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In case you haven’t notice, the photos from my last post are kind of flat and lifeless.  Why? Well, that’s because I sold my old big toy and waiting to buy and learn to use my new shinny tough super duper semi professional dslr, the Canon 7D!!!!

Even though the new toy cost almost double of my old one, there are reason to my madness. But let’s look at the new shinny packaging first, it’s so clean and clear, the black and white packing almost look like something that you would carry out of an Apple store.

Oh, after my last dSLR, I learned more about lens and what focal length range suit my shooting style, and what features I need to consider in order to use it for video as well. After weeks of research, I settled with what most people would call a “walk around” lens, and it’s the Tamron 18-270mm.

The Tamron lens package kind of remind me of box for computer cpu, might be because of that silver shinny sticker.

Upon taking out of the content of the lens box, all you get is a clamp shell box style cardboard protector with the lens inside.

The lens come with a lens hood, which is used to block excess light that could create flare when pointing the lens at the light source in certain angle.

The lens itself is very heavy and solid, much better than the plastic lens that I had from my Canon T1i Kit.

Once the lens hood is on the lens, it doesn’t makes the lens look awkward or bulky to use.

Let’s get back to the camera body. The moment I open up the box, it looks as if I just opened up a Pandora box. There are lots of stuff inside that you have to take them out layer by layer, from manual to registration card and software CDs etc.

After all the printed material, the hardware is finally unveil.

‘Taking out the hardware seems like taking Lego pieces apart. You ended up with cable, battery, charger, camera body, more cables……

Ah…. the rugged center of attention, the camera body! From the front, it doesn’t look much different from my old dSLR.

Looking at the back of the camera, it looks more foreign to me as I was used to the old camera. The new camera has different buttons placement and added the control wheel.

The control wheel looks kind of intimidating, and I can’t help to think: “If I have greasy thumb, would the wheel rotate easily?” But I hope I won’t find myself in a situation where I have greasy hand and use the camera, I take pride and keep my gadget clean like new all the time!

Compare to my old dLSR, all the common setting buttons are on the left, arrange in an easy to find vertical column.

The top LCD screen is the biggest feature that I thought I wouldn’t use much since I was used to using the LCD screen at the back of the camera to perform all my setting and review.

Upon looking at the shooting mode dial, you can tell it’s no longer your point and shoot user friendly dial anymore. You don’t find things like “potrait”, “sport”, etc kind of preset setting dial.

To get a sense of how the whole set up look and feel, I put together then Tamron lens and the body. I have to say, they look hardcore kick ass!

Adding the lens hood of course make it look more sexy.

As I grab and feel the whole thing in my hand, I can’t help but to notice that the lens seems to be bigger than the body, I swear it feels heavier than the body too!

The lens can do 270mm, good for common telephoto shooting. When zoomed all the way out, the lens look like a telescope.

Overall, I think I made the right choice going with this more semi-professional set up. It will allows me to grow into more professional photo shooting style, yet the camera itself is so durable, it will last me for many more years. Oh what? I didn’t mention about the body construction material? Ah…. it is actually made out of alloy magnesium materiel instead of hard plastic like my last dSLR. Yes the new toy is heavier, but it’s so rugged and weather proof, so I can use it by the beach and not worry too much about humidity.

Early Spring the weather was a bit cold for me to work outside, after walking Oreo for the whole Winter, you would think I built up some sort of tolerance toward cold temperature, but that’s not the case!

Anyway, I like to work outside when the Sun is out, mainly because it’s easier to see thing instead of need to squint my eyes to do some detail work. Last year I had good success with Hydroponic gardening. I had a bush of strawberry plants that were over ran by weed. I was going to kill them all using a highly effective chemical call RoundUp, but I figure: hey, if I were to destroy them, why not give hydroponic a try before I declare them as hopeless?

Well, that’s what I did. I attempted to build a hydroponic strawberry tower because I already had the AgroTower, and I have the water pump from last year, why not give it a try?

From my last experience, AgroTower on planter filled with river rock is very very heavy to move, not to mention I need to find a way to recycle the nutrient solution from the hydroponic reservoir. After window shopping around, I decided to go with this solution:

I anchored the PVC pipe on to the bench as metal pipe is too pricey and hard to cut to size. I also improvised to use cheap plastic party nacho tray to collect and drain the nutrient water back to the tank. I drilled the center hole too big so the tray kind of wobble a bit, I had to put some rock to balance the tray a bit.

