Hoorah! for warm weather
Particularly when you have two loads of washing to dry.
That makes me sound like my Mum. Not to worry; that’s fine by me.
Anyway… fabulous weather yesterday and today… last night was so nice, I really felt like going to a party. And today too – it feels to me like a cool break after some rather warm weather in summer. Which I know is a very strange feeling to have at the fag end of winter. I’m concerned that the beginning of spring will now be greeted with a spell of frost, which would make me incredibly sad. I will enjoy it nevertheless, and hope that spring manages to have rain for our dams but also be warm-ish.
I just heard some thunder, which is unsurprising if this is like a cool spell in summer. Effective impetus for getting the washing in, though.
Ajax – Super Snail
J has a new macro lens for his digital camera… and has forgotten how to log on as himself.
Plants
Always nice to come home after a couple of days and see how the garden is – particularly at the moment, with bulbs happening. The daffs are looking well; have a couple more bells out, which is nice; and I think the third hyacinth might be growing, which is very odd indeed. The climbing rose is looking nice with its white flowers – Mum feels a bit guilty because we had a hack at it and might have chopped off lots of flower potential. Oh well; can’t have been too unhappy if it’s decided to flower anyway.
Looking at Mum’s and Aunty Allison’s gardens has given me all sorts of ideas. Allison has a very shady spot she’s basically turning into a fernery, but with some other stuff too: I am so going to find myself some helleborus, I love it! And I’m going to try alyssum and violas in the front and just let them go a bit wild. Very exciting. I keep having to remind myself not to do anythign drastic (like remove the hedge) until autumn, when we’ve been here a year and have seen all the garden has to offer. I must also remember to see if I can find a home for the hedge, come ripping-out time. Which reminds me: the possibly-violets in the courtyard, behind the hedge, which I thought J might have killed with the ladder, have ressurected themselves. I rather wondered if they might do that.
Angel moving
Decided the angels were quarantined long enough – they got moved tonight. Seemed a bit lost when first they got into the big tank, and although I had fed the tank about an hour before I gave them a bit more food because the Colombians, in particular, were making overtures of aggression that I decided to nip in the bud (and other appropriate cliches).
I think one of the neons in the qt has been et. I have only been able to seen 2 for the last couple of days. Curious; I think it was the fattest one, too.
Drinking Midnight Wine
My “I need to read at the airport and REFUSE to take Dart-Thorntot with me” book. A Simon Green, but less dark than his usual stuff, which was refreshing. Quite odd and very entertaining; I was worried it was going to morph into needing a sequel but this story has avoided it, although of course there is always room for another with the same characters. Highly recommended.
Now I need to get back to the Deathstalker series, but a) I think I’ll have to read the lot again, and that will be a bit painful – they’re so dark; and b) I know something bad is going to happen (thanks a lot, Kate). So I’m in denial.
Walkerville book sale
Well, yes… the most expensive book I bought was $2… I bought 10 books. For $11. I felt a bit guilty, but hey; good books, and cheap! There were stacks of people there… if I’d had time I think I probably could have picked up even more (I would have had to grab a bag in order to do so, though). As it was, I am glad they didn’t weigh my bag at the airport since I was just a little over the limit.
So what did I get? Good question, so glad you asked:
A Short History of the World, by none other than HG Wells
The Last Plantagenet, by Tyler White (that’s about Richard III, in case you’re wondering)
The Borgias, by Michael Mallett (which I started reading at the airport, and got a fair bit read because the plane was late in leaving; more readable than I had expected)
Journey among Warriors, by Eve Curie (yes, the daughter; no idea what this is going to be like)
The Idea of History, by Collingwood (hurrah! for $1, no less!)
Firebird, by Muchael Asher (some conspiracy novel)
Empyrion Omnibus, by Stephen Lawhead (confused me no end when I saw the title and it not by Simmonds; looks good)
The Chosen, by Ricardo Pinto (some fantasty schlock, I expect; interesting to try)
and Running with the Demon, by Terry Brooks (I’m feeling a bit guilty about not having read the entirety of the Shannara series).
Some Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters) novel, which I actually left in Adelaide so as to save room in the bag
So that’s the lot. Very exciting. I also came home with one of Mum’s books, which she has donated to the cause (of teaching, that is): Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosaling Wiseman, which she says is excellent and well worth reading as a teacher. So that should be good.
Houseboat on the Styx
This was one of the books Mum got at the Walkerville Libarary/Council book sale – more about that later. She bought it on Saturday; it’s a little book, and only 170 or so pages on that lovely thick paper they used to use, so I read it all that day. It is one of the funniest little books I’ve read in a long time… and that edition was published in 1925! And it said it was the 28th impression! It’s by a guy called John Kendrick Bangs, which is hilarious in and of itself. The premise of the book is conversations between people in the ‘good’ part of Hades. Think Shakespeare, Napoleon, Nero (?!), Dryden… it was actually laugh-out-loud funny, which is fairly rare for me; Mum got a bit sick of me reading out the great one-liners before she got a chance to read it. I think the funniest bit I remember is Nero saying that the only thing he hadn’t murdered was the English language – and that directed to Dr Johnson. HA HA HA. I thought it was funny.
Water change
J came home; he was almost as distraught as me about the fish. We did a water change right there and then. J isn’t convinced that the ammonia is a result of lack of water changes… thinks the filter is working all right and all, so it shouldn’t be a problem… we wonder whether the tests might be past their use-by, since we’ve had them forever. Must check that.
Also did a water change on the main tank. Looks better with water to the top.
The reason for water changes
I have been at J for a number of weeks to do water changes in both the tanks. I really wanted to do it two weekends ago; I really, really wanted to do it last weekend. I didn’t push enough. A couple of days ago the water in the qt started looking a bit cloudy, and J agreed we would do one this weekend. I looked in on them when I came home and gave them some food. Two hours later, I looked in the qt again and two of the half-grown fry are dead – just lying on their sides in the tank. I have done tests; ammonia is up, and the pH test reads about 6 or so but I don’t trust it, and I can’t find the tube for the other test we have.
So I should have pushed harder and done water changes when they were needed. We are way too slack about doing it, particularly in the qt; the main tank gets away with it because it has two filters and lots of plants. The qt does not have this luxury.
Cecilia Dart Thornton #2
She is driving me nuts. I can’t stand her style at all – way too purple for me, I’m just not that visual – and I don’t like not knowing what words mean, and besides I think she is just being gratuitous in using them. However, I am half-way through the third book because the story is just interesting enough to keep me going. I am very much looking forward to finishing them and getting back to something a little less tortured.
Randomly Yours, Alex 