Mandyworld

Love

Greater love hath no woman than the one who makes her husband hot chocolate while he plays poker on the internet. Little does he know but I am on the net too....organizing spa days! Mwaaa ha ha ha!

The amazing bird life in Dorset

For Christmas my father-in-law made me a bird table. It is a work of art. I love it and him for making me such a nice present. I love bird tables and my last one got left behind when we moved house so I was  very excited to get this one set up and see who came to visit. At this house we have a big mature garden with a stream at the bottom and I have seen loads of pretty birds flitting about so I set up the table just outside the sitting room window and looked forward to seeing what would arrive. It took quite some time for the birds to figure out there was food available and then another week or two for them to build up enough courage to investigate the actual table. Of course the Great Tits were the bravest and they soon gave everyone else the all clear.
Since then I've seen lots of finches, robins, blackbirds, mistlethrush, what I think is a dunnock and of course all the tits.
Now at my last house we had woodpeckers as regular visitors and also nuthatch and long-tailed tits which are all quite unusual. We are quite a lot further south in different countryside now so I was looking forward to seeing something equally exciting and unusual.

And here he is.... The damn thing has taken up residence and just sits there scoffing his face and frightening everything else away. Occasionally he waddles over to the windowsill and smiles at me through the glass before settling down for a nice a sleep. He's not even a nice wood pidgeon, he's just one of those flea-bitten types like you get in Trafalgar Square. His only saving grace is that the munchkin seems rather fond of him as she can get really close to him when he sits on the windowsill. Still I'm thinking of a pie.....

By the way, I found the fish. He was under a peice of bogwood and very dead. I don't know what happened to him but I fancied another one was swimming a bit funny this morning. I'm the worst fishmum ever!

Not so much fishkeeping as fish-losing.

I am new to fish keeping. Not so long ago I purchased on ebay a very nice tank and went about setting it up as it said in my book. I thought that if I just followed all the instructions, everything would go smoothly and I would have a beautiful tank and very happy fish. I have discovered it is not that simple. I have since spent hours shopping at local and online aquarium stores looking at fish, cleaning stuff, treatments, food, etc. I have joined fishkeeping forums and subscribed to Practical Fishkeeping. It is in fact one of those hobbies that sucks you in. It's quite complicated and there in lies the challenge. I fall for it every time.
So anyway, I naively went about setting up my tank. I won't bore you too much but basically I used tap water which around here is very hard and has loads of nitrate in it. The hardness means I now have a high pH and the nitrate has caused loads of algae. I am sorting this out gradually with water changes but it's taking a while. In the meantime I went ahead and got my first fish. They are zebra danios. Small, cute, friendly but most of all hardy and should withstand the odd beginners fishkeeping whoopsie. Or so I thought? They seemed very happy, I was just starting to get attached when one of them ups and disappears. It's just gone. I keep expecting a little fish body to float up from behind a plant somewhere, but nothing. I've checked the filter and he couldn't of jumped out as the lid is too tight. The only thing I can think is that one died and the others ate him. But in 12 hours! How hungry are they? Maybe I bought Piranhas by mistake. Maybe I shouldn't put my hands in there anymore...

Lost and confused

It has come to my attention that this blog isn't really about anything. It was going to be a photojournal but I never seem to have the time to take many photos so it has just become a very infrequent and probably rather boring diary. I have to admit that my life is somewhat like this at the moment, not boring as such but definately lacking in direction. I seem to be chronicly busy getting nothing done. So, time for a plan, I am good at making plans. The execution of said plan can be a bit woolly but I'll get to that later.
I have several 'jobs' all of which I do 'part time':
1. Mother to 2 year old. (I like to think I'm good at this.)
2. Housewife.( The house is a pigsty and we never have any clean clothes!)
3. Showjumper. (One week this is all I do then the next week I think I might give up. I can't make up my mind.)
4. Photographer. (I never seem to have the time for this but I'd love to do more.)
5. Fishkeeper. (I have six fish and an algae problem!)
There are also loads of things that I would like to have the time to do but haven't yet started. I'd like to get out in the garden and learn how to be a decent gardener, I'd like to make my own curtains and do some knitting and I'd like to do some ballet again. Oh, and at the moment I am really getting into cooking. I've been on a bit of a serious diet and now that I am starting to eat properly again I have a bit of a passion for food. I'm working my way through Jamie Oliver's new book. Yum!
I don't work as such, so I should be able to do all this shouldn't I? Maybe I just need better time management. Maybe I should just concentrate on one thing at a time. Maybe I should just give up on some of this for the moment.
So what is this blog about? Oh, I don't know.......I guess just me, off in Mandyworld, doing my Mandy thing. So, here's the plan, it's a diary, about all of this. Read it, don't read it, comment or not, I will continue to muddle my way through life.