'Milking' Amaranth, plumbing and plodding

This magnificent beast of a plant is Amaranth. It has seeds which can be used for grinding into flour. They are tiny, the seeds. Can hardly been seen by the naked eye. It has been one of success stories here. Grown by moi aka Under Gardener from seed, repotted, planted out, thrived. Does a convenient droop of its leaves when it is thirsty, and stands proudly over all the other plants out front.

It is ready for harvesting. Uno problemo: Just How Does One Do That! It is upwardly pointing. An Idea made entertainment in my head. 'Milk' them. You know, like you would stroke the udder of a cow. Did I succeed? Well, sort of. I did get a yield of seed. Plus other things, like spiders and other creep crawlies. For more of that little experiment have a wander over to Jumbly Gardening, and look at 'How not to harvest Amaranth'. Being self sufficient is ever an ongoing learning curve here!
And here is Head Gardener home from the fields, putting his trusty (?) ancient rotovator to bed for the night after having spent a happy afternoon whizzing up and down the veg plot out back. Him and his trusty implement are managing wonderfully well at this task. Bless.



And so the plumber came this morning and left this trail of pipes.




And for the first time in all of its life the house will be plumbed. Not only with cold water, but with hot as well. It has been decided by Project Manager Hubs, that we are to have a boiler, having become enamoured by Ron's boiler in situ over the now blocked up with an apricot stone sink in the dining room.

Now I am happy with a kettle. Having lived with a kettle as my main hot water provider for many months, I have become perfectly happy with that means of heating water. It is simple. Fill the kettle. Plug it in. A few minutes later and hot water arrives.

I find a smidgeon of dismay arriving in my head when I observe these wires, pipes, and other various assorted electrical and plumbing detritus now festooning my house. Because it looks complicated. Filling a kettle is not. It is easy. And if the kettle decides never to work again, then all you do is go buy another one. But all those wiry and plasticky pipes and things look ssssooo complicated, but Project Manager Hubs says not to be so silly and 'You do want hot and cold water don't you!" he says, "And it means you can have a shower whenever you want...".

Mmmmmm.........uno showero? Mmmmmmmm.......washing my hair more than once every few weeks? Mmmmmmmmmm..........having proper girly type evenings when the armpits, feet and other neglected spots on the bod are given a good going over with nice smellies? Mmmmmmmm......lingering while naked without fear of planes and microlites overhead having a good look at what I am up to, which is a concern when I have occasionally braved Ron's boiler shower by the now blocked with an apricot stone sink.

If you were to see me at this precise moment, you would notice the teensiest little smile tickling the corners of my mouth. I may be changing my opinion about all those pipes and cables and things!

Meanwhile uno ploddo at my PC. Strewth, if I had known what a task it was going to be when I fiddled about with the entry page to my website, then decided to tweak other bits up as well, which led onto an almost complete re-write of the whole thing, I would have left it all alone in the first place! Well perhaps I wouldn't have, but Tech Team Guy Hubs decided to 'show me how to do this little thing' and 'oh this would be a good idea for you to do' then off he goes leaving me to sort out his instructions, most times suggesting I do an Internet search if I get stuck.

I have spent the last three weeks grappling with css code, which to PC bods would be no problem at all, but to me, quite frankly, it is mind blowingly difficult. Just to get drop down boxes, for crikey's sake. Yes, but then the format of the individual pages had to be changed, which meant the graphics had to be altered, which meant the colour-flow didn't work page to page, and so on.

My head has felt as tangled up as a ball of wool would be after a bunch of kittens has messed about with it. I wake up in the middle of the night with a line of code cruising through my non-asleep head. When I have spent ages interred in the lines of code, to hold a sensible conversation with me is not do-able. And yet the pages look far simpler than what they used to be! That's the irony. For all my hard work, the web site just looks more streamlined! Oh well, it should make the reading of it easier, and the navigation simpler.

Things I have learnt today: That it is great to be living the life of a camper when one knows that one will not be doing it forever!

So Hooray for the Plumber!
So Hooray for the Electrician!
So Hooray for the Builder!
And Hooray for Project Manager / Tech Team Guy Hubs for pushing me and the house along!

And off I go, to apply my very pickled brain back to the task of my website, wishing you happy moments in abundance and the ability to laugh when the happy moments are a bit far apart.