This is my new camera lens.

Look at this beautiful lens. 

It is the nicest one I  have ever tried. 

It is an all round great lens to go travelling with and I will take it to Italy when I go next year. 

 

It is mine, I just love it. 

Canon 24 to 105 

Features

• 24-105mm standard zoom lens with f/4 maximum aperture for Canon EOS SLR cameras
• 1 Super UD glass element and 3 aspherical lenses minimize chromatic aberration and distortion
• Ring-type USM system delivers silent but quick autofocus (AF); full-time manual focus
• Image Stabilizer technology steadies camera shake at up to 3 stops; weighs 23.6 ounces
• Dust- and moisture-resistant; measures 3.3 inches in diameter and 4.2 inches long; 1-year warranty

Technical Details

• Focal length: 24-105mm
• Maximum aperture: f4
• Lens construction: 18 elements in 13 groups
• Diagonal angle of view: 84 to 23 degrees 20 seconds (with full-frame camera)
• Focus adjustment: Inner focusing system with focusing cam
• Closest focusing distance: 1.48 feet/0.45 meters
• Zoom system: 5-group helical zoom (front group moves: 32.5mm)
• Filter size: 77mm
• Maximum diameter x length: 3.3 x 4.2 inches/83.5mm x 107mm (lens only)
• Weight: 23.6 ounces/670 grams (lens only)

It costs $1,219.00

Great value for money. 

Creative Quote of the day 

“We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.”
― Stephen R. Covey

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.”
― Stephen R. Covey 

What have I been up to creatively lately

 I am writing the equivalent of a blog post every day for the month of  November in order to celebrate National Novel Writing month.
 It's a lot easier than writing 1666 words per day.  
I did this two years ago and it was a marathon and I was totally exhausted.

I produced a pile of unpublishable words, but it was thereupeutic. 


The posts all of this month will be made to achieve the goal of making a blog post for the equivalent of every day. 

If  I think that it's a good idea, I  may carry on with it, but I'm not promising anything. 
 

Please keep on reading and if my words help you, drop me a line. 

If you read my posts and think it's all a pile of garbage, it's a free country. 
  I don't hold grudges but I'd rather not know about it. 

Creatively using books in a lecture or a public speaking engagement

If a speaker brings along a sample of books to illustrate a powerful message during their talk I think this is an effective and creative device.
Analagy is clever. Connecting two separate things forms a visual metaphors.

It is a way of showing not telling. 
The most powerful one for me lately has been the iPad and the mini iPad and a simple childhood piano duet being played on it.
What is the message? For me it is that the iPad is Creative and fun.
Another one for me was the gorilla playing the drums during a Cadbury chocolate advertisement,
  Same message, eating chocolate is creative and fun.

A picture tells a thousand  words.


You can tell a lot about a person's personality by the number of bookcases and types of books that are contained within them.
In my house there are seven book cases.
Graham my husband is a book collector and so am I.
Him and I had the same copy of a John Fowles book The Magus when I moved in with him.
 I thought this was a good omen.

He has read every single one of his books in his bookcases and so have I. 
When we go on holiday we often go into bookshops and he invariably buys books of short stories which I read after he has finished. 
If we go out of the country he often buys books from authors of that country. 
 
His choices are always deep and thoughtful and in this way I am exposed to books that I normally wouldn't read.

I don't read a lot of fiction, principally because I can hardly ever find any that engage me.
Fiction I find can be so full of padding.
  I don't like romances, chick lit or block buster best sellers.
 When I read I like to be informed and it's often about things that really interest me.
I like reading poetry because I love well written word pictures.
 I love reading books about art techniques that artists have written. I have an amazing collection of them. 

I like reading young adult fiction as well, authors often cut to the chase in them because they know their readers have short attention spans.

It occurs to me that I should probably be reading books about traveling in Italy right now since I'm dreaming of visiting the mosaics in the Vatican in 2013.
Maybe if I do this it will bring me one step closer.

I thought that I may set up a blog and take on a pretend personna and  write about my italian travels. 
This way I  would be living it and my brain would believe it and all sorts of positive things would fly towards me to make it happen. 
In particular large amounts of money. 

