Helen Mirren
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| The Garden Party side of the Garden |
Saturday, 25 February 2017
How can you not be happy?
"I don't think there's anything on this planet that more trumpets life than the sunflower. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that's such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life."
Sunday, 19 February 2017
The son also rises
"He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
An interesting picture emerges of the garden temperatures this morning - you can see the impact of the sun rising over the garden, dispelling the chilly darkness of the night. And what a cold night for an Australian summer (4 degrees around 6 am)!
Despite the sun we have the fire on as well, heating the place up via a hydronic system that pumps the "wetback" water around the house and through radiators in each room. Simple, cheap and effective. The sun is still working during the day to keep the garden happy, and here is a montage of the produce (and one of the producers...)
We are on a countdown to the wedding of Chelsea and Mitchell, it's hard to believe as we have just had our 26th Wedding anniversary ourselves and now a new chapter is being written. Very very exciting and look out for a barrage of pictures in a couple of weeks. Take care and for our large West Australian family we miss you and we'll see you all very soon!
Matthew 5
An interesting picture emerges of the garden temperatures this morning - you can see the impact of the sun rising over the garden, dispelling the chilly darkness of the night. And what a cold night for an Australian summer (4 degrees around 6 am)!
Despite the sun we have the fire on as well, heating the place up via a hydronic system that pumps the "wetback" water around the house and through radiators in each room. Simple, cheap and effective. The sun is still working during the day to keep the garden happy, and here is a montage of the produce (and one of the producers...)
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| Not all of us are huddling by the fire |
Saturday, 11 February 2017
Gardening with Technology
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
The garden really is in full flight at the moment, and we are drowning in peas, beans, potatoes, zucchini, rhubarb and heaps of herbs etc. About to come online are a million tomatoes and some really impressive looking corn plants. We are preserving and/or freezing a lot of produce for the winter, and of course the hens continue to pump out four eggs a day, many of which are used to lubricate the fledgling relationships with our local community (and the new girl Kelly loves an egg a day - and is now at 16 kg!!)
You can follow this experiment online here.
Currently (ha ha) the monitoring time limitation is due to the power requirements of the ESP8266 Wifi module (so cheap to buy!) which sucks up a lot of juice when communicating with the outside world.
The circuit looks a little like this (but always being fiddled with in the spirit of continuous improvement)...
The prototype spends the odd night outside sitting under the stairs in the garden, providing hours of amusement for those concerned.
The goal is to have the monitoring turn into feedback loops which will help plan, monitor and maximise yields as well as alleviate some of the work. Finally for those who just want to look at the view, here's one for you... enjoy...
Confucius
The garden really is in full flight at the moment, and we are drowning in peas, beans, potatoes, zucchini, rhubarb and heaps of herbs etc. About to come online are a million tomatoes and some really impressive looking corn plants. We are preserving and/or freezing a lot of produce for the winter, and of course the hens continue to pump out four eggs a day, many of which are used to lubricate the fledgling relationships with our local community (and the new girl Kelly loves an egg a day - and is now at 16 kg!!)
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| Panoramic view of the produce |
The quest to over-complicate gardening continues <heavy sigh from some quarters>, and we now have the means to monitor the temperature and humidity over about a 24 hour period.
You can follow this experiment online here.
Currently (ha ha) the monitoring time limitation is due to the power requirements of the ESP8266 Wifi module (so cheap to buy!) which sucks up a lot of juice when communicating with the outside world.
The circuit looks a little like this (but always being fiddled with in the spirit of continuous improvement)...
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| Mmmm...spaghetti! |
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Since these pics were taken/drawn, the power source has changed to a "homemade" 3.3V supply and currently (get it?) the supply is being regulated using a series (also another circuit joke!) of capacitors to smooth out supply and hopefully increase battery life. The Attiny85 sleeps for 20 minutes, then triggers the mosfet to supply power for the probe and wifi module for 8 seconds. A reading is made and transmitted, then the whole thing sleeps again.
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The prototype spends the odd night outside sitting under the stairs in the garden, providing hours of amusement for those concerned.
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| A lunchbox of electrickery hiding under the stairs |
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| Lovely! |
Thursday, 2 February 2017
The world is going to the dogs!
“It's a blip, not a catastrophe.”
It was difficult to find anyone post 2013 who actually owned up to voting for the walking headline, the Englishman Sir Tony Abbott, OBE. In our house we used to play the game "Who has Abbott insulted today?" and most days it proved to be a fruitful exercise. Fast forward to 2017 and we are having a nervous laugh again as Trump easily outdoes Pommy Tony for bizarre behaviour (although he has yet to scoff down a raw onion).
A lovely antidote to this surreal "leadership" quagmire are the three Amigos here at Charis. Enjoy the pictures, the reality is even nicer...
Donald J. Trump
It was difficult to find anyone post 2013 who actually owned up to voting for the walking headline, the Englishman Sir Tony Abbott, OBE. In our house we used to play the game "Who has Abbott insulted today?" and most days it proved to be a fruitful exercise. Fast forward to 2017 and we are having a nervous laugh again as Trump easily outdoes Pommy Tony for bizarre behaviour (although he has yet to scoff down a raw onion).
A lovely antidote to this surreal "leadership" quagmire are the three Amigos here at Charis. Enjoy the pictures, the reality is even nicer...
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| Aren't all the dog beds mine? |
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| Nice and quiet when she's asleep! |
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| Only 14 weeks and already "heels" like a champ. |
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| Where are we going now. Where, Where. Huh? |
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