Late July Garden Photos - Overgrown Green Jungle?

Is it August already?  This summer is flying by so quickly.  Although we can't complain in Vancouver, we have had an amazing stretch of hot and dry weather.  So at least we have really had a summer!  Here are a few very recent photos of my garden.

Looking at this side, I wonder why the peach is referred to as a "fuzzy navel", since it sure looks more like a "fuzzy rear end" (click any image for a slightly larger view):

I can't help but visit my one little peach every time I go into the yard.  I keep taking photos, since I'm sure that the squirrel will pick it before it is fully ripe.  But even so I still hope that I will get a taste of it myself.

The grapes are looking very promising.  I'm hoping that I will have a small taste of all 3 varieties this year.  We'll see:

We hosted a BBQ last weekend for some 60 - 80 people, and I got many inquiries and comments on my garden.  But my husband, who tries but can't seem to appreciate what I am creating back there, recently told me that I have too much green and not enough "flowers", and it has all grown too large.   Hmmm, what do you think?  This is a view from the 2nd floor balcony, looking into the back yard:

It is true that I am crazy about foliage, and very strictly "don't do annuals", which tend to be the brightly coloured bloomers.  But I think there are lots of neat flowers and foliage when examined a bit closer.  Such as these pretty coneflowers from the "Cone Crazy" collection:

These Kwanzo daylilies form a pretty good patch of orange:

As do these other unnamed daylilies from my friend, whose name is also Lily:

I have oriental lilies also, most of which are fragrant, too:

And yes, I like foliage, like the large rough hands of the gunnera reaching up to the sky in the corner of my yard:

This lacey japanese maple cascading softly over the hard concrete wall (with the spiky balls of globe thistle standing tall behind it):

And I have some garden decorations.  Not lots, but some well placed decorations such as this dragonfly, perched high above the bold leaves of the Rodgersia:

I really like this corner of the garden.  It has a few colours too.  I see pink and white and yellow.  And lots of textures and shades of green.

And how about this view up the steps?  Even without counting the orange, blue, pink, white and purple flowers, there are reds and purples and silver-blues in the foliage too.

 And then there are our newly-placed birdhouses, which are very colourful:

 What do you think?  Do I have enough flowers and colours in my garden?  Or is it just a big overgrown jungle of too much green?

The Price of a Cute Photo

It seemed to be a good idea at the time.  It would make a cute photo, for sure.  I stuck our youngest rat, Jenny, into one of the birdhouses which we recently posted out in the yard, after it sat way too long (more than a year!!) on our kitchen counter.  (Ironically, last year's post talks about hoping to post the houses before the big company BBQ last July, and it is this year's BBQ (this coming weekend) which finally prompted them to be posted out.

After a long wait, I was able to get a wonderful photo of her (him?) poking her nose out the doorway of the bird house (click photo for a slightly larger view):

Of course, it occurred to me only after she was in the house, that the rat with the darkest face was probably not the best choice for this photo.  This photo shows her face a bit better:

Well, getting a rat into a small cozy dark space is easy, but getting one out is a totally different story.  Good thing I was on a lunch break (I work from home on Fridays), and the weather was wonderful for being outside, but I didn't plan to spend half an hour on this photo.  But once Jenny got in there, she didn't want to  come out, even with my attempts to call her, entice her with food (which she bit and then retreated inside to chew), poke her with a stick (she thought that was fun, playing with the stick!).  Finally I had to stand some distance away, wait until she was curious enough to start coming out, and then snatch her up before she changed her mind and went back inside.

My immediate feeling was "I won't do that again!"  But soon I began wondering if I'd be better to try this with Sam, who would be too big to find the house so comfortable, and is better trained to come to my voice, or more easily enticed by an edible "treat"....  I may just get myself into trouble again, but sometimes that's the price of a cute photo!

