Gave the Sweet Heart a thorough clean up
It served us very well throughout the Winter but it was hard to find a time to clean it up because it was always hot.
Baby Robins are doing great
I don’t see the third one but I didn’t want to intrude too much.
Cool Lego Project #2 – Rope Climbing Robot
My son is 5, Mindstorms are too complicated to investigate but… By hacking a wire straight to a battery, it’s easy to explain to him how to apply power to a motor. No indirection from the programming or the brick, simply energy applied to motors.
With this you can make a simple car:
It’s been great fun to watch him figure out how various gears work. Now for the project, we simply turned this car into a robot which climbs up a string.
Cool Lego Project #1 – Paper Bending Machine
Simply run the paper through a couple of interlocked gears, the result is way more fun than it should be.
This one is powered by induction (a motor with a handle is manually turned to generate electricity for the other motor).
Potable verdict
We just got the test results from the well, we can drink it 🙂 This is huge for us. No more bottled water, almost a year in.
The first glass of water we drank and are still alive to talk about
Having a well is amazing and we are becoming quickly dependent on it. We use a lot more water because it’s easier to get. Watering the garden, longer showers, laundry, anything goes now 🙂
Surprisingly efficient way to do laundry, and so much better than wasting time and money at the laundromat
With the nice weather back and easier access to water, we’re enjoying luxurious showers.
When we had just moved in, I noted there were 3 things our household didn’t support:Â potable water, laundry and reliance on gas to power tools. The well allowed us to eliminate 2 of the 3, with the 3rd one still unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Morels
We tried to find them for weeks to no avail. Finally Matt was kind enough to show us the spot where he had found them on our land.
Better shot of the Robin eggs
I’ll go take a look at the nest tomorrow, they’re most likely all out by now. Mama Robin is getting used to us and doesn’t fly away until we’re very close now.
I spy a hummingbird
They arrived a couple of week ago, found our feeder right away.
Mad Max Lawnmower
We bought a 2nd hand sacrificial lawnmower to drag over all the stumps left from the land reclamation. Bush hogging leaves them high enough to be very annoying so it’s time to accelerate the decomposing process. The lawnmower takes a beating in the process, I’m literally pulling it over 1″ to 2″ thick stumps as it jumps around.
First inspection
They’re not raging but there’s brood and they’re happy.
Robin eggs
Towards the end of Winter, we’ve had the great privilege of observing a robin build a nest in a small pine right next to the house. We’d see it pick dry grass and go in the same tree over and over again. We found the really quaint nest it built.
Working on the beehives a few days ago, which are close to the nest; the robin would take off and start chirping in alarm relentlessly until I left. This happens every time we get close to the nest.
We soon found the reason why:
I really like how the inside of the nest is made with finer material. Thinking about mama robin choosing carefully each piece of grass anthropomorphizes the bird.
All in all, it chose a pretty horrible spot for a nest: a very small pine well within reach of predators and close to humans and bees. But it’s very very accessible for us to observe 🙂 we try not to intrude too much. And we’ll definitely keep the predators away.
The Sky is at it again
Really cool although faint circular rainbow
Upping our game
We are finally planting a real garden after years of temporary arrangements. We are a long way from the square foot gardening we did in Utah. We’re at the opposite extreme really. From an urban space-constrained deserty Utah to a rural roomy arable Vermont.
Huge thanks to Fred for saving me hours or brutal work with his awesome tractor :).