I don’t want to drill through the bench, nor I have the right tool to do that, so I decided to use a T-join to route the garden hose up the PVC pipe.

To test the set up, I slide one AgroTower through the PVC pipe and there is just the right amount of clearance at the bottom of the AgroTower and the nacho tray so the water will drip back to the tray and not splatter all over the place. Oh, why the nacho tray? Well you want the nutrient water to collect around the bowl and not flow out through the center at the center. So the ridge in the tray center will take care of that!

As I was working outside, I discover something annoying, Oreo is being nosy and poke his face through the blind and stick his nose against the door.

It was cute the first few times, after awhile, I can’t help but think: “That big head is going to break the blind eventually and that wet snout is going to leave some nasty streak mark on the clear door window, can you just quit it?” I suppose I can open up the blind, but then I have to close it back, do you have any idea how often I go in and out of the house through the patio door? I need to really find a solution to this…….

So, back to the tower. Since I don’t have a whole lot of hydroponic gardening medium, and I figure it’s best to leave the tower as light as possible because it’s not really anchor to the ground or something heavy, I decided to use plastic pillow. Call me crazy or environment friendly, I save up plastic air pillow from all my online shopping shipment. Why? Because I never knew if I ever need to pack something to ship out and those Styrofoam peanut or plastic air pillow save me money and time to gather.

So, a few plastic air pillow wrap around the PVC and taped up. That should do the trick. The strawberry plants will be grown at the outer slow anyway, why fill the middle of the pot with growing medium?

I have a lot of perlite but they can fall through the pot easily because the holes at the base of the pot are a bit big, so I lay the base of the pot with clay balls, also called “Hydroton”. That should seal the holes at the bottom of the pot yet still let water flow through.

After the hydroton, it’s time for perlite, which hold a bit of water and provide it to the plant root.

The perlinte need to be rinsed first and fill to a few inches below from the rim of the planter slot.

In goes the strawberry plants that I yanked from the ground, put into peat pots to help develop young root and let the plant grow out of dormant state in early Spring.

Each peat pot has enough potting soil to hold moisture further and I don’t anticipate the peat pot to breakdown and dissolve in the hydroponic setting since there is no earthworm or in ground soil bacteria involve.

Top the planter slots with more perlite and hydroton to prevent algae  and to weight the perlite down, and I was done! For one layer that’s it.

Before stacking up the next layer of planter, each slot need to be investigate to make sure the strawberry plant doesn’t slide toward the center of the planter and has proper amount of perlite/hydroton to support the plants as they grow bigger.

Continue and spend the rest of the weekend and finished up two towers, total of 8 planters with 48 slots. I also tied the bottom planter to the bench in case the PVC quit on my so I don’t end up all the perlite and hydroton on the floor. If the tower is no holding up and lean in certain direction, the string will help me to buy some time so I can further correct the structure if I have to. So, 48 eight strawberry plants is reasonable for a single gardener right? I figure if the strawberry go crazy like my hydroponic plants last year, I could easily get 10 strawberry per plant, and we’re talking about 480 strawberry…. which I don’t think is too much for snack consumption through out the growing season.

In mid Spring, my black berry bush was done shooting out cane and flower buds. It was time to bloom!

Big tissue white blackberry flowers everywhere, they’re the bee’s favorite!

My raspberry bush flower is harder to spot, but I trust that they will perform well just like the past few years.

I thought my currant plant didn’t make it through the winter as this is the first time I overwinter currant plant. Turns out they return from dormant and gave out healthy and bright green leaves!

My South East Asia plants like curry leaves and pandan were getting through the winter basement treatment shock and recovering nicely with the mild and moist Spring air.

My oldest curry leave plant almost die  in the winter as it was attacked by Scale, most branches and leave were gone, but with hope, it recovered back and thrive with lots of flowers that will turn into seed pots later. That means I should try to regrow and duplicate the curry plant in case this oldest plant can’t make it through another winter!

The tomato plants I started in the basement were transplanted from paper pot to peat pot, as they grew so fast that the root just outgrow the paper pot, and my raise bed garden wasn’t ready for them to go into the ground.

My gardening trend got interrupted a bit in mid Spring, how? You just have to check back later!