Here are photos of the other bird houses, mostly set on the posts holding the supports for our 3 espaliered trees.  This one is not too colorful, since we bought it already painted.  We may eventually paint it more within our bright color scheme:

This one is surrounded by the red currant bush which grows between the espaliered asian pear and espaliered european pear:

 

The twin posts holding up my monstrous yellow perennial (I've forgotten if it's a Heliopsis or what) had a bird house from long ago, but it is now joined by a tiki bird feeder:

Girls Camp Out and Ratty Dilemna

My daughter had two friends over last night, and the 4 of us "girls" slept in the tent in the back yard last night.  I didn't sleep well.  Not because the girls didn't settle until close to midnight, and a robin perched in a tree in our yard and started singing loudly at 4:30am.  No, I wasn't sleeping anyhow, I was tossing and turning, and trying unsuccessfully to solve our rat dilemna.

Our first rat, Sam, is a girl.  When we bought her, we had no intention of having more than one, so didn't even think to ask about gender.  Not that it mattered, since the pet store staff may not have gotten it right anyhow.  So when we realized she was a girl, I was a bit anxious, since my friend Andrea, who is a wonderful ratsitter for Sam when we go on vacation, had in the meantime adopted 3 boy rats.  Sadly, her 3 boys caused terrible allergies, and needed to find another home.  But I was still a little anxious about having a girl rat, considering the frequency and size of litters if she were ever to become pregnant.

So when we realized that she would be happier with a companion, we set out to find her a female one.  We ended up with a sweet dumbo eared rat, Berry, and curly "Rex" rat, Jenny.  But last night we realized that Berry is now Bear, a boy rat.  Since we bought him July 6, and I'm guessing he was maybe 3 weeks old, that would make him approximately 5 weeks old.  Although not likely, females are able to become pregnant as early as 5 weeks.  So as I tossed and turned in the tent, I kept trying to work out the age of Berry.  She was probably 2 weeks old when we bought her on July 9, so she is about 3 weeks old now. Assuming she's a girl, at what point is it no longer "safe" to have Bear and Jenny together in the hamster cage?  Probably best if we sort out this living arrangement within the next week or so, just to be sure.

Bear may almost be big enough (that he can't squeeze out) to join Sam in the big cage, but that is no longer an option for us.  Jenny is probably still too little to join Sam.  But can we leave her that long with Bear, or need a separate hamster cage for her?  But then I end up with 3 rats in 3 cages, with no companions for any of them!

My first reaction last night was that clearly Bear had to find another home, and soon.  But then as I tossed and turned, I wondered, what if Jenny was actually Jimmy, a boy, too?  Even then, I couldn't bear to give him away, too.  In which case I should have kept Bear, and then we'd have 2 boys, would could be good friends, and poor Sam, who is still without a companion.  Two large rat cages in our kitchen.  Make sure we don't let the boys and girls out at the same time, but otherwise we could still play with them whenever we wanted.

Without being clear on Jenny vs Jimmy, it is hard to know what cage to buy next, or whether to start advertising to find a home for Bear.  So when the robin started singing at 4:30am, I took the opportunity to step out of the tent to scare it to a more distant tree, and search the internet for some answers.

I found many pages on "sexing rats", and the best one was this one.  But without being able to hold her side by side against similar aged rats, I am still not sure which of the photos more closely match our dear Jenny.  So even though I turned her over a number of times to look at her, I couldn't be sure one way or the other.  But I do know that I can't trust that the pet store staff thought she was female.  They thought the same of Bear.

So then I found myself reading about curly haired or "Rex" rats, with mixed result.  Although Jenny's curly whiskers will always be curly, there may be various moults and regrowths of her curly hair which may not be as curly as I had hoped.  I learned also that her colouration is actually called "bareback" instead of "hooded", since she  has the "hood" part but doesn't have the stripe running down her spine.

