as there is nothing to mark the spot. I just focus on the balcony & when I can see nothing more than the whole balcony, as if it were a square, is when I take the photo. On occasions I seem to step a little further back & on others a little too close but generally that works for me.

I well understand your frustration with the Panorama scenes as I've had the same problems as you! I had a digital camera that let you set up a panoramic scene & then merged the 3 shots for you but even then it never seemed just right.

I've no idea if mine has a "panorama" setting. Typical - learn enough to use the basic functions, and that's it. I bought a camcorder years ago (big tape one) and still don't know how to use most of the functions)

I think the manufacturers put too many functions in their products & that relatively few of us learn how to use little more then the basics to "get the job done"!

On my "smart" phone, which I've had for more than a year there are functions I still haven't tried out!

I just bought a new mobile phone that has a camera in (wow!) and a lot of other functions, but not got it going yet - at least I know how to use the current phone, and now is not the time to be experimenting with new features - I need a phone that i know how to use. Once things have calmed down a bit, I can take time to check it out.

I can't understand the rush to buy a new phone that has one extra button or something from the prevoius model - unless it's so that people can boast that they've got the latest one. I'm rather a techno-dodo - if it works, don't matter how hold it is. I don't need to read emails on my phone - lol I have enough probs with a 42" screen! but some of the apps might be handy, or fun,

my analogue camcorder has a "title" function, no idea what that does, and "picture adjust", ditto. I keep meaning to try these, but sigh, it's "later" - mainly when I can find the leads to connect it to the TV!

Do you write the posts you make here on the 42" TV as well?

I use the camera function on my phone more than I use it for phoning!

smaller posts I write direcly into the box at the bottom (which explains the typos!), but I have to lean a bit close to see what I'm doing. Longer answers I type in Word - have the font up to 24 so I can see what I'm doing AND sit up staright! then paste in here.

I can't wait to try the camera on the new phone: even if I take my camera out with me, by the time I've got it out of my bag, got it out of its bag, turned it on, pointed ... what I was going to snap has long gone!

I don't have a touch screen - given that I need to be so close to see, fingerprints are a real pain (at work I had a notince on top of the PC "if you're going to point, use your fingernail, not your finger"!!!) great big smeary bltoches all over the screen don't impove readability

I've become so accustomed to the touch screen on my phone that I go to touch the screens on the cash machines for instance! LOL!

What you say about finger prints is more or less right. on a touch phone they are practically invisible but my computer screen in not a touch screen yet my two grandchildren WILL keep touching the screen! The youngest, James, is the worst, he simply WON'T leave the screen alone!

When he comes round on a Thursday to spend the day with us he likes to watch videos of the Daleks on YouTube. As you probably know when one video finishes you get a multitude of others that are similar, well James has to push his finger into the screen to show me which one he wants to see next. "DON'T TOUCH THE SCREEN, JAMES!" But the next time he wants to point to something he does it again & I have to repeat "DON'T TOUCH THE SCREEN, JAMES!" LOL!

The great advantage of having a camera built into the phone is that you don't need to carry one around with you, it's already incorporated in your phone! (Probably takes better photos into the bargain!) I was always having to remember to pick up the camera before I left home & then hope the batteries weren't flat or that they wouldn't die on me while out. As I always carry my phone with me, I say to my wife "we always used to check our pockets for keys & purse/wallet but now we also have to check to make sure we have our phone before leaving home!"

It just sooo useful when you want to take a quick photo of something that catches your eye! I've taken 1,000s of photos that otherwise would never have been taken! I keep 1,000s on my phone all the time.

All the photos I upload to GOY are taken with my phone's camera & using the lowest resolution at that! I use the 1MB setting & it's good enough to see on the computer screen. I often use my highest setting, 3MB, to take photos of the grandkids but for everything else I always use the lowest resolution, 1MB setting. If you want to print the photos later then a higher setting is advisable, but for showing on the computer, a 3MB or 1MB phone you wouldn't notice the difference!

I've seen some small touch-screen appliances that have little sticks to touch the screen with but, knowing me, I'd lose that. PC screens are all I've got to go on, as my only experience with fingers on screen. Perhaps a phone would be different, but it'd cost me to find out!

Could you try teaching James to use the back of his finger, ie the fingernail? (mind you, I had enough problems trying to teach that to the rest of my team at work) or give him a cottom bud to point with? either would take time and lots of reminders, but it might eventually work - most pointing is spontaneous, even wiht adults.

My bag has a phone pocket on the outside, which is where it usually lives, so I know where it is, but I've had to go back for it more than once (if it's not in the bag it's usually on charge - or by the bed at night - often spends the whole day there cos I forget to bring it out again in the morning!)

When I upload from a camera I take the SD card out and use a card reader - someone told me it kills the battery to upload from the camera. Don't know if removal will be a practical option with the phone; depends where the card is housed. Only one way to find out.

But at least the phone camera might eliminate camera shake as I press the shutter button too hard.

"When I upload from a camera I take the SD card out and use a card reader - someone told me it kills the battery to upload from the camera."

From a normal digital camera they may be right as you have to have the camera switched on, which uses your battery power of course. If you have a card reader then it is better to take your memory card out of the camera & put it into your card reader on your computer.

However if you want to transfer your photos from your mobile phone to your computer then that isn't necessary as the phone draws it's power from the computer itself. In some phones it can also be very difficult to access your memory card.

right, thanks. Have a vuage notitoin that the card in this one is in the back iwth the sim card and battry, which would mean taking the back cover off and possibly removing ither the sim or the batterh or both each tme. don't think I'll bother!

Had to upload once via the camer as my USB sots on my PC were playing up, refusing gto accept any USB from any device, even my backups on USB; only had few pics to move so not too badl, but perfer to have ca era out of the way and safe - friend of mine, first time he uploaded from his new camera, got a bit careless and knocked the thing off the table to the floor. *s* always best to learn by others' mistakes!