I think It's Corrected!!!

I think I finally have the issue concerning blog updates fixed! At least the most current post is now showing up in the sidebar of those who graciously follow my blog!

Somehow in my settings I said "Yes" to "Show Link Field" this field assumes that you are using a customized template. I kept seeing error messages that I didn't understand and I'm assuming this is what it was trying to tell me. I changed that setting to "No" and it started showing the current posts again. At least I hope that is what did it.

While I was tinkering with my settings trying to correct my problem, I decided that I would change my blog look. My daughter likes the green better, and I think I do too. Which do you like better?

Well, Let's Give This A Try

I've been working all day trying to figure out the RSS feed problem and still don't know what is wrong. I did find some Feedburner error messages that I had not seen before, but I don't understand what they are saying! It is all Greek to me!

I'm trying to back up and see what changed right about the time it stopped updating. One thing that changed was I started using the new Picasa and collages and my error messages say: "This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations." "style attribute contains potentially dangerous content: border:" I have no idea what that means.



It also says: "description should not contain onblur attribute (7 occurrences)". I do know in my photo html it sometimes says onblur. So I'm thinking it may have something to do with the new way I've been loading my pictures. Other bloggers are using Picasa 3 too and don't seem to be having issues, so I don't know for sure that this is the answer.



I've deleted my collage header thinking that maybe that was the problem. It didn't correct the problem. So, now I'm doing this test post using the other way that I used to load my pictures to see if it contains any potentially dangerous content in the html codes.

Oh, how I wish I understood this stuff! I'm so afraid I'll mess something else up. As it is now at least some people are getting the updates and so is Blotanical. I sure don't want to eliminate them too.

Well, I hope this works! Thank you all for bearing with me as I try to correct these Blogger/Feedburner issues.

Edit: I think I can safely say that this wasn't the issue either. At least I can still use the Picasa 3! Now I'm back to square one.

Bunnies, Beauties and RSS Feed Issues

Several people have mentioned to me that my RSS feeds are still not working for them. It seems, from what I can gather that my new post are not showing up for those who have Robin's Nesting Place on their sidebar. I've played around with Feedburner trying to correct this and I've deleted a program that my husband downloaded recently that isolated all Cookies and spyware thinking that maybe that was the culprit. I still have not figured out how to correct this issue.

I think the problems began when Blotanical had us do a special feed just for their site. I'm showing that I have two feeds on Feedburner, one is for Blotanical and the other is for Google reader and two other readers. I have no idea how to consolidate this or correct whatever is wrong. I'm not certain that this is even the problem.

I would be so grateful if anyone can help me correct this. I don't know if it would help if those who are having trouble with my RSS feed would delete the existig Robin's Nesting Place and then replace it with the new RSS feed. Also, I wonder if my post are showing up regularly for those who are Following Robin's Nesting Place on Blogger. All of this Feed stuff is way over my head and I'd love to correct whatever is wrong. I apologize for the inconvenience and I appreciate so much those who have continued to follow me in spite of these problems. I appreciate all of those who take the time to read my blog and I hate to lose any readers over this. Please HELP!!!




We are being overrun with rabbits here at Robin's Nesting Place, seems that they have been nesting nearby and are unfortunately enjoying the plant munchies here. There are the cutest baby bunnies that are starting to explore. Two of the larger rabbits were right beside our patio, under the swing. Our golden, Lilly, certainly checks things out closely when she is let outside.



I recently purchased my first Fuschia plant. I just couldn't resist, it was so beautiful! These were huge and looked healthier than any others that I had seen and they were only $9.99. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll see the hummingbirds enjoying this beauty!

RSS Feed Trouble

Several people have mentioned to me that my RSS feeds are not updating, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I had to update my feed for Blotanical and I think that is when my troubles started. I don't want to choose between Blotanical and my friends and others who follow my blog. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem?

I'm still getting the feeds from other Blotanical people who also had to change their feeds, so I think I've just done something incorrectly. Please help!