Then there is the sneezing.  Both Bear and Jenny sneeze a fair amount, even though they are in the recommended aspen bedding, and there are no obvious reasons why they would have allergies.  Sam, on the other hand, has never sneezed, at least not that we've noticed.  But my reading didn't answer my questions, and even the people who went to their vets didn't seem to get clear answers why their rats were sneezing when they didn't exhibit other signs of sickness.

So finally, I ended up on Craigslist, searching for another large rat cage.  Rather than a second hamster cage, this way we'd be prepared long term for whatever decision we end up making.  I found a good one at a good price, and emailed the owner about it, but just need to wait until I can follow up, since it is only 6:25am.

The 3 campers are awake now, and in the house.  They all have freshly painted fingernails and toenails.  My son just came downstairs also.  So I guess that's it for any attempts at sleeping.  I'll catch up another night.

Third and Final Ratty Girl: Jenny

When my daugher picked out Sam some 3 months ago, I found a beautiful little hooded (black head, white body) rat with curly hair.  The curly hair is really different.  (It's apparently only the occasional rat that comes out curly, and none of the adult rats there seem to have curly hair.)  But we only wanted one rat at the time, so we brought home our beautiful Sammy:

Since then, we have realized that it was not fair to Sam to leave her alone, and I set out to find another curly haired rat.  We've stopped in at the pet store a few times, without success.  Then on Monday, I found my girl.  But she was still too small to remove from her mom.  So I told the ladies at the pet store that I would be back Friday, and take her if she was ready.

At the same time, my daughter found the little dumbo eared girl, which she adored, and wanted as well.  So we ended up returning for her on Tuesday.  She is called Berry. 

Then on Friday, we returned for my little girl, Jenny.  She is the most adorable rat I've seen, with her curly hair - and even curly whiskers!

Now that we have the 3 girls, I think we are done.  Our household is complete now.

Berry and Jenny are too small to join Sam in her cage (they could squeeze between the bars), and after some initial skirmishes between Berry and Jenny, we had all 3 in separate cages for a couple of days.  Then this morning, I moved Jenny into Berry's (hamster) cage, because she had dumped over her small water dish (in a bottle cap) in her tiny cage (which is actually a carry-cage), and in the larger cage with Berry, she would have a more consistent supply of food & water.

There were a few tense moments, just before we headed to church this morning, watching them pouncing and rolling on each other, some foot and tail biting, and some squeaking.  But by the time we had returned, they were both together in their makeshift hammock formed by a sock with the toe cut out.  So I think they should be good now.  When the two get bigger, they will join Sam in the multilevel cage.

Another Girl in the (Ratty) House

...or at least we sure hope she's a girl!  Since we are not looking to breed more rats!

Do you remember our rat, Sam, which we brought home 3 months ago?  She's a sweet little girl, and has added lots of enjoyment to our family life.  We haven't taken nearly enough photos of her, since she's a very active girl, and is hard to catch on camera.  The photo on the top right is when we first brought her home (click for a larger view):

We have realized for a while now that she needs a ratty friend, especially since she's awake most of the night, while we're sleeping.  Then we're away most of the day, at work/school, so she needs more socializing.  Last night we went to the pet store, to pick out another girl, and I found one I adore, but she is still too young to remove from her mother.  We hope to return on Friday or on the weekend, to bring her home.

In the meantime, my daughter held a dear little tan Norwegian hooded rat with dumbo ears, and instantly bonded with her.  I resisted, since it was my turn to pick a rat, and I had already picked one.  But on the way home, I realized that we wanted this one also, and we really could accomodate 3 rats.  So I told my daughter that if she was still there Friday when we returned, we'd get her also.  But by this evening, we were running back to the store to pick her up.  We would have been very disappointed if she was sold in the meantime.

