Hummingbirds, mulching, TV/DVD set up issues
Well, it’s that time of the week again: time for another vapid life update blog.
Shortly before writing this I was chatting with my brother as he looked out at the front garden. Close to the window is the hummingbird feeder I mentioned before, so I asked my usual question: “Any customers?”
“Nope.”
But then he saw a hummingbird come towards it and we watched. Alas, she fed from a succession of blooms on the rose campion planted right below the feeder.
She did hover a moment looking directly at the feeder as if considering it, then cocked her head and dropped back down to feed on more rose campion blooms before going over to the hollyhocks and flying away.
OK… Well, the feeder has a lot of competition at the moment, but she clearly knows it’s there and thought about it. And come fall and winter, there won’t be any floral competition.
The feeder in the backyard seems like it gets more use. Not because we ever see any hummingbirds at it, but because it seems the nectar level drops more than one would expect from mere evaporation. There are some flowers in the backyard still, but we’re definitely in a bit of an in-between lull where it’s mostly green.
And still mostly overgrown – I harvested a bunch of garlic a few days ago:
But that’s been about it because my garden energy has been going to trying to reduce the giant mulch pile in the driveway so I can park my damn car on my property instead of the street again.
After 3 or 4 nights of shovelling out at least 3 wheelbarrows a night, the pile is consistently getting smaller:
And I now have a couple of the backyard flowerbeds completely mulched with a third one nearly done:
Where I have enough space between plants to get away with it, I’ve been laying down pizza boxes under the mulch as they will block weed growth for the summer and rot away over the winter before the tulips and daffodils emerge again in the spring.
Thanks to the sun and heat, I’ve been making use of the clothesline:
As you can see in the background, no, I haven’t done much bushwhacking in the veggie patch yet.
What other updates… well, the TV is now up on the wall. It’s been tested with an HDMI to USB-C cable so I can now watch YouTube on the big screen.
What didn’t work so well was the AV cable for the old portable DVD player. See, the input on the back of the TV was only the 1/8″ jack one, and the portable DVD player also has that same jack, but I had the 1/8″ to triple male RCA cable. I ordered a triple female RCA to 1/8″ cable and it arrived… but no dice.
All I got was a buzzing noise. And the portable DVD player has no other outputs.
Sigh…
Well, good news is Amazon has multi-region DVD players with HDMI outputs for like $50, so that’s been ordered and hopefully come Thursday I’ll be watching Married with Children on the big screen.
And it’s not really a waste in regards to the old portable DVD player, since I can just leave that upstairs in my bedroom with a small stack of yoga DVDs for pre-bed yoga.
Let’s wrap it up with some flower pics:
