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Friday, June 18, 2004
Pondage Part Three posted by Missus Boot at 17:52
Liner is all tucked in and the surrounding soil bits have been raked and neatened. The sides are now more level and the plants are growing. w00t!
Ever indecisive, I decide to make a very heavy sorta Klingon Bird of Prey waterfall instead of having the pebble stream that wasn't all that, anyway.
After what seems an eternity and incredible quantities of rain, the very heavy sorta Klingon Bird of Prey waterfall is complete. Doesn't look too bad, either.
The liner went a bit saggy and the pond wasn't as level as it should have been. Hurray for Edd who, applies another 'critical update', and sorts it out.
As well as making the waterfall out of concrete, I also got some time to make rocks out of the leftovers. Edd slaps these on with aplomb.
Time to put in some plants, do a rockery thing and paint the fence. It still looks a bit bare as the plants need to grow.
The last lot of the outer rocks have been made and put around the edge of the pond. Now all we need are more faux rocks, a bit more water and a lawn.
I always seem to miss once-in-a-lifetime celestial events such as these, due to cloud, illness or just pure laziness, and therefore made a gargantuan effort to haul myself out of my comfy bed at 7 AM. Ewwwww. It turned out to be a tad pointless, as the Sun doesn't come round to my garden until 8ish. Bunghole.
Aquired the piccies using a run-o-the-mill digi cam, 10mm Plossl and telescope with lashings of insulating tape, a bit of cardboard and my limbs to steady it all. At one point I nearly fell in the pond.
All in all, a magnificently amateur attempt at getting pics of Venus transiting the Sun, and probably most amusing for my neighbours to bear witness to, especially the pond bit.
Pondage Part Two posted by Missus Boot at 16:47
One new liner later, we start lining again. Our neighbours generously give us their old carpet to go with the old papers under the liner. Nice one.
Edd takes charge and lines the pond, while I annoy him by taking lots of photographs and getting in the way.
Huzzah! Now there's plenty of liner to get in our way, so we embark on a tripping over things and filling up pond adventure.
While we wait for it to fill up we enjoy tea and cigarettes, and hope and pray that the liner doesn't leak.
The pond has been filled, left to stand overnight and doesn't appear to be leaking. So we chuck some plants in it.
The fish weren't too chuffed with their temporary paddling pool, but seemed most happy when they were introduced to the pond.
We raided the garden centre and got boulders and stones for the waterfall, and groovy grasses and a Japanese maple to hide the dodgy bits.
Now for the stone edging and waterfall thing. We should have done this before the fish went in, really, but time was a problem. Edd has had his hair cut.
Concerned that the filter we had was a bit poxy, my dad gave us this absolutely enormous all-singing and all-dancing filter. Isn't he lovely :o)
Pondage Part One posted by Missus Boot at 16:21
I've only been living in this house for 10 years and the only bit of gardening I'd ever done was hack up some shrubs and chuck grass-seeds on a large sea of mud in order to grow some sort of lawn.
Edd had been going on about doing a pond and getting some fish for years, and this wish was fulfilled when one of his mother's neighbours got rid of her husband and gave away his koi (and chucked his computer out onto the street, but we didn't get that unfortunately). We adopted the fish and immediately set about building them some suitable accommodation.
Here is the occassionally hacked-at garden. It has big shrub things, a tatty lawn, lots of twigs and a washing machine for the ultimate in urban council-house chic.
First of all, that shrubbery needs a trim and a half. I hack away at it with secateurs, attempting a Mary Quant bob and hoping that it will grow back.
The Babapapa shape of the pond was marked out with bricks, and we started to dig, eventually getting an amoeba formation. Incidentally, digging is not fun.
We dug up a lot of bottles, suggesting that the previous occupant liked to have a sneaky little drink and bury the evidence. Tsk.
As well as bottles of what seem like brown ale and whisky, we found an old Lucozade bottle containing a mysterious substance. No-one would test it.
I'm crap at digging so I made tea and had wonderful ideas while Edd did the magic with his shovel and did stuff with sand.
Here's the little island formation. A waterfall will go around the back and sides, and a plant looking like one of Tina Turner's wigs is to go in the middle.
The pond liner (free with the fish) didn't look too clever, but there was a slight chance it would stretch when filled. Heh. It didn't stretch.
So now we have to drain the pond and re-line it. It took ages to fill, but the sparse greenery of the garden did need a water, so it wasn't all bad.
Mar Bars Are Nice posted by Missus Boot at 14:22
Still can't get the camera to pick up as much colour as it did the other day. This is not helped by my constantly losing the camera settings; maybe I should get them tattooed, or something. Starting to get the hang of K3CCDTools and Registax (software used for capturing, stacking and processing).
A Mars A Day posted by Missus Boot at 14:19
Mars pictures came out a bit better this time, probably due to a combination of different telescope positioning, less haze, less light, Mars being in a more interesting position and borrowing Edd's eyes for focusing.
Mars posted by Missus Boot at 14:15
These are my first attempts at capturing some pictures of Mars, with and without a Barlow. They didn't look too clever to start with, but after stacking with Registax they came out better than I thought they would.
More Moon posted by Missus Boot at 14:12
Mostly sorted out the mirrors and got these pictures of various craters of the Moon, including Atlas, Hercules, Posidonius, Fabricius and Metuis. These unstacked pictures were taken using 2x Barlow and processed in Photoshop. The edge craters came out nicely, but the middle of the Moon was a blurred mess.
Moon posted by Missus Boot at 14:04
My first attempt at using an unmodified Toucam 740K and a Tal 150P to image the Moon, and its craters Copernicus, Tycho and Plato. These unprocessed (excluding a quick Photoshop fiddle) pictures didn't come out too badly really, considering that the telescope's mirrors were dusty, loose and in desperate need of a good seeing-to.