Here she is, my daughter has named her "Berry" (named in honour of "Bear", another dumbo rat which my friend Andrea had for only a short time, before she sadly discovered that she was allergic and couldn't keep her 3 boys - we still don't know why, since Sam doesn't bother her at all).  In all the excitement tonight, and trying to introduce her to Sam, we didn't get any good photos, but here are a few we managed to capture:

So far, the introduction went well.  They sniffed each other a bit, but largely ignored each other.  So we let Berry climb around in Sam's cage for a while with Sam removed, and then let Sam back in.  A few times, Berry chased Sam, and it looked like she was hoping Sam would be her mommy, but Sam wouldn't have it.  Berry made herself comfortable inside Sam's usual tissue box, so Sam found her way into the other tissue box, and mostly retreated into her hammock.  We made popcorn to celebrate the new girl in the house, and both enjoyed eating in their separate areas.  Once Berry grows up a bit, she will be a good friend for Sam, I'm sure of it.

Stay tuned for my new rat coming soon.  I can hardly wait to bring her home.  Right now she's pretty tiny, and hasn't opened her eyes yet.  She still needs her mommy.

More Wildflowers at Mt Hood

As promised, I am posting more wildflower photos from our trip to Mt Hood.

Trilliums:

Cornus canadensis (Bunchberry or Perennial Dogwood):

Adiantum aleuticum (Western Maidenhair Fern):

Other native wildflowers:

And finally, one of the kids at the fishing dock at Trillium Lake was pulling up salamanders by the bucketful, using only a line with a worm attached to it.  I couldn't resist to pull one out to get a better look and a photo:

It seems that this may be a species of Taricha, or Western Newt.  Apparently they produce toxins, including in their skin, but I didn't feel anything.  It was adorable.  I would have picked it up even if it irritated my skin.

For more lovely mosaics this week, visit Little Red House.

Bear Grass Surprise at Mt Hood, OR

Our family just returned tonight from a wonderful 4 night vacation near Mt Hood, Oregon.  We spent some time hiking, visiting various waterfalls and lakes and other viewpoints, and relaxing at the Mount Hood Resort, mini-golfing, playing tennis, and enjoying some wonderful spa treatments.

Most of the native plants and wildflowers were quite familiar to me, theirs being a very similar climate to ours along the west coast of BC.  But one which I had never seen before, and which really impressed me, was the Bear Grass (Xerophyllum tenax), as featured in the following mosaic.  It was my husband who first spotted the white spider (Goldenrod Crab Spider or Misumena vatia) hiding in one of the blooms (rightmost photo), successful at catching an unsuspecting visitor.  After that, we found many of the blooms inhabited by that spider, many of them successful also.  Click the photo mosaic for a larger view.

I took many photos of the native plants along the trails, including trilliums, Cornus canadensis (bunchberry), Adiantum aleuticum (western maidenhair fern), and the beautiful pink rhododendrons which grew wild in the forests near the base of Mt Hood.  I hope to post more photos soon, but since it's after midnight, it will need to wait for another day.

For more photo mosaics, be sure to visit this week's Mosaic Monday at Little Red House.

Don't They Ever Sleep?

A couple of weeks ago, my husband phoned from the department store, asking if he should buy a tent.  The kids and I answered "NO".  He bought it anyhow, along with a second air mattress.  Then next thing we knew, we were setting it up in the back yard, and the 2 kids & I all slept in it that night.  It's a huge tent, with an optional divider in the middle which makes it two rooms, each with its own door and two windows, and with plenty of room for a double air mattress on each side.

I know when we keep our windows open at night, I sometimes need to close them by 4:30 or 5am, since the birds are so noisy it is hard to continue sleeping.  But I was surprised that in the tent, the commotion starts much earlier.  At 3am, I already heard swallows flying.  Then at 4am, a small bird started singing in earnest.  By 5am, the crows were on the move, and calling loudly to each other.  We were all quite ready to get up by 7am.

This weekend, our nephew stayed with us, so we set up the tent again on Friday night, and the 2 boys slept on the one side, while we girls slept on the other side.  Same story.  By 3am, sounds of birds stirring.  (If anything else had wandered by earlier, I must have been sleeping and didn't hear it.)  The weather had also changed from a clear sky (and view of the full moon!) at midnight, to totally dark and overcast by 3am.  Good thing it didn't rain, so allowed us to take down the tent while still dry the next morning.