I've been playing with my photography some today. I bought several display foam boards at Hobby Lobby to use for my background. It was cloudy and I couldn't get the lighting right so the flash was too bright, but I like the colors! I have the hardest time photographing daffodils. I definitely need more practice.

No Longer Number One

Two years ago, during winter, I discovered garden blogs. I was fascinated to read about the personal gardening activities of so many people and the pictures were a feast for my winter weary eyes. It was better than any gardening magazine I had ever seen. I was soon hooked. It was in April, 2007 that I reluctantly decided to start my own blog. I'm so glad I did because it has been such a delightful experience.

Blogging became even more fun when Stuart, from Gardening Tips 'n' Ideas created a wonderful gardening website called Blotanical. It has been a wonderful way to connect with gardeners from all over the world. I was amazed as Robin's Nesting Place rose in the ranks and eventually became the number one "Most Favourited Garden Blog". I was so honored by this, but at the same time I was actually a little bit embarrassed and felt a sense of pressure that took away some of the joy of blogging. I didn't feel that I deserved to have this rank because there were so many other blogs far more deserving than Robin's Nesting Place, and other garden bloggers far more interesting and knowledgeable than me. In the last few days two of those deserving bloggers have passed me in the ranks: Jodi from Bloomingwriter and Frances from Faire Garden. They are obviously neck and neck because they keep changing positions. Congratulations to you both! I'm very glad to see you both at the top!

I want to take this opportunity to thank each of you who have added Robin's Nesting Place as a favorite on Blotanical and to those who follow me on Blogger. I appreciate it more than you could ever know.

Enlarging Photos on Blogger

I was asked tonight how I got the pictures so large on my blog posts without causing distortion, (thank you for asking Chrisss). There may be others who want to know this information and there may also be an easier way to do it. I'll tell how I do and if anyone else knows of another way with fewer steps, PLEASE let me know.

First, from Adobe Photoshop Elements, I go to "Save for Web" and adjust the size, (the pixel proportions), usually to about 600 width x 900 height and I usually have it at maximum or very high quality.

With Blogger the pictures automatically default to Picasa when loaded onto a blog post.
After the picture has been uploaded to the new blog post, I go to Picasa and locate it in my album. I then go to "Link to this Photo". Select the size "Large" copy the html code to "Embed Photo". I then go back to my new blog post click on "Edit Html" delete the original picture, (Html) and then paste the "Large" html code where I want it to go in the post.

This is probably clear as mud, and there should be an easier way, but this is the only way I know how to do it. Hope this helps you, Chrisss!

I've also been playing with putting texts on some of my pictures. I thought the picture of the lilies was perfect for this verse.

I hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!

One Year Old Today

After spending the winter months last year reading gardening blogs and enjoying them immensely. I decided to start a blog of my own. I had never even thought about having a blog before, because I couldn't imagine having personal information about myself or my family on the internet.


However, with my interest in gardening and a budding interest in photography, a garden blog seemed like a perfect fit. I took the Blogger plunge on April 7, 2007 and I'm so very glad that I did. It has been both a rewarding and pleasurable experience for me.

Because I had read other blogs and their comments for several months before starting my own gardening blog, I knew there was a very active and friendly garden blog community. I wasn't expecting the warm and friendly welcome I received though.

I was amazed at how quickly people found my blog and the wonderful, friendly comments I received.

It still amazes me and thrills me each time I receive a comment on my blog. I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to each person who has visited me, especially to those who have left comments here at Robin's Nesting Place. You have enriched my life by your time spent here.

Since it is my blog birthday I decided to reward myself with a few little gifts. I collect teacups and teapots and it had been a while since I bought any. I loved these and couldn't pass them up.

I also decided I needed a little treat for the birds too and bought this. Now I can replace the broken clay saucer the ducks and birds have been eating from.

The weather is gorgeous and it definitely feels like spring now. I have things sprouting up all over the place and flowers are beginning to bloom.

Thank you to Mr. McGregor's Daughter for identifying the Scilla-sibirica for me. I love these tiny deep blue blooms that are spreading under my Japanese maple.

The maple trees are blooming now; I love the red blooms against the blue sky.

