The lastimage is the one for me. The black reflective background shows off the yellow of the flower much better than stark white.

Changed them this morning. Last night we had a 90 minute meeting with Sue's brother and his wife via video link and it worked quite well. We had a relaxed catch up and we can happily do that again.

This morning I've been looking at Zoom for video conferencing and the laptop is more convenient to use than the iPad, but both are perfectly usable.

We can allo feel better connected to the rest of humanity with technology to help. This forum included! I'd miss you guys without it!

Lovely sharp, crisp pictures!

There are lots of great old lenses out there. I love the multi-bladed diaphragms on them and the quality of the all metal and glass construction.

I think it depends what you need to use the lens for. If it's travel, then small and light has a lot going for it. If it's the highest possible quality for fashion, studio, architecture, etc., then the new, larger lenses might have the edge. The new 50mm f/1.4 certainly has - it's a new breed of ultra-high performance and it might show when shooting to make huge poster-sized display prints.

For shooting for the web, then the difference becomes less marked, although sometimes it can still be seen depending on subject and image size.

It's a great idea!

Glad to hear you know what's amiss and there is suitable treatment. Hope it kicks in soon and you feel much better.

That's ironic in that I've been trying to introduce Golden Rod into ours, with very little success. It must be unsuitable soil.

When I was growing up we had masses of Golden Rod at my Mum and Dad's house and I guess I must have fond memories of it. What I have introduced successfully is the Montbretia that is a direct descendent of the Montbretia that my Granny planted in the 1930s. I took some of the original bulbs and they have thrived in our garden. A resplendent mass of colour every August.

I'm just a hopeless romantic really, keeping the links to the past,

We bought one of those last year for tomatoes. It was a dramatic failure, but we did learn a bit about growing tomatoes and might try again this year.

Meanwhile, the garden is looking better for a bit of TLC.

We've locked ourselves down totally and our Grandson Finn ended up being here with us. He's 8 and very active, so we've been doing schooling with him for several hours a day. Sue covered Maths and a bit of writing practice and I covered Science. We started off with discussing the Solar System and got as far as Jupiter. Tomorrow the Outer Planets are the scheduled subject.

Meanwhile, his Mum is on the front line and his sisters are holding fort to help out Dad who is still working. No time to be too glum really.

That's one way to solve any dilemma!