Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
After an exciting Friday on the sea, we had a slightly more relaxed Saturday. Steve headed home feeling a little battered and bruised. I was quite tired too. However, while he was here I suggested we all meet up in Derwen Garden Centre on Saturday. We checked with Anna and Biddy and they were keen...
The garden always looks a little untidy and overgrown at this time of year. I kind of like to let it do its own thing to a certain extent so it’s partly by design, but my OCD and perfectionism can’t stand it for too long. It was therefore good to get out there at the...
Having had a bumper year last year we weren’t expecting much from the bees this year. Our expectations weren’t helped by the fact that we lost our largest colony over the winter. I suspect they swarmed late in the year after we had harvested from them and got them ready for winter. With no queen...
I did say I wouldn’t buy any more houseplants for a while. You know what that means don’t you! Yep, whilst at the garden centre for brunch they had a whole selection of tiny little houseplants just come in. I couldn’t resist! They are only tiny, but I ended up with It’ll be a while...
The bees seem to be loving the new garden pond. There were literally hundreds of them all lined up along the edges at the weekend. We had a hedgehog visitor at the weekend too, and there was a cool photo of a stoat on top of a fence post in the dunes here posted on...
Just a quick trip inside one of our beehives.
Long-time readers of this blog will know I get into projects for a while and go all out on them! I usually keep them going in the background afterwards but don’t necessarily blog about them or invest quite so much energy into them after a while. My latest obsession is houseplants! Don’t worry, I won’t...
It seems as though my somewhat experimental preemptive artificial swarm technique has, at least to a certain extent, worked. With only one colony surviving the winter we wanted to ‘make increase’ this year. The fact that this colony had taken up residence in a hive next to the bedroom window also meant that there weren’t...
Despite my sore finger and the strong winds, I did manage to do some beekeeping at the weekend. We’d bought a new poly hive so I constructed that. It wasn’t much of a project really and only took about 5 minutes so instead I set to cleaning out a whole load of old brood frames...
Well, the weather seems to be showing no signs of breaking yet. Every day for the past 3 weeks has seen wall to wall sunshine. Strong NE winds blow all morning as well and often continue to blow all day until evening. We’re talking 30 knots plus all day long here in Ynyslas. Of course,...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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