Creative quote of the day 
 “Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

The importance of using props creatively when public speaking in public.

I think the idea of using a suitcase  when delivering a sermon about baggage you carry around with you is a good device.
 A visual  prop is very powerful.
 You can tell people till the cows come home that it is a good idea not to hold grudges and it could easily just pass the listener goodbye.

Every time I look at suitcases I think about grudges  and travel, but I notice so far that it hasn't really shifted any deep ones that I have.
Fortunately I haven't very many.
Maybe it's a process and they will all melt away some day.
With the concept of forgiving, I think it is possible to do this but it is way harder to forget.
 People say that you shouldn't get angry about things and everything that happens to you happens for a reason and that the people that urk you the most, have something to teach you.

I am still in two minds about this.
This year and next year I have a few things to focus on.
These are about being honest.
I want to be around people who respect boundaries and who are well mannered and uplifting.
I want to be around people who are interested in celebrating my successes with me because I'm planning to have a lot of them.
 I am interested in celebrating their successes.
I am interested in them telling me about their successes and I am happy to oblige as well.
 This is not boasting.
If you let your light shine, you give others permission to shine. Flying free is the key.


A friend of mine said to me that she thinks most people in New Zealand aren't really happy to hear the good news that others are having.
I replied that I thought they were and that I wasn't really interested in socialising with anyone who wasn't.

 I'd rather be honest with people.
If I don't like certain attitudes I don't want to go around being false about it.
I will not be confrontational, I will move away, refuse to buy into it.
Think lets live and let live but above all I'm sticking to my guns.
 I see little point in waiting around to be annoyed.
 I can't afford to be in this state if I want lots of good things to happen to me in the coming year.


If it's a paying client it could possibly be different but luckily for me all my clients are really fantastic. I always attract fantastically talented people to my studio. 
It is a haven for creativity and joy. 
It is set is a gorgeous garden humming with life and love.

If anyone pays me to teach them, buys an art piece or a mosaic or commissions me to make something, they are already on my wavelength.They are in the sun wioth me. 
I always appreicate my clients and never take them for granted. 


So that's it. 
I want to sow nice healthy seeds and reap lovely, strong, happy plants in 2013.

Cheers Janet
Creative quote of the day

 Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
Norman Vincent Peale

Poetry, I'm having a break from gardening posts, but not for long so be warned.

About a Cockroach

 

A cockroach is climbing up the wall

into the kitchen after a night of thunder.

You call me in to see and I explain

that it would be sad to leave it there:

it might fall into the soup;

We must take care

that no-one eats it.

You pick it up in a handi towel

and carry it outside,

to hide it in the wood pile.

 

I see then that a kind of faith prevails:

your gentleness is moulded still by words

from me,

who has squashed small ants,

lied to your teacher and snapped at your  

mother

That is how things are,

I am your father

 and we are kind to cockroaches.  

 

By Janet Keen

 

 

 An adaptation of  another nz poet's famous poem.

Ladies from Tirau Garden Circle come for a garden tour and mosaic demonstration.

I don't have vast numbers of people trecking through my garden for tours.
 It is more like a gentle trickle.

It is enough to keep  me on my toes as far as the weeding and planting goes.
The admission I charge doesn't really cover the amount I pay out to the  person I employ  to help with the weeding on an adhoic basis.
But I figure it's worth it to have everything looking like it's  cooking with gas.

Weeds are so rampant it's really hard to keep on top of them all at this time of the year.


Here are some pictures of the group.
There were supposed to be twenty of them but only twelve came in the end because some of them had to go to a funeral.

They were nice ladies.
Mostly from the Waikato and from what I could tell and lot of them had  gardens of their own. 
 
They enjoyed the mosaic talk and asked lots of questions plus looked at my large collection of mosaic books.

It was fun. They all left smiling.
 I love public speaking to groups about organic gardening and mosaic making.


 

Gardening in Rotorua. This is supposed to represent a post every day on this blog in support of national Novel writing Month.

 My garden could be described as a rustic bird haven or sanctuary. 

 It's not perfect, there are weeds in the lawns. 
 There are gaps where there shouldn't be. 
 I don't plant in drifts of one type.
 I  have things poking in and out all over the show. 
If something pops up and it's not colour co-ordinated I don't worry too much. 
I honour its decision to be there.  