I was just about to go to sleep tonight, when I noticed a bird singing outside.  He's been singing for over half an hour, since I noticed him (it's now past 11:45pm).  I'm wondering what he's thinking.  It got dark at about 9:30pm.  Or are there enough lights in the city, that he is staying up a little longer than he should?  Anyhow, even though the "camping" is fun (and we hope to do more of it this summer, maybe invite some of the kids' friends over), I'm happy that I'll soon be crawling into a warm, comfy bed.  And if this poor confused bird keeps singing, I can close the windows.

New Look for My Young Lady

A while back, my daughter asked me to cut her hair real short for the summer.  I am very impressed with her, that she will take chances with new looks and trying new things.  I am also glad that she still has confidence in my ability, to ask me to try it.  I have never had any training in hair cutting.  I've never really been one to fuss with or style my hair, it's pretty much tied in a ponytail and that's that.  But ever since I can remember, I've always cut my own hair (my mother in law trims the back now that it's too long for me to reach), and since we got married, have cut my husband's, and the kids' too.

I guess I just take the approach that in the worst case, hair will always grow back.  That takes off the pressure, and allows me to experiment without too much fear. And so far, I've done a pretty decent job, I think.  But this one was a bit of a challenge for me, since I don't have any experience with short hair styles for ladies, and didn't want to cut it to match the two men in the house!  So it took a bit of thinking, and searching the internet for inspiration.  I think this Meg Ryan photo on right was my main inspiration (no, I was not specifically looking for any "stars", but that's who seemed to show up in my searches for hair styles).

At 11 years old, my daughter April is already becoming quite a little lady.  Smart, determined, concerned, responsible...  I think the short hair will suit her personality.  Not to mention that we are always annoying her by asking her to brush her hair - again! - since it still looks messy.  Here is her "before" photo tonight:

The bangs have become too long to be bangs (she wants to grow them out again), and the curls go wherever they wish. (I love curls, since my hair is completely straight, but now I also appreciate the challenge they present.)

Here she is "after".  The aim for the new style is that she will no longer need to brush it, just brush the back straight, and push the top with her fingers, maybe add a bit of gel if necessary (a bit more height on it may look even better):

We'll find out tomorrow and in the next few weeks whether the decision was a good one. But for now, I'm pretty happy with the new look.

Masked Visitor to the Garden

The kids and I were eating at the kitchen table the other day when something passed within inches of our sliding glass door to the deck.  A raccoon!  I jumped up to get the camera on the counter, and looked out, but didn't see him anymore.  Then a moment later, the kids shouted that he was along the fence, so I slid open the door and caught his attention for a photo, before he hopped down into the upper neighbour's yard.

Skimmers, Raspberries, Fuzzy Navels and Magical Garden Lights

I somehow managed to hurt my left shoulder today, so decided to be careful and not go into the garden after work. But then I saw this little beauty sitting on my retaining wall, and next thing I knew, I was walking about, then doing a bit of weeding. I believe this is some sort of "Skimmer" dragonfly. It is not common in my yard.  I think I've only seen it once before.  I hope he visits more often.

My son David was anxious to try out his gardening gloves we bought on the weekend.  He was the one asking me today whether we could go into the garden. He enthusiastically pulled a LOT of weeds and some very large horsetails. He is a wonderful helper for me.  I hope he continues to enjoy gardening.

Earlier in the spring, I had my landscaper help me clean up my raspberry patch, since it was overgrown with various weeds, had no room to expand, and was getting hard to wade in to pick the berries. Now it is in two neat rows, but the plants suffered quite a bit from being pulled up and replanted, especially since it was a sunny warm week when we did it (unfortunately, I didn't have much control over the timing).

