Herisson Rose Jewelry

Oh, sorry no! 😂

IT'S STILL LEAKING. Started up again.

Not nearly as bad, but how THE FARK is it still leaking. we cut off the WATER SUPPLY.

Truly some Cursed plumbing in this house..

Sigh. Water off again for the night.

A Tomorrow Problem.

(Replacement hot tank is ordered tho..)

We also have cherries (that birds strip-mine the moment they ripen), and two peach trees that rarely fruit.

It's generally still too cold / short growing season for them up here.

I'd love some chestnut, walnut and fig trees - they grow wild *everywhere*, but (used to) struggle at this altitude..

Currently have:

- Cherry plum, that flipped from "hates it here" to doing really well in the milder climate.

- Prune d'Agen, that's never given me any fruit 😭

..and some mystery yellow (Italian?) plum that appeared from nowhere, taking over like a weed.

Oh, lovely! We had a magnificent purple leaf plum tree just in front of the house, but the recent hotter summers didn't agree with the poor thing.

It kept dying back, and finally gave up completely a few yrs ago.

First plum blossom spotted in MY garden, tho not the same tree. The Cherry Plum is covered in fat buds about to burst.

Give it a few days, full bloom is likely exactly 3 weeks earlier than last year (Apr 1st)

#bloomscrolling #blossom #fruittree #plumblossom

It's okay, came back from dog walk to water back on!!

(Not *hot* water, but something)

I'll take it.

Getting *hot* water back is a Tomorrow problem.

Bonus Cappuccino chin scritches

#caturday #cats #exferalcat

Oh mah gawd we nearly missed #caturday !! 🙀

I had cute Cappuccino videos lined up, then Everything Happened..

#catsofbluesky #chinscratches #siamese #tortiepointsiamese

as for the water saga:

- We're now draining all the house pipes (takes a while), so dad can take the broken POS stopcock valve off and replace with the visibly less shit one.

After that, hopefully we can cut off the tank / have cold water back on at least.

Been trying to take pics of this cowardly motherclucker since we got him (Valentine's day).

Today's meeting with Pipsqueak left him so mad, he forgot to run away..

A very pretty cockerel or rooster, with fox red feathers on his body and a light grey tail. Behind him is a light grey chicken.

Oh, we never did New Roo introductions!

Meet ✨🐓HERMAN MUNSTER✨

- He's a Very Pretty Boy, but also a coward

- My mother traded a box of chocolates and some of my jewelry for him, in an illicit carpark deal.

#rooster #cockerel #chickens

Replacement stopcock has been purchased! Hooray Gamm Vert (tiny French hardware store)

Then (you cannot make this up) I came home to find the gate open / chickens out. Cockerels fighting.

I had to stop.. some cocks. (Fortunately neither was broken)

Screaming SNOWFLAKE!! At the generations that followed was *always* a projection.

Twiddling my thumbs here, waiting for the tiny hardware store to open and see what they have.. 😙🎶

(Bet we have No Water all weekend 🙃

EVERYTHING is going wrong today..)

Which means the innards as well as outside is broken!

Whole thing needs to be replaced, and my mother. Will NOT. Hire a plumber 😒😒😒

(I get her point.. half the (few) pages jaunes results have been closed for ages, rest have 1 star reviews..)

I don't know if she got thru to one or not, won't say 😒

To replace the tank, or even switch COLD water back on, we need the valve to *shut off water* to the tank.

Which it is not doing.

Dad managed to remove the snapped off turny thing, then use a wrench to turn the rod inside. Which SHOULD have closed the valve.

But, water is still filling the tank.

Status: Mother now refusing to pay for a plumber, and Dad insisting he can still fix it 😩

A morning's wranglings have yielded the result: It's Way More Fucked Than We Thought.

(The stopcock, not the tank. That's completely fucked. Rusted where the thermostat goes in..)

..And it's still only 8:30am 😩

- Can't get a plumber to answer yet (not many out here)

- Water is completely off, temp fix.

- Buckets n bottles filled, ready by all the sinks.

At least I'm a dab hand at this now?? (Months of water main replacement last summer)

Ah. Tank started leaking AGAIN.

Which means it's re-filling w water.

The stopcock must not have turned fully off before it broke, and well, it broke.

No plumber is answering, so we might have to shut off cold water / drain everything to stop it.

(It's bucket filling time)

I've lived on building sites, so being without working plumbing or water for ages is unfortunately not new.

At least we HAVE cold water..

Still cruising at Oh Bother levels of mild annoyance here, at least until 7am (errr.. now) and starting to actually look for a plumber 😒

Thank you. Flooding os now mopped up, and the thing has at least stopped leaking further.

Got my coffee / confused cat, waiting on mum so we can start looking for a remotely nearby plumber that's open for the broken stopcock..

I'm sitting like a lemon, waiting my turn to have a decadent 6am bath. The last in a while.

(Drained out the hot water to empty the tank)

Then call a plumber..

(Rural France - unlikely to find one at this hour remotely nr us)

Joy!! When you wake up too early (nightmare), go to let the dog out, and discover a flooded garage.

(It's the hot water tank)

The flange also snapped off the water lever as we turned it off 😜

But at least.. no more water flooding out..?

(I'm slightly higher up, on thin stony hilltop soil.

The actually-opening ones are in people gardens down in the river valley)

A mass of white plum blossoms against a blue sky, with a dark honeybee about to land on a flower.

Late / tired.. but I took this one last year, April 1st 2025 of a plum tree blossoming in our garden.

There are.. buds on it already 😬

View of distant hills and the roof of a house, between the twisted trunks of oak trees lining a ridge. Tiny young bright green leaves are just unfolding on the oaks, acid green in colour.

Same view in landscape, ten years later. The view across a river valley, the distant hills, and the young oak leaves just uncurling on the branches of the oaks. The difference is time - 4 weeks earlier in the year.

Looking back in my photos for cherry blossom to illustrate season creep.. But these oaks illustrate it nicely.

Same view. 10yrs apart.

2010: 28 May
2020: 24th April

This year ??? tbc. The cherries are blossoming alarmingly early though.

#landscape #treesky #climatechange #firstleaves #ecology

move slow and repair things

Elon's floating space crap are already colliding / damaging other satellites, and polluting like a mofo as they fail and burn up..

Ozone hole will be nothing compares to this.

This feels like an ill thought out scheme chasing venture capital $$. Not like, actually be useful or safe anytime soon.

YIKES.

This isn't just about aesthetics of light pollution, it will eff up circadian rhythms of plants / animals, and cause major ecological damage (on which food production is dependent!)

Inevitably rushed/vibe-coded by idiots. Prob death-laser a city or two. The SPACE JUNK as these things fail..

'Post-Shiterate'

While we're at it, 'reputed' (laugh)

'Repudiated'