The young Bradford Pear trees will soon be blooming. The picture above was taken with the grass as the background, the picture below, of course, has the blue sky for its background.
Again, thank you all for making Robin's Nesting Place such a wonderful experience for me during this first year of my blogging adventure. You all are the greatest!

Blotanical and a Dating Tip

Blotanical is a great new garden blog networking site, blog directory and an awesome tool for staying caught up on your favorite garden blog posts. It was created by Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips n Ideas.

Everyone who signs up for Blotanical has their own garden plot to tend which can be used to interact with other garden bloggers. Someone referred to it as a "Facebook" of sorts for garden bloggers. There's a bit of friendly competition going on as points are earned to attain a higher Blotanist level.

I enjoy utilizing "Picks" to keep up with new blog posts, it also has a feature that allows you to pick a blog post that you like, the votes are tallied to feature the "Popular Posts at the Moment".

The one thing I find frustrating about "Picks" is not necessarily the fault of Blotanical, I believe it has to do with the time on the bloggers post entry. Some people may start drafting their post hours earlier or even the day before, if they don't change the time and date on the post before publishing, then the post will not show up near the top. Hence, while I'm checking Blotanical for new posts I have to scroll all the way through the posts to find the new ones that I haven't yet read. This can be difficult and time consuming. One thing we can all do to help remedy this is to remember to make sure the time and date is correct and current on our posts before we publish them, that way newer posts show up near the top. For those who use Blogger you can easily do this by going to Post Options, (above the orange Publish Post button), and changing your post time to the current time.

Not only have I noticed an increase in my own blog traffic by using Blotanical, but I have found several great new garden blogs. So, if you haven't signed up yet, come join in the Blotanical fun.

Please note, this post has been reworded and republished.

Blog Picture Problems

For the last couple of days something odd has been happening to the pictures on my blog.

On Sunday I did the post Beating the Winter Blues and several people commented that the pictures didn't show up for them. They were showing up fine for me and other people, they were showing up fine on Blotanical, then on Sunday evening they all vanished completely. They weren't even showing up in my Picasa account. I uploaded them again to Picasa and added them for a second time to the post. The odd thing was that the html code was still showing. I thought it was just a fluke but the same thing happened with my post on Schonbruun Gardens.

I decided to go through my blog to make sure that all of my pictures are there, but some of them are gone. There is no rhyme or reason to explain a pattern. Just random pictures, about ten or eleven, are gone from my posts. The above picture of my cat was one of those missing, while every other picture on the post was still there. Odd.

I was wondering if this is happening to anyone else. This may be a dumb question, but can someone steal your picture from a public Picasa or Flickr account, causing it to delete from the Blogger posts?

I'm hoping this is just a temporary problem with Blogger or Picasa and not something that is going to be an ongoing issue.

Edited to say: Another problem I'm having is that since yesterday comments to my posts are going into my junk/spam mailbox. This has never happened before. Anybody else having this happen?

Changing

It is a nasty rainy day, you know, the kind that zaps your energy and makes you not want to move. So, I'm taking advantage of the low energy and just sitting here playing with Blogger and Adobe Photoshop Elements. I'm trying to figure out how to do the copyright thingy, I've never been very good with using layers on Photoshop.

I'm also contemplating some changes on my blog. I loved the pink template, it was me, and I didn't think I'd ever change it. However, now that I'm using Flickr to upload pictures, they can't be enlarged and with the useless wide pink stripes on the sides of the blog I was limited in the size of pictures I could actually put on the blog. I think with this new look, I can add larger pictures if I want. Anyway, I'll try it for a while and see how I like it.

Lavender in Bloom

This was just a test to see how uploading a picture from Photobucket works. Vanillalotus commented that she uploaded her pictures from Photobucket; I have a photobucket account but have never used it to upload pictures on my blog. I like the way it works better than uploading from Flicker. This probably will be my new uploading method. Now I need to go back and see if I'm still accumulating storage space on Picasa. Thanks so much, ladies, for your help.

