Helengraham

@Helengraham@ieji.de

I am early retired ,I live in the rural north of Scotland,keep chickens and have a cat .I like gardening and I am interested in fungi and lichens.I am sorry due to past very unpleasant experiences I have had to enable follower request approval and restrict followers to anyone with interests fungi ,history,the restoration of historical properties,green living etc

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

purplepadma, to random
@purplepadma@beige.party avatar

Mood has lifted a few percentage points after having my hair done. Can’t decide whether to try to work this afternoon or just do self care stuff. The only thing that feels appealing is taking myself off to a cafe for some ice cream, so maybe that’s what I’ll do

Helengraham,

@purplepadma I took a photo of our first spring chicks I thought might cheer you up a bit ,though its a dull day here so its not very spring like

Geri, to random
@Geri@mastodon.online avatar

Starmer's Labour Party has told the government that it will NOT oppose the bill

FUCK OFF

Helengraham,

@Geri thats depressing ,I hope the SNP are at least opposing it and the lib dems

purplepadma, to random
@purplepadma@beige.party avatar

I was feeling kind of lost and slightly sad but I’ve just been reading my Mastodon feed and checking out interesting articles and boosting cat pics and enjoying shitposts and I really feel so much better. People who think all social media is toxic have no idea

Helengraham,

@purplepadma Sorry not cat pictures but a cute trio of other creatures :)

a grey squirrel
a broody little lavender coloured hen

Helengraham, to random

. Santa Engracia in the Catalan Pyrenees

MadeyeTheCarnaptious, to random
@MadeyeTheCarnaptious@mastodon.scot avatar

“This election in Scotland is all about SNP failure. Our hospitals face record waiting times, standards in our schools are plummeting, the police are underfunded, and our roads are an utter disgrace."

Sue Webber's a gaslighting sour faced Tory hypocrite who thinks our heads button up the back.

This ludicrous BS is all these lightweight clowns have to offer Scotland. They're an insult to our intelligence.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24185999.scottish-tory-msp-challenge-joanna-cherry-general-election/

Helengraham,

@MadeyeTheCarnaptious and yet we get free hiugher education and our universities are so well respected a future king was educated at one.We have the cleanest water ,the majority of the UKs Salmon rivers, the cleanest beaches ,we are one of the world leaders in renewables,in internal elections we have PR and 16 years and above can vote without needing ID ,we have better social care,unlike England nobody has starved to death here ,England needs Scotlands(and Wales )oil and gas which it steals

Helengraham,

@TCMuffin @MadeyeTheCarnaptious Yes I was thinking of that,but ran out of my word allowance,it was disgraceful esp as all the Welsh MPs voted against but were outnumbered by English MPs ,its not a union of equals if one entire nations MPs can be ingored,I dont think its coincidence it was welsh speaking either,the village has been partly uncovered more than once due to droughts so I suspect more communities both over the borders and in the north of England will get sacrificed to feed cities .

Helengraham,

@Wen @TCMuffin @MadeyeTheCarnaptious I agree, though having lived in rural Yorkshire I would say the vast majority of those who believe it live in the south of England or in big cities .

Helengraham,

@Wen @TCMuffin @MadeyeTheCarnaptious They do,there used to be a Yorkshire parliment and seperate govt ,until the Tudors came along

Wen, to science
@Wen@mastodon.scot avatar

Males Aren’t Larger Than Females in Most Mammalian Species

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/males-arent-larger-than-females-in-most-mammal-species/?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=adeec3770a-briefing-dy-20240313&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-adeec3770a-50037120

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin posits that in most species of mammals, males are larger than females. Although Darwin did not cite evidence to back up this claim, his view on sexual size dimorphism was readily accepted as fact, and it still dominates today.

But Darwin, in this case, seems to have been wrong.

