Stress Gets To You Sometimes

Stress really does get to you sometimes. Take last week, for example.

Wednesday my scanner refused to work, and despite continued uninstalls and reinstalls, much talk with technicians, and checking tech support forums, it wouldn't go.

Finally, even my PC spat the dummy, and Windows, which has never had a password, decided it wouldn't start without one. Don't know the solution to that yet, but what I had to do was reload Windows, after formatting "C", and then reload all my programs.

Fortunately, the data was on another drive, but the scanner worked once, then refused to work again. More stress, and I won't tell you the language I used. :-)

Earlier in the week, the barrel of the back door lock fell out when we tried to lock the door, and we were unable to find a replacement. Couldn't repair it, and couldn't lock the back door for a few days. Fortunately, there is an inner door, which we could lock, so there was safety in the house, but that also caused stress.

Saturday morning, we discovered the fishpond in the front garden had sprung a leak - well, there was only a couple of inches of water in the bottom, with some very miserable, stressed-looking goldfish in it, so we assumed that was the problem.

Not at all! After working hard to remove the pond from the ground and checking it, we discovered it was perfect. A mystery, until my partner came up with the idea that a cat had knocked the fountain over, and it had fallen over the edge, therefore all the water had been pumped out. Just as well it had fallen with the inlet high so there was enough water to keep the goldfish alive until we rescued them.

Of course, the pump gave up the ghost after this episode, because they can't be run dry, and it had burned out. More expense, but it's now replaced and we have a working fountain/aerator in the pond again.

That was last week, and I'm hoping that there won't be too much more of that kind of thing happening for a while - Maybe I'm delicate or something, but I can't cope with too much stress! :-)

Some Rain Came !

Surprisingly, it actually rained a couple of days ago!
Not a lot, but the garden really enjoyed it.

In my rainguage, 23.5 mls showed for the 24 hours of April 3rd.
Much more is needed of course, but for a change, there were
actually little puddles in the garden, until the soil could
absorb all the moisture. Trouble is, about 2 inches down, it's
still very dry.

The forecast is for showers over the next couple of days, so
here's hoping for lots more of the wet stuff!

We Badly Need More Rain

The bushfires are over, although for the people who lost relatives, their homes, pets, livelihoods, it isn't over. It probably never will be.

Plants are regenerating in the fire areas, but we badly need some rain, to assist in this process. Southern Australia is still in the grip of the worst drought in living memory, while the North is having floods and cyclones much more frequently than they used to.

Climate change is probably to blame for all of these problems, even though there is still some controversy over whether there is such a thing. What do you think?