The first of the Heart House spring flowers are blooming and flowering shrubs are starting to show green leaves. I have upgraded my web site somewhat and resurrected an old program and put it to use. Details below!
A few spring bulb flowers are blooming, daffodils and hyacinths. Magnolia trees are blooming on a neighbor’s yard. Tulips are developing their flower buds. It seems spring is definitely trying to arrive!
Spring often brings thunderstorms, and on Tuesday, the 14th, we received some of the largest hail I have ever seen. The sound of the storm was like someone beating on the house with a bat.
The hail damaged some daffodils and left quite a few small limbs and branches on the lawn. Some cleanup will be in order, but thankfully there was no damage to the house.
While we suffered only twigs and small limbs on the yard, others were not so lucky. The city’s solar panel installation was heavily damaged. Speaking to the city clerk, I learned the solar installation is covered by insurance but had to be turned off as a precaution against the system shorting out. Some of our neighbors reported damage to their windows and vinyl siding. A few cars have new dents in their sheet metal. No one I spoke to had ever seen such large hail.
Here is a 35 second video taken near the end of the storm.
Moving on into Tech Talk
I recently made the decision to upgrade my web hosting service from 10gb to 50gb of storage, as I was beginning to bump up to my original limit. This does not result in any visual change, but does open the door for me to do a few more things such as posting the above video.
Another upgrade was in software. Several years ago I had purchased a program called JuiceboxBuilder-Pro and had used it to create photo galleries for this web site. However, eventually it would not run on my old Mac Pro; there was a conflict with the operating system patches I had used to keep the old Mac going.
I tried using JB-Pro on my new Mac Mini and ran into a few problems. The JB-Pro support desk (Mr. Steven Speirs) did a great job of helping me solve my problems and get me back up and running. A salute to him!
My Gallery page looks quite a bit different now than it has over the past few years; many significant features have been added. You can now show or hide the thumbnails at the bottom of the gallery, open an individual photo in a new tab, enlarge or minimize the gallery, and step through photos manually or turn on autoplay. Instructions are at the top of the Gallery page.
The current gallery may be of interest only to Colorado or mining history buffs, but my plan is to publish a new gallery from time to time featuring more general topics. You will see a few past galleries that have been re-worked and expanded. This plan goes hand-in-hand with my project of grouping my old slides by topic instead of by date, making it easier for me to create and update galleries.
In other news, it was a quiet Easter. Becky’s birthday is the same week as Easter this year, so she drove to Elma and we celebrated both with a light lunch (including a desert of brownies and ice cream).
I will be heading to New York State shortly, so my next post will be delayed until I return. I hope to have some travel photos and information about the trip (and projects completed) when I get back. See you then!
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!
Pam’s Penny
It will soon be Mennonite greenhouse time. Hopefully after spring finishes with the hailstorms.
Rock on.
Humor Corner:
