Embracing silver, the theme for this week's #bow got me thinking about embracing learning something new, despite my lack of skills in the area. As we get up in years we tend to get set in our ways.
I'm a guy that likes routine and doing things as I have done in the past, but I knew I had to step up my game. What I needed to embrace, regardless of my apprehension, was inspired by this guideline set forth by 
"No more than 10 photos - I can't scroll forever! If you're a newbie, using this code will put your images side by side:"
For me, the CODE was unbreakable and after a short time, I realized that codes are made just for that reason, otherwise why would they use a dam code anyway. This stuff had my head spinning,<>/~:'^+= ()"";;,'{[}]./.<,]]}},>,>/**":';<>, but I wanted to be able to participate in the Garden Journal Challenge Early June. Only being able to include ten photos was my dilemma. I had way more than ten pictures that I wanted to use to document our garden. I knew there had to be an easier way to put a picture side by side, or even better than that, make a collage, but the code thing was off of the table!
Just recently, I read a post that had several collages included in the article. I'd like to be able to recall who's post it was, but sometimes more often than not, this #silverblogger tends to forget stuff. I guess this comes with the territory. When I replied to the mystery person, he/she was kind enough to get back to me. He/she told me about https://www.picmonkey.com/.
After spending a considerable amount of time learning the program, I was able to create the following. Who says you can't teach an old dog with silver hair on his chin, a few new tricks.
Embracing learning something new was extremely satisfying, and now I will be able to follow the guidelines for entering the #garden #journal.
Look at that, four different pictures all in the same picture. This was my first attempt at making a collage and I must admit it took me several hours to kind of get it down.
For my next attempt, I decided to make a collage with pictures from last year's harvest. This one I completed in about half of the time. The layout was different from the first one, but it was rather easy to change the # of pictures that would make up the collage.
Here is a #feathered #friends collage for all of you bird lovers out there. At this point in learning the picmonkey program, putting the collages together was rather easy, but finding the collage after I pushed the download button was still giving me more problems than I'd like to admit.
When I finally was able to locate them, they were in a zipped folder. No problem, I would just unzip the zipper. In the past, whenever I have unzipped a zipper, I found what I was looking for.馃榾
Well, as soon as I unzipped the collage that was tucked away safely in a folder and protected by the zipper, the dam collage decided to hide somewhere in the depths of my computer.
As the sun was setting on this learning experience, I was finally able to locate where the collages ended up after I had released them from their captor, the ZIPPER
When I had finally scouted out where the doggies were hiding, I had about 20 zipped folders of the collage. Every time I downloaded it, the doggies decided to play, I hide you seek, and because the seeking didn't go too good I just pushed the download button again, again, again, and again.
Learning something so new can be painstaking when you're in your silver years, but embracing the experience makes it fun!
I wonder when I will use my new skills, maybe for this month's #gardenjournal.