Cleaning Up Picasa

I am still very much in the learning stages regarding Blogger and the whole blogging process. Until this past spring, I had never even considered having a blog of my own, and to be honest, I knew very little about how the blogging process worked. After spending the winter months browsing garden blogs for the first time and enjoying them immensely, I decided to start Robin's Nesting Place. It has been seven months since I began the blog and I have taken thousands of pictures and shared quite a few of them on my blog, as a result, I am reaching my limit on picture storage space.

Starting the blog with Blogger was so easy for this novice and learning to upload my pictures was easy too, albeit quite frustrating at times when not working properly, but as a whole, the basic process is very simple to understand. Since I was interested in simplicity, I didn't concern myself with all of the little Blogger details. It wasn't until my picture storage space reached the seventy percent mark that I actually began to wonder what I would do once the storage space ran out. I didn't really even know how or where my pictures were stored until I did some researching and found the information I was looking for on Beta Blogger for Dummies site:

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/03/picasa-web-albums-
for-bloggers.htmllittle


There I discovered that my Blogger pictures are being stored in a Picasa web album. I recently logged on Picasa for the first time and actually looked at my albums. What I found surprised me, so I thought I would inform those of you who also may not have checked out your Picasa album, (I hope I’m not the only one who’s been living in ignorant Blogger bliss). The problem that I discovered was that I have many duplicate photos being stored in Picasa, some were copied as much as three times. I didn't count but there are probably hundreds of duplicates and triplicates. This is using up valuable storage space when my space is at a premium right now.

I started the process of cleaning out my Picasa album, but am a little concerned that I’ll delete those pictures that were actually used on the blog. I have a few questions about this and would greatly appreciate insight if anyone else has had this problem. If there are two pictures of the same thing and I delete one of them will it matter which one is deleted? How does this duplication happen and can I do something to prevent it?

Also, I’d love to know how other Blogger users store their photos and upload them to their blogs. Do most use Picasa or is there another simple way to upload pictures using another host?

Edited to say: It sometimes takes Picasa up to 24 hours to delete pictures so it took a while to see what happened with the duplicates I deleted. Know I know, it does matter which picture you delete. I am missing some from my blog, so now begins the unpleasant task of putting them back. I'm so glad I only did about ten of them until I figured out for sure how it worked.

Comment Problems

I've had my blog since April and have never really had any problems with comments on it, but over the last couple of days I've been getting a lot of junk comments on older posts. The comments are coming from things like discount pharmacies and one tonight came from something about Britney Spears. I've deleted all of them and don't really know what to do to prevent them from being posted. I really don't want to moderate post before allowing them and I like to keep things as simple as possible for those who comment. If I have the word verification will this eliminate the problem?

Is anyone else having this problem? What can I do to prevent it from happening on my blog? Could someone please advise me?

Thanks,
Robin

Cleaning Up

I've been trying to clean up my computer files for the last several days. I have thousands upon thousands of pictures of flowers and nature related things that I have uploaded since I began blogging. I usually take pictures everyday and some days I will take about a hundred or more pictures, sometimes with more than one camera. So many of those are just taking up memory space on my computer. I mean, how many blurry pictures of pink tulips do I need to keep? Really, how many good pictures of pink tulips do I even need to keep? I think I might have a problem. I hope I'm not the only one who does this.
Anyway, I am trying to find a good way of organizing the pictures that I want to keep. I'd like a simple way to organize them so that I can easily refer back to picture records if I need to.

So far my folders just have things like: Front Garden, Back Garden, Zinnias, Ornamental Grass, Birds, Hummingbirds, Insects, Garden Projects, etc... I guess I do need to at least put the year on them so that next year I can start all over. Even those files are getting huge as I go through the dated picture folders and place them in the categories I want them in. Besides I will want to back those up when I finish organizing and there will be too many pictures from one file for the CD backup, especially for the front and back garden folders.

I was wondering how other garden bloggers and photographers organize their digital pictures. I also wonder if other people just delete the pictures once they use them. I wish I could just save the very best and delete those that are just so-so, but I just can't right now, probably because that would be most of them. I need a better system. Ideas anyone?