I knew there would be at least a temporary setback in fruit production.  Sure enough, for some while, the plants have looked quite sad, although they did manage to still put out a number of flowers, and the bumblebees have been busy pollinating.  Today I noticed the first few ripe berries.  Perhaps I've been forgiven.  I'm relieved.  Plants are wonderfully resilient.

I'm still anxiously watching my little peaches.  This is the largest one.  I hold my hand close to it for size reference, but I dare not touch it.

My landscaper came and cut the lawn today, and connected the low voltage wire through the path lights I had set up.  Unfortunately, he didn't connect the 3 spotlights.  That will be next time.  But he did plug in the transformer before he left.  I had almost forgotten, and looked outside while the kids were getting ready for bed, and noticed the inviting glow of the lights.  I had to run out to take a photo or two or three...  What do you think, is it magical yet?

Rainbow Mosaic Header

After waiting more than 4 years to create my first header, a photo collage from my garden....

...only weeks later, I am experimenting with a replacement header (click for full-size image):

This one a photo-mosaic made from my garden photos, in rainbow colours. I'm not sure I like this one better, though, it is not as vibrant, nor does it contain as many of my "favourite things". What do you think?

Creatures in the Garden : Centipedes, Cats, Rats

My son is becoming a great naturalist and garden buddy.  On the weekend, he found a really cool centipede (it turns out it is a millipede - see comments section) in the garden.  I don't remember ever seeing this one before:

The day after he spotted it, I was weeding in the upper corner of my yard among the monarda patch, and was surprised to discover the same type of centipede - perhaps even the same one.  This evening, I was again out weeding, this time in my new garden path area, and found that centipede again.  I called down to David, who was in the lower yard, and he said he also had one down there, and proudly carried it on his shovel to show it to me.  So there are at least two of this gorgeous creature in my yard.  I hope to see more of them!

Then after letting the centipede go, he proceeded to pick out the grasses and weeds growing between the concrete blocks of our outdoor chess board. Later he took the hose on "jet" setting, and blasted more weeds out of the cracks.  What a fine garden helper he is growing to be.

My daughter April is less inclined to anything in the garden. But she came out and visited me for a while, with her pet rat, Sam. I like this photo of them, sitting in the new garden path area.  April is excited to have "flip flops" this year (I previously frowned on such "dangerous" footwear but she's now old enough to handle them), so she changes into them at every opportunity.

Speaking of the new garden area, there is much weeding (when we cleared the area, the horsetails invaded with ferocity!), but I just love looking at it, weeding it, sitting on our new granite bench, and generally admiring that area. It will be even more magical when we get the path lighting connected up. I'm waiting for my landscaper to come and help with that. He's already picked up the transformer, and just needs to come and connect up the low-voltage lights which I already plunked out along the path months ago.

We had a cat in our garden earlier this evening. I caught a photo of it before my son opened the sliding door, and it darted away. When we first built our house (almost 6 years ago now) we regularly had cats prowling through our yard, presumably hunting, even after we fenced it in. I'm glad to still see the occasional cat.

The rain today helped thin our small peach tree, as evidenced by the few fuzzy balls below the tree this evening. Thankfully, the two largest fuzz-balls are still holding on. I'm excited at the prospect of tasting a peach this year - if the rain or squirrels don't remove them all first.

I took some photos of the bumblebees buzzing around in the wild roses which are blooming in the upper yard. One particular sequence of photos turned out pretty well, I think. But at midnight, I'm a bit too tired to create a slideshow. I'll try to create and post it another night.

Fun with Mosaics and Collages

I am very excited to be playing with (free!) photo mosaic software, and creating images such as this photo of my son David, made up of 1000 tiles of little David images.  Pretty cool (click the image for a larger view, and also roll back a distance from the computer to see the overall image):

Created by AndreaMosaic.

The first time I think I saw a photo mosaic like this, was in 2006 in Disneyland.  They had some beautiful mosaics, such as this one of Walt Disney with his famous Mickey Mouse, made up of tiny Disney character drawings and images:

I remember thinking at the time that I would love to one day make a mosaic like that, and maybe there would be software available to help.

