JustPlainOrchids Blog

After a couple of buds aborted, my "red" lotus is finally blooming. LOL, so much for it being a "red" lotus. That's what happens when you buy lotus seed from China. I'm sure it's probably hit or miss with a lot of vendors regardless of country. At any rate it's a very nice large white flower. Here is the bud just opening up yesterday.

Here is the bud today (NOTE: it was very windy when I took the photo; the flower is not deformed).

It's been my experience that the flowers open about 3 days and then fade. The good news is that another bud is growing and it looks like it's doing pretty good. Hopefully it will not abort.

My cardinal flowers have been slow to bloom, but they finally started blooming a week or so ago.  Here's a quick pick of the flower spike (sorry about the color...it should be a very intense, deep red).

About a month ago I got my first Windows 7 slate (think of an iPad on steroids that runs Windows 7 and Windows 8 when it's released). It is an Asus EP121. It has been extremely difficult to get these and everyone had been sold out off and on. I finally got mine and I have to say I love it! The thing I like best is being able to use the stylus to write and draw in OneNote. LOL, the best part was opening it up and upgrading it to the (current) max. It now has 4 GB ram, 128 GB solid state hard drive (SSHD) and an upgraded WiFi card from Intel. It comes with a Bluetooth keyboard from Microsoft and I added a wireless mouse. So on the go, I use my fingers and stylus. When I'm home I use the keyboard and mouse. I hope to have a beta of Windows 8 to put on this in the near future. Here's a link to the Asus website:   http://usa.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Slate_EP121/

Samsung is also releasing a comparable version at the end of this month or the first of next month. It will be interesting to see how it performs, but I'm sticking with my Asus slate.

Today is a great day....it's actually cool and I'm not complaining about the heat.  This is nice fall weather....I'm going to enjoy it while I can because I know it's going to warm up in  a few days.  I'm just hoping it will stay below 90 deg.