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Stowe Gardens

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Stowe Gardens during the third lockdown

After the cold and wet weather, we had a break with sun and a warm 12C temperature. We decided to go for a walk in the local area and drove over to Stowe Gardens. It is that time of year, Snowdrop season. R had booked our arrival time online a couple of days before. We arrived and walked down from the car park. The NT shop, restaurant and loos were of course closed. A small van was selling coffee and light lunches at the entrance. (We had already stocked up with Ginsters Cornish pasty from our local shop.)

A longish walk down the hill to the gardens, where our names were checked. The loos were here, a row of Portaloos. We enjoyed a three-hour walk, with a well-deserved lunch break of Pasty. The Snowdrops were somewhat a disappointment, there were clusters of them, but not the huge waves of them there were a few years back.

We met a man and wife taking pictures of the snowdrops with a background of the Temple of Ancient Virtue. He was using a 4×5 Walker Camera. I believe he could adjust the angle of the photographic plate to reduce converging verticles and change the plane of focus. At least he doesn’t have hundreds of images to choose from when doing his final edits.

Changing the Tails

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We are having some electrical work performed in the house. New lights for the kitchen, along with a flat ceiling. At the same time we decided to have our power supply increased from 80amps to 100 amps.

This involves:

  • changing the main fuse
  • Updating the distribution box, we need an extra circuit breaker, and of course, you can’t purchase circuit breakers for the 30-year-old distribution box.
  • Changing the meter tails from 16mm to 25 mm. Why are they called tails?
  • Coordinating the electrician with the builder, so we don’t have holes in the lath and plaster ceiling for too long. Actually, this should be easy, as have worked on projects together for us.

So I messaged UK Power Networks, to change the fuse. They said I would need to get my supplier to change the tails first. Contacted Bulb, and they had Siemens come over to change the tails. The ideal chap, he could stand and work on the tails at over 7 feet up, without a ladder, steps or even a light.

Now I am waiting for UK Power Networks to come over and change the fuse, they do appear to have gone rather silent.

Should I follow in the footsteps of Noah?

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Garden Bunny
The most fearless wild rabbit I have ever come across!

The last few days have seen rain, and more rain. The field was totally flooded. The field pond went from empty to full in the course of a couple of days. The leaking garden pond is almost full. Not seen such high levels for years. This rain has added to a water main leaking outside one of our neighbours since at least March. I did wonder why one of our field gateways had been damp during the summer. The water apparently flowed to her ménage, which is well drained, and then through the ménage land-drains to the gateway. Thankfully Thames Water have at last fixed the leak. This though is worthy of its own story.

The rain has again attracted the Little Egret, and flocks of gulls, who suddenly descend on the field as if it were the seashore. If I wanted a house by the sea I would not have bought a house which is probably as far away from the coast as you can get in the UK. Not only do we have these coastal birds visiting us, we now have Garden Bunny. Such a fearless animal sitting eating our grass for most of the day, totally ignoring us as we walk around the house & garden, and the tractor which came into the garden to cut the hedges. One worry is that Rosemary saw some baby bunnies the other day.

Experimenting with the Moon

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From the 25th April to the 6th Of May I took several pictures of the moon. On the 6th of May, there was a full moon, indeed a supermoon. The May full moon is 2020’s third and final full supermoon, and it’s also the third-closest, third-biggest and third-brightest full moon of 2020. All photographs were taken on a tripod, with a 2-second delay for the shutter. The exposure time was around 1/80 of second at f16 ish