Every election I always ring up the Green Party and ask them to put a poster on the front of my fence. 
 I love their posters and I have voted green for the past nine years. 

To a perfectionist OCD (obsessive compulsive) person my garden is probably close to one of their worst nightmares. 

It's  verging on being out of control and a bit chaotic. 
And I love it that way. 


I have a live and let live approach to life.
Spiders and earwigs are welcome.  
Even aphids have their place because they provide food for ladybirds and praying mantises. 
 I love both of these insects. 

 
I found an enormous snail the other day on a hydranger and instead of squashing it, I let it live.
I have a lot of thrush and black bird visitors to my garden and they like to eat these.
 I know because I often hear them dropping the snail shells on top of my roof  in order to try to smash them. 


  
  I even feed the sparrows who come into the garden with bread.
 I buy native birdseed for the waxeyes, chaffinches, miners and starlings. 
I buy fat for the waxeyes and I hang it in onion bags for them to get to easily. 
I have lots of fantails around and there are plenty of bugs for them to feed off. 

Two fat wood pigeons always come to visit around this time to eat shoots from the willow treees that border the steam that runs at the edge of the property from the natural spring next door. 

  Tui and bellbirds  are always singing away.
They like hanging out in the sequoia that is at the bottom of my garden.

 Every year the Shiney Cuckoo's comes around to lay their  eggs in the Grey Warblers' nests. 
The Gery Warblers always arrive first. 
 They migrate away to other countries and always return to the same place at the same time each year. 
 It's a symbioic relationship. 

I hear the Kokarko call of the cock quail.
 There is a family of them that live nearby.
I saw one on top of my willow tree last year.  
It is my dream to have a family nest in the secret, sunken native garden. 

Ducks come down to the stream to nest with their quacking  and there are around five roosters nearby. The roosters are over the top but I'm not all that willing to ring the council over them and have them beheaded because I don't want any bird deaths on my conscience.
They can't help it that they have loud cock-a-doodle-doos that wake me up at 6 oclock in the morning.

Moreporks fly over from the native bush reserve across the road and land on top of the Sequoia and they sound like they are inside the house some nights.  I have dreams of taming one of these but I don't really think this is going to happen so I have to satisfyl myself with drawing pictures of this happening.
 

The whole place teams with the calls of birdsong. 
 At times it seems a bit deafening so I meditate  every morning and night so that I can remain calm and focused. 
 
 The only two birds who are not welcome are Kingfishers because they try to catch my goldfish.
 Herons are not welcome either because they have been known to clean out entire fishponds in one fowl scoop.  

Luckily my cat is on patrol.
 He doesn't catch native birds. His speciality is rats and that's another story that I won't go into here. 


Creative Quotes of the day

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. 

Emily Dickinson

  God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

Jacques Deval,

 

More Flowers in my Organic Mosaic Cottage Garden

Angelica Flower

Don't know the name

Dont know the name

 Gaillardia

                                  Sedum

Roadside Daisy

Japanese Maple

Ponga frond

Water buttercup
( This is a plant in my fish pond)

                                  Lambs Ears

                                  Mallow

                                  
                    Penstemon

                               
                    Wisteria


Garden Dairy
Every year I have noticed that the harsh, frosty winters in Rotorua claim some of my plants and this means that I am always needing to propogate more from cuttings to replace them.
There is always work in a garden, it doesn't just look after itself year after year, even though I plant quite heavily.
There is a battle between plants and weeds.
If left, weeds would win.
I wonder why this is.
 The buttercup on this proerty is rampant and the convulvulous is ever creeping.
I am keeping a small area in relative weedy wilderness because it is a haven for bugs and lizards.

There are so many more honey bees now coming into the garden.
Sometimes the buzzing  is almost  deafening.
Three years ago I had hardly any honey bees and lots of bumble bees.
I love bumble bees and always welcome them when they bumble into my studio.
 Bumble bees are cute looking plus they are optimists.
Apparently because of their wing to body ratio they shouldn't be able to fly.
But they do.
What a  miracle.

