Potentially might get some work done in le jardin today. It’s much warmer than it has been. There is a slight threat of rain around lunchtime. If not today the defo Wednesday. This is in keeping with an executive decision I made to nominate one day in the week for non sitting at the desk activity. Start off with a day and who knows where we might get to 🙂
The pressing garden work is the pruning of apple trees and the vine. These, together with the wildflower meadow are my responsibilities. I also have an application that requires the use of my new socket set which you can imagine is quite exciting.
The other garden related job this week is happening at the weekend when @Adie is swinging by to bottle the cider we made during the 2024 harvest. It’s looking beautifully clear. Gemini offers the following insight into what we might expect potency wise:
- Natural Fermentation (No added sugar): Most standard apple juices have a starting gravity between 1.040 and 1.050, yielding an ABV of roughly 5.5% to 6.5%.
- High-Sugar Harvests: Exceptional years or specific apple varieties (like those from the 2025 harvest) can produce natural ABVs of 8% to 10.5% without additives.
As this is from 2024 we might expect 6% which is strong enough. I do need to sort out some bottles. Might have to tip some cheap lemonade and similar purchased for a party but never used. Will keep you updated obvs. Didn’t harvest any last year due to mobility issues affecting my enthusiasm. In 2026 my bionic powers should alter that.
There is news from the lake this morning. We had two overnight visits from the herd: five past ten and twenty five to one. Seems to me that the fawn is getting bigger, as children do. Although we only have firm evidence of two animals, the exciting thing is that I think we see three pairs of eyes in the earlier vid. Two having emerged through the hedge and potentially another pair still within the hedge. Check out the pic and vid to see what you think.
The camera isn’t set to record long enough clips to validate this. Might have to change that, at least as an experiment. We have 30GB of usable storage and it loops round and overwrites the earliest media when full. I deleted the content once last year before we went away (late summer?) but there is still a gig and a half of free memory so increasing the length of the clips shouldn’t be a biggie from the perspective of timeframe storable in memory. Only needs to be able to cover a few weeks really rather than months. I download vids of interest on a daily basis or in a batch if I’ve been away.
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The walk to the shed was done without the aid of a jumper which has been discarded due to the clement weather and the heating has been turned down. In fact it almost feels like a spring day. The birds are in fine voice and the red arrows (I assume it is they – can only hear them – it could be some jets from Waddo) are practising in preparation of the 2026 display season.
Video clip length increased to 15 seconds fwiw. Fox came at 16:04.
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Was in from the shed by five fifteen. Figured I’d spend some time with THG but she is hard at it in her sewing room. We are off back there to watch the Liverpool game later so doesn’t do me any harm to take a break.
I spent the afternoon, once back from the pool, looking at drovers roads and similar. I have Davies Family Tree Locations in “My Maps” in Google maps. It registers a number of features such as farms, churches and woollen mills and now I’m adding features of interest such as Roman roads and drovers roads, both of which touch our spaces. Pubs called Drovers Arms also feature. There is one down the road from where we lived. Bit of a clue there as to the route of the drovers innit. Also fields called Cae Nos (Night Field) which were used by drovers to park cattle overnight. There are a few other landmarks I’m looking at but there’s no point in telling you it all in one go.
The point about the drovers is that we would have sold cattle to them, or they would have sold cattle on our behalf.