Recently, I have been inspired by many bloggers who create wonderful photo mosaics (which are really more like photo collages), many of who participate in Mosaic Monday at Little Red House.  My first attempt at such a collage was through Photoshop, but that was painful and time-consuming.  Then I was told about the Mosaic Maker at Big Huge Labs, and was able to create mosaics more easily and successfully, but the interface still left me frustrated, especially controlling which image would be placed where.

Then I heard that Google's Picasa was useful for creating mosaics.  I don't know why I hadn't tried Picasa yet, since I am a big Google fan, and my husband has been urging me for years to get some software for photo organization (I currently save them in folders named by date - usually month - and topic, but it is a painful process to go back and find anything from previous years).  Since Picasa is free (that price is right!) I decided to try it.  I was not prepared for what I would discover, and have yet to discover in the days to come.

Picasa is the most amazing software.  After I downloaded it, it proceeded to search through all my folders, including connected network folders, to find and index (it doesn't actually move the photos, just index them) all sorts of images which I didn't remember that I had (and certainly not where!).  The result is a set of thumbnails which are organized by date and folder name, and can be scrolled through very quickly to see the images.

Then it started on the face recognition.  Oh my!  It automatically locates all the faces in the photos it indexes, and allows you to name them.  Once you identify the first few people in the face images, it uses feature recognition (oh my goodness, I know this is possible, but this was very amazing for a free program!) to categorize other images of faces that are similar.  The interface is very easy to use.  As it finds faces and guesses who they are, you can click Yes or No and correct it with a different name where it goes wrong, or tell it that you don't want that face named at all (e.g. it will find each separate face in a choir).  The success rate was incredibly high, well over 95% correct.  As it learns which faces are which, it gets better and better at classifying, and automatically classifies from the remaining faces.

I left it chugging away for hours, and checked on it occasionally to correct it.  The results are presented as thumbnails in "folders", one for each person you wish to name.  For example, within hours, it had assembled 1,600 photos of my daughter April and 1,200 photos of my son David.  Each face is presented as a thumbnail image (see sample below of 9 photos from David's 1,200 photos), and from that image, you can easily click to see the whole photo, including Picasa's list of who else is in the photo (which you can update if any names are incorrect), and you can click to go to the image in the original folder.  You can select the entire "folder" or images in the "folder", and export either just the face images only, or the full images, to a specified folder on your computer.

When I saw this, I immediately saw the potential of photo mosaics made up of the little faces.  Sadly, Picasa has a mosaic feature but it is the photo collages, not photo mosaics.  Having said that, the collages were very easy to use, and allowed not only images and collage shapes to be specified, but it was easy to drag the photos around, and the software rearranged them accordingly.

But it wasn't hard to find some free (creditware) mosaic software - AndreaMosaic - which received good reviews, and for very good reason.

AndreaMosaic allows you to specify the primary image, and then a folder of other images which will be combined together in a mosaic to create the primary image.  There are a number of other parameters you can specify, such as how many tiles and in what pattern, what orientations of the images you will allow, what colour variations are allowed to make it a better fit, how many times the same image can repeat, etc (see below):

When I first clicked "Create Mosaic" I didn't believe it worked, since it took only seconds to prepare the mosaic, even the one with 1,000 tiles shown at the top of this post.  Even when I increased to 10,000 tiles, it took less than 1 minute to create the image (below):

Created by AndreaMosaic.

At this number of tiles, it takes very close examination to see that those are 10,000 tiny images of David.

Pretty cool. I think this has potential to keep me busy for many many hours. I can't wait for the next opportunity to play a bit more.

PS. Couldn't help but come back and create one mosaic of my daughter April, using this image of her in a floral wreath crown she created, back in July 2007:

Here it is, in 1,000 tiles.  Again, click for larger image, then step back from the computer to view: