Faking my spring garden

Begonias are one of my favorite flowers. Not so much the ones that come in six-packs at the nursery, but tuberous ones, with big fat flowers. Like this one, which I picked up at Trader Joe's last weekend. LOOK at that red. It's incredible.

I needed to clear out those forced bulbs, that had been in the process of croaking on the windowsill, and TJ's is a perennial favorite for finding new plants.

Begonias are pretty easy to care for and propagate easily. They like part sun, regular water, and some humidity. If humidity isn't possible, mist the leaves.

Though that's a closed pot, the plant is in a separate pot inside and there are some packing peanuts at the bottom to facilitate drainage. (Nobody likes wet feet.)

So now my little windowsill garden looks like this:

I repotted the geranium that had been sitting in a jar of water for a few months (that's the two bare-looking sticks on the right sill) and it has some very teeny leaves sprouting. Here's hoping she recovers; I love those hot pink blooms.

Nature override successful

Just thought I'd report that my forced grape hyacinth bulbs are starting to bloom! The color's not as intense as it would be if they were in the ground, but hey...flowers on the windowsill. No complaints here.

Adventures as a "hacker"

We have a lot of computers. Once of these computers is an antique laptop (craptop, which is what I named it) from a place I used to work. It functions ok, but I wanted to network it with my desktop. (The laptop has Photoshop, the desktop doesn't. The desktop has pictures, the laptop doesn't.)

So like any good, well-seasoned hacker, I googled what I wanted to do. And proceeded to use the directions provided by eHow.com (it's what the pros use). The directions led me down an increasingly rocky path of requiring administrator passwords (note to company administrators: company name + current year is not a secure password) and other such things. Finally, I changed all the settings required (not understanding what, exactly, I was changing) and restarted. Perfect. I glanced gleefully at Todd to make sure he was suitably impressed.

I then entered the password that had always worked, and BEEEEP. That shrill, technologically primitive "screw you" sound. CRAP. More googling yielded no answers, and so, on a whim, I left it blank. Lo and behold, it worked. (It also erased pretty much everything on the hard drive, mysteriously.)

So, in a half an hour on a Saturday afternoon, with the help of Google, eHow, and my own luck, I created a network. Or, as I prefer, hacked. And Photoshopped this picture, among others.Yes, that red flower really is that color. Better, actually.