Monday 16th August 2020 Day 146

5.15  The weather is so much cooler but my sleep patterns don’t seem to change, I’m listening to Katherine Mansfield, short stories. Written in the 1920’s.  Not only has our poor heroine lost seven of her children but she actually can’t find anywhere to go for a cry!  I think I’ll turn to a little light music for the next couple of hours.

8.30  I am checking on the fish, still not looking too happy and several of the big fish have made it to the smaller pond via the shallow stream.  The other problem I have now is duck weed, thousands of tiny green leaves that can double in population each day on top of the water.  By yesterday evening the whole pond was covered so I spent half an hour with a net pulling them out.  This morning you wouldn’t know I’d bothered.  I read that duckweed could be used for bio fuel, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and

would be good food for humans, giving forty per cent protein.  As far as I am concerned its just a darned nuisance and the fish aren’t so keen either.

9.15  I am making myself a coffee and being very careful not to waste any water.  On Saturday for the first time this whole summer, I didn’t go down the garden to check on the greenhouse and veg patch.  In fact, I didn’t go down there until seven o clock in the evening when I discovered that I had left the sprinkler going on the vegetables for twenty-four hours!  Apart from the fact that the patch was like a quagmire, which made a nightmare of digging up some potatoes, I am wondering how it will affect my metred water bill.  It is not until you have no water, as happened the other day when there was a burst water main, that you realise just how much you use every day, so I a making a conscious effort to conserve and hopefully bring my water bill down a bit.

11.35  It seems that the entire village has had the same idea to walk their dogs at precisely this time today.  We all squeezed into the little layby and out came Scottie dogs, sheep dogs, two huge hounds of some description, an old yellow Labrador and of course Audrey, who, even with all those dogs there, was only interested in whether or not I had remembered to bring the ball.  We dispersed into the woods and I only saw the sheep dogs on our way round.

14.30  I’ve decided to have a go at fixing in the new letter box, it can’t be that difficult.  I’ve found a jig saw and a chisel.  The jig saw bent almost as soon as I started but still works ok and as for the chiselling, I won’t be sculpting statues any time soon.  I found what I imagine is a masonry drill for making the holes bigger for the nuts and screws and that seemed to work quite well.  Trouble is, however much I keep chiselling away, it just won’t fit flush to the door and the letter box flap won’t open when I try to fit the whole thing into the hole.  I’ll come back to it tomorrow because tonight I would just like to chuck the whole thing in the dustbin!