It’s been pretty windy here again, so I went to the plot to see if the shed had tried to escape again…
It hasn’t quite done a Wizard of Oz this time, but did seem to have moved a bit which is surprising given it has about 30 kilos of water sat on its roof. Also the plastic box next to it has been obliterated, and the wooden cold frame clearly needs something heavier inside it.
The actual point of today wasn’t to tidy up, but to do some tidying. Grass is an annoying thing, it grows quite happily all over the plot, especially if you don’t dig it out. At home, my lawn is all thin and patchy.
Managed to get the majority of it cleared before the batteries gave out on the rotavator. It’s certainly a lot better than doing it by hand.
This bit is next, It’s full of grass and junk that has grass growing over it. I’ll need to give it a mow and attack it with the strimmer a bit first to get it short enough the rotavator can chew it up without getting tangled.
The wind wasn’t all bad though, I somehow gained a giant sheet of plastic from somewhere, and two large builders’ sacks. The plastic will keep the weeds down on the end of the plot I dug over earlier, and the sacks will be useful for gathering up rubbish.
I’ve made an attempt at tidying, I’m sure the wind will help reorganise things soon.
Attempted to cook a fruit pie, but the pastry I’d made was more like biscuit dough and didn’t want to stay together. Ended up turning it into a giant fruit tart thing instead. Worked out pretty good.
The trick it appears was to leave it to cool down after over cooking the fruit into a sort of jam-like consistency.
I sleep with my FitBit on. Every morning it tells me how well I slept. For those with other devices (or none!) the way this works is by monitoring my heart rate, motion and blood oxygen level. It then does some magical maths to arrive at a score out of 100.
In FitBit land, a score of “80” means you had a “Good” night’s sleep. In the real world, 80 is not a good night’s sleep. Ever woken feeling like someone filled your head with sawdust and you put the kettle in the fridge? Yeah that’s 80.
Supposedly I also sound like a warthog that’s being strangled. FitBit doesn’t tell me this, my other half does.
So I did some Googling and amongst all the snake oil quack medicine websites out there, and websites for apps trying to sell you a subscription to their dubious systems I found the good old NHS website.
Feed it your height and weight, it spits out “you are overweight, lose five kilos”. It also shows you a free app you can use to help with that. I probably should cut out the excessive sweet things, and I’m quite sure if I went to the doctors about this their first advice would be “get more exercise, lose some weight”.
That doesn’t solve the bit where I feel like death in the morning though. It might do in six months, but not tomorrow night. One website I found did mention propping yourself up on pillows. It also recommended stupid things like sticking a tennis ball to your back – the snoring happens when I roll on my back. I’m not taping a tennis ball to myself every night. I’ll forget to take it off and go to work looking strange.
I can use more pillows though. It was a bit weird the first night, but last night seemed more comfortable. And also reports of their being a warthog in the house have gone down.
I feel less like I’ve been resurrected against my will too (this is why zombies are angry, they were woken up too early) and my mouth doesn’t feel like the cats have used it as a litter tray, so maybe it spent most of the night closed.
Further testing will continue. I have apps that collect data and make graphs.
I promise that this blog isn’t just a log of my attempt to cover my garden in plastic barrels of water, but it rains a lot in the winter, it doesn’t rain in the summer, I have a water meter and spraying chlorinated water on plants doesn’t seem like a good idea.
I’ve replaced the small water butt next to my garden shed with a bigger one. The small one was full of some rather horrible smelling brown water. I think this is from the roof garden, but I’d have thought all of that would filter out the fine bits of soil up there by now?
I managed to find enough bits of random drainpipe lying around to make things neatly flow into the water butt. It’s a bit awkward because there’s two pipes and only one hole in the lid.
I then half filled the water butt using one of the others. I now have something like 700L of water storage now. Should help in the summer when it stops raining and I need to water things. Also when I water the roof garden and it starts to run out, it’ll go back into the water butt and not be wasted.
In attempt at containing the mud and helping the lawn grow I’ve given it a good stabbing with a lawn aerator and then covered it in a layer of sand. The ground is full of clay and very sticky. I noticed that when it rains water runs over the surface of the ground instead of soaking in.
I also put a bag of gravel on the slope behind the shed to control the rain that hits it. I’d like to find a few large stones and put them down too.
The grass will be fine, it’ll come back. I’m planning on re-seeding it anyway with some grass that copes better in shaded locations.
Finally I was getting tired of tracking mud into my shed, so found two paving slabs and just put them down as stepping stones. At the moment they’re lying on the surface of the ground. If I like where they are I’ll put them into the ground in a more permanent way.
A typical British lawn with straggy grass, worm casts and the odd bit of moss.
A job for warmer and drier weather is to sort out a more neat looking path.
“What did you do in the cold dark winter of 2022/23?” “Oh I took up cross stitch”
Yeah so my partner likes making crafty things, and she does cross stitch. Although it’s a certain style of it. This isn’t doilies and pretty houses with quotes and nonsense under it. This is slightly more NSFW.
Look how happy that sloth is!
I was idly watching her make one and curiosity got the better of me – there was very little to watch on TV – after 30 seconds of explaining I was off making an equally NSFW picture of my own…
I thnk that crocodile needs to be a logo
This is a bit like those arty YouTube channels where they try a new skill, fart around for a bit, then try some large project to show off. Sure, there’s a certain amusement from stitching a dainty little creature that’s shouting obscenities but once you’ve done one the fun wears off a bit.
Then I had a thought. During Christmas I was helping out at a local Christmas activities club, and one of the distraction activities was Hama beads. Those little cylindrical pellets of plastic waste you arrange into a picture, iron and have a wonky looking thing that passes as a bad coaster.
There’s something quite nice about having to concentrate really hard on such a simple task. Copying a design takes zero effort, but getting adult sausage fingers to manipulate tiny bits of plastic requires conscious efforts. Patiently re-starting because you sneeze and flick your design onto the floor, knowing that’s the only option is also quite relaxing.
Makes a 100% total opposite difference to trying to think really hard about programming, or teaching kids how to program. There’s nothing to compile, nothing to debug. And unlike drawing, there’s no real skill involved so you can’t do it badly.
It appears cross stitch is the same, just without the slightly worrying contribution to increased plastic waste. The needle goes in the hole, it doesn’t stab your finger. Maybe you stitch away for half an hour, and realise you started from the wrong hole and now have to patiently unpick it and start over without getting upset and giving up.
I decided I’d do a loading screen from my favourite ZX Spectrum game Rick Dangerous. Here’s the screen
If you listen hard, you can still hear the loading… or is that tinitus?
It’s 256×192 pixels. That’s 49,152 pixels. A cross stitch cross is made from two stitches. It’s a lot of poking a needle through a hole. I’ve got this far after a month.
Cat for scale, no bananas in the house
I’ll finish it eventually, it’s a nice alternative to staring at social media. I dipped into Facebook the other day, nothing exciting is going on. I have a new phone, I set up the wrong account in Twitter and just uninstalled the app.
Take up weird obscure hobbies, the complete opposite to your normal activities. It is quite refreshing.
