Ye Olde Garden

Lilies!

I’ve been testing the Droid 2 camera for the past few weeks (since I finally reacquired it from the man) to take some garden and pup pictures. However, due to some quirky resolution settings, the photos haven’t been resizing correctly. My preference is for 1024×768 sizing, but lately the aspect ratios of the Droid 2 pix are whacky. Anyway, as convenient as it is to have the phone with me whenever I’m out and about, I’ll fall back on my trusty ole Canon to do the grunt work.

I captured this lily scene sometime after 8:30am. The Red Alerts are in full bloom, the Lollipops on the way out. Only the Navona have yet to make a showing.

5/13/2011 Lilies!

Ye Olde Garden

Francee hosta and veggie/herb garden look

5/10/11 Francee Hosta shoot5/10/11 Herb Garden residents looking for a homeTurns out those 99 cent hosta bulbs the man picked up from Calloway’s a few weeks ago were viable. What I originally thought were calla lily shoots were actually the Francee hostas coming up in one of my planter boxes. It’s only been 3 weeks and they are leafing out like gang busters.

Now I’ve got to make room for all the herbs and veggies currently taking up potting residence in the bed. I have a few extra herbs to pass along to friends, but all the rest needs to be rehomed before the summer heat is upon us.

Dandy, Doogie, Furkids

Pups in purple

I had an almost perfect shot…of Flash sitting serenely in the midst of the purple bed. But he wouldn’t sit in place long enough for me to capture it on film. So instead, I posed the dynamic duo to snap up a few wonderful spring pictures.

5/13/2011 Dandy & Doogie in the Purple Bed

Technical

Knocking out multiple fail2ban notifications to admin

Ever since I’ve been troubleshooting and tweaking Fail2ban, it seems the ban notifications sent to the server admin email address has steadily increased. For example, a ban event currently sends 5 identical emails to the server admin.

I thought it was my limited understanding of how Fail2ban worked. But I soon realized that the culprit had to be multiple instances of Fail2ban causing the behavior. I had to dig up some Linux/Centos knowledge on how to figure out where to pull up processes (similar to the Windows services and task manager).

To show a master list of processes and pids:
ps aux || less

To display a list of pids with the name “fail2ban”:
pgrep fail2ban

To kill all pids with the name “fail2ban”:
pkill fail2ban

However, this kills all but one server instance of the Fail2ban server. I still had to start the server, reload the configuration and verify the status to ensure that it worked.

Remember to save and reload iptables prior to and after the above operations.

Ye Olde Garden

Sunday flower run, don’t bake in the sun

Note to self: don’t cover tender young seedlings in microwaveable plastics under the hot May sun. So it was that I lost 3 batches of plants: Seabreeze salvia, Lime and Genovese basil, and all of my Stardust ice plants. Back to square one.

5/10/2011 Sunday Herb and Veggie HaulSunday’s flower run included a 50% off all plants sale at the Lowes in Carrollton of Trinity Mills and Old Denton. The man decided to invest in 2 2.5 quart Stella d’Oro daylilies to add to the front flower bed. We also picked up a hot banana pepper (more than a foot tall), a habanero, a variegated oregano and a Chinese eggplant (Ping Tung cultivar). All of the herbs and vegetables by the way were Bonnie plant branded; they retailed for $3.70 but at 50% off they were a good deal. We also ran by Calloway’s in Lewisville to pick up our Spider Lily bulbs at 3 for $3. The bulbs were disappointingly tiny (what’s with all the tiny bulbs coming out of Calloway’s lately), and the man and I are still debating where to plant them. Somewhere where they’ll get summer shade but fall sun, says the checkstand lady.

I divided and moved the picoteed dianthus in the purple bed, planted the Confetti lantanas (x2) and dahlberg daisies (x4) in the front flower bed, and all the impatiens in the shade bed. A leftover from the purple bed, Super Parfait Raspberry dianthus, has been transplanted to the shade bed near the gate.

A pleasant surprise that I uncovered while weeding out the front flower bed: dozens of vinca and at least 3 impatiens seedlings. The impatiens seedlings, amusingly enough, are tucked under a layered branch of the Emerald Snow loropetalum. Like the numerous calla bulblets I uncovered and transplanted this week, the garden presents continue to appear as the weather continues to warm up. For example, one of the mums is displaying bulbs…of course, I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t lifted the sprawling Oertel’s Rose yarrow–which, incidentally, threatens to fill the entire bed!

Next lilies to bloom: Red Alert asiatic lilies! Interesting to note that they all appear to be opening at the same time!