Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
Life here on the edge isn’t ideal for gardening, sand instead of soil, eternal winds, salt-laden air and mole invasions all try to thwart our gardening attempts, but we haven’t given up yet and actually have quite a nice garden despite the challenges.
It’s lovely having a small wildlife pond tucked away amongst the plants in the garden. It’s nothing grand, certainly not one of those landscaped affairs with waterfalls, lighting systems and ornamental fish, but it punches well above its weight when it comes to attracting wildlife. With nettles and weeds behind it, and plenty of slightly...
West Wales isn’t a bad place to spend a long weekend at home. Both Anna and I were off on Friday, so after an early-ish run around the dunes for me, we headed into town for brunch. We decided to try somewhere new and ended up at Kwizinn, which serves Caribbean-inspired food. It was excellent...
It was Bank Holiday weekend last wekeend, the weather was glorious, and so we did what many people probably did over the long weekend — headed to the local garden centre to buy some bedding plants for the patio pots. Of course, it’s never quite as simple as that. The local Greenacres Nursery here in...
The mild weather and lengthening days mean that the grass has started to grow already. The daffodils are out earlier than usual, and on the odd occasion that the sun comes out, things are looking decidedly Spring like. The bees are flying, the rhubarb is ready for harvesting and buds are breaking on the trees....
Our robot lawn mowers might be in winter hibernation mode, but the off-season is the perfect time for… upgrades. On a recent trip to Bristol, my Dad deployed his 3D printer (aka the family’s unofficial R&D department) to produce a pair of traction rings for the wheels on our Mammotion Yuka Mini. Now, the stock...
With the temperatures dropping and the days shortening, I’m hoping the grass has finally stopped growing. Time, therefore, to give the robot mowers some well-deserved rest and recuperation and let them hibernate for the winter. That was my chore for Saturday morning. It was a grey, slightly damp, chilly day — but not too bad...
I think the most notable thing about the weekend was the rain on Saturday. When I got up early, the little raindrop on our home info panel that I built was already full to the brim. The Borth & Ynyslas weather station in our garden had already recorded more than 25 mm of rain. At...
I like to keep our garden as wildlife-friendly as possible, but it’s always a bit of a balancing act. In some ways, making it wildlife-friendly is easy — I could simply leave more of it to grow wild and give myself fewer chores. But then it looks messy, gets out of control, and… well, I...
Having taken the plunge and upgraded our trusty, boundary-wire-guided Flymo robot mower to a GPS-guided Mammotion Yuka Mini 500, I thought I’d share some first impressions. Scepticism, Satellites, and Software To be honest, I was a little sceptical about GPS-guided mowers. I’ve used GPS in various ways for years, so I know both its strengths and...
Going All-In on Robot Mowers (Again) You may remember that we went all in on robots during the Covid lockdown, adding robot mowers to our collection of robot vacuum cleaners. Since then, Hector (who mows the back garden) and Harriet (in the front) have done a great job. It started as a fun lockdown project...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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