Let me start by saying happy Valentine's Day! To all of you with someone special in your life, have a wonderful day and celebrate your love! To the rest of us who are still looking, don't give up — there's someone out there who will appreciate us, and maybe today will be the day that we find them.

OK, I'm done with the mushy stuff. 😃

Today's images are just a continuation of old slides that I'm labeling and scanning. There's no pattern that defines which images were selected for inclusion in this update other than the fact that they were taking up space on my hard drive and had to be moved to the main site.

Last week I asked if some of you could compare a Wisteria photo in the gallery with a larger copy somewhere else, and everyone agreed that the smaller image quality doesn't compare. Thanks for your input! Hopefully I can find a way to correct the graininess that shows up when stuff is added to the gallery.

And just a reminder continued from last week: not every image is a breathtaking work of art. What I try to do is capture the essence of the plant, but sometimes it's raining or I have the wrong lens or my contact lenses are bugging me, so they're not all perfect. By rating the images in the gallery, you let me know which pictures should be replaced if the opportunity presents itself; otherwise, I just assume that they're all good!

Just because a habit shot might not be great, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't check out the close-up flower shot too. Usually poor weather for habit shots means great weather for closeups, and the inverse holds true as well. Lighting is everything!

This week I'm hoping to start some of my garden seeds indoors. Spring's getting close!

Christopher Lindsey, gallery maintainer