A person has moved a group of hives into a paddock about three kilometers away from me on Paradice Valley Road.
 I am sure the bees are all coming from there.
I like to think that I am adding to the honey mans supply.

One year I had the priviledge of having a nest of bumblebees in my front garden.
Little baby bees were everywhere. 
It was cute.

Last year a nest of wasps took up residence in the bank leading down to the secret, sunken garden.
We had to poison it.
 I don't usually like to have poison of any type on the property because it is totally organic.
I often wonder though if a bee goes to an inorganic garden and leaves some pollen on one of my organic flowers does it strictly mean that my garden is organic?.
 You can't control where insects go, can you?


Creative quote of the day
Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces.
 Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
Ashley Smith


My garden is available during the spring and summer for school groups, community groups, garden groups and groups of people wanting to see the mosaics and artwork.
An admission charge is applicable.
Contact me on jkeen@clear.net.nz or phone me at 07 3463435 to arrange a suitable time.


All photographs and images on this blog are for sale.

Email me at jkeen@clear.net.nz with your enquiry.

All photographs are copyrighted by Janet Keen and may not be used for any purpose without written permission 
 

Flowers and plants and herbs in my organic garden

I am now one day behind my intention to do a blog post per day for the month of  Novemebr so you will be treated to two posts on the same day, when I get time.

While writing my column on creativity for the Rotorua Weekender I had an idea of going around my whole garden to document photographically every plant and flower.
It will be interesting to see how many plants I can identify and how many are a mystery. 
I will probably be including weeds because believe it or not they are important.

The garden is on the equivalent of a quarter acre section so there are a fair amount of specimens.

Here goes with some of them.

Yellow Climbing rose

                                                Red Rhododendron
                                              

Ballerina Standard Rose

                                                Boysenberry Flower

                                                        Camelia

                                                         Crimson Chinese Lantern

                                            Yellow Chinese Lantern

                                           Red and Yellow Chinese Lantern

                                                     White Chinese Lantern

                                                            Comfrey

                                             
                                                Fennel

                                                      
                                                         Foxglove White

                                                     
                                                         Fuschia

                                            Hebe white

Creative quote of the day 
 “The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.”
― Thomas More

 My garden is available  during the Spring and summer for school groups, community groups,  garden groups and groups of people wanting to see the mosaics and artwork. 
An admission charge is applicable. 
 Contact me on jkeen@clear.net.nz or phone me at 07 3463435 to arrange a suitable time. 

 
   

Gardening off and on all weekend

I have a group of twenty  Garden Club women are  coming for a visit from Tokoroa on Thursday.
 Over the years I have had  people and groups  from garden clubs and bus tours visiting and they pay me for a mosaic demonstration and a tour around the garden.
This is good because it helps me keep my garden as up to date as I can manage.
It's never perfect but I like to think that its part of its charm.

I have been working all weekend  in my garden and my body feels like it.
Thank goodness I have a magnetic underlay, with this aches and pains just disappear.

                                               Clematis

                                                         Federation Daisy

                                                       Spraxia

                                           Cornflower

                                             Forget Me Not

                                                        Fuschia

                                              Aquilega or Granny Bonnet

                                                         Honesty

                                                 Jasmine

                                                          Lavender

                                                      Orange Blossom

                                                   Orchid

                                                      Azalea

These are just some of the flowers out at the moment in my organic cottage and vegetable garden.
 I have decided to document every plant in my garden and post it on here.
So if you aren't into gardens you should just tune out now.

Gardening is really creative and quite back breaking when you do it all weekend.  I love it though and never resent pulling out weeds.

Both of my Grandmothers were great gardeners. I have inherited their love of it.
I  am sure that sometimes I can feel sensatiuons coming from the flowers.

In the orange blossom at the moment a Tui is having an incredible feasting party.
 I am hoping to capture it with my lens.


Creative Quote of the Day

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Marcus Tullius Cicero


 My garden is available  during the Spring and summer for school groups, community groups,  garden groups and groups of people wanting to see the mosaics and artwork. 
An admission charge is applicable. 
 Contact me on jkeen@clear.net.nz or phone me at 07 3463435 to arrange a suitable time.