#science #evidence #dimorphism

Helengraham,

@Wen ,Darwin occasionally has flaws and I think sometimes its because he gets caught up in typical Victorian assumptions ,,,women after all still being considered "the weaker sex" I was also suprised to learn how much bigger female sparrowhawks are compared to males

Helengraham, to london

I have no idea where this came from , I was clearing out my downloads and saw it,it made me laugh so I thought I would share it .(its not a genuine poster or I would def remember it)

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

There are currently 5,591 Starlink satellites in orbit, launched in the last 5 years https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html

There are 5,595 known exoplanets https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ discovered in the last 30 years

Starlink is about to have more sats in orbit than known exoplanets, and with each launch, make it harder to do astronomy research

Imagine what astronomy (or any part of science) could do with the shittons of money that have been spent on occupying (and likely soon destroying) low earth orbit?

Helengraham,

@sundogplanets I posted on a off grid site about non satalite internet options and I was really shocked how many people were very pro starlink and nobody at all had issues with the number of satalites or the impact on the night sky or likely issues when they all eventually end up fakling back to earth.And those are theoretically enviromentaly friendly ,ecologically aware people

NorcalGma2, to random
@NorcalGma2@sfba.social avatar

Same game, different toy.
Summer watched her pal drive off for an early doctor appointment this morning.
She decided to keep me busy so I don't worry.
So she plays with the bunny until it falls on the floor, expecting that I will pick it up and toss it back to her.
The game works until Grandma says Summer has to retrieve it herself.
Life is so unfair.
Good morning, Mastodon.

Oh no, the pink bunny fell to the floor. Summer is looking down from the sofa assessing the situation.
The pink bunny is getting chewed and hanging on by a thread. Summer is lying on the sofa with her orange ball and bunny hanging off the side.

Helengraham,

@NorcalGma2 hi

YusufToropov, to Europe
@YusufToropov@toot.community avatar

"Somebody has to be blamed for our troubles." -- Adolf Hitler in the mid-1920s, asked why he was anti-Semitic.

If you're in the , and you blame illegal for your troubles, you're being manipulated by . For his advantage. Not yours. If you're in , and you blame refugees from , same.

He must be stopped.

Only way to stop him short of world war: support , and specifically .

If lose this election, it's over.

@uspolitics

Helengraham,

@YusufToropov @uspolitics [Putin has openly said he wants back the USSR and certainly people my daughter knows in Poland are worried ,so are friends I have nr the Russian border in Finland,though Finland is much more capable of defending itself than either Poland or Ukraine.I dont think Canada is entirely safe either .Putin has already sent jets in UK /Scottish airspace twice that we know of and bragged about being able to bomb the UK.Theres been more Royal airforce activity here of late

Helengraham, to conservative

.My plastic free project is kitted out (and chaotically stored) .I have wicker in all shapes and sizes,stoneware ,enamel tins an wood apart from stuff I need as my hand joints are damaged ,so food processors etc.I have found plastic is essential only outside in winter and for plant pots .I use ceramic and metal bowls for the chickens and water collection until the subzero days then I switch to ex plastic sweeties tubs and recycled food and storage tubs

a collectkion of stonewar pots and jars plus a wicker basket and ,metal storage tins
a collection of stoneware jugs casseroles and bowls
more wicker baskets

Helengraham,

All of this came either from charity shops or off ebay .I am not working ,I retired early due to ill heatlh so nothing I have done costs much and a lot costs less than the alternatives certainly seed saving and regrowing kitchen veg scraps is free ,All my homes have cost below the going rate to rent and on principle when I moved north I used houses nobody wanted ,though now I am in a council house its due to being temporaly out of options I am going to rent a house thats been empty since 1970s

Helengraham, to climate


So my winter experiment of trying to soley use the electrcity (which here is 100 percent hydro) rather than use our log burner which is the obn,ly way bar the immersion heater to have ch ,wasnt entirely succesful .Late Autumn was fine we did without either.Biut winter ,Nov ,Dec and Jan we had to use the fire as the electricity was hugely expensive ,Feb we mixed but even so our bill went from £223 for Jan to well over £300 for feb when we used a mix

Wen, to random
@Wen@mastodon.scot avatar

The Hoyle/Starmer stitchup

https://bylines.scot/politics/hoyle-starmer-and-the-media-combine-an-snp-stitch-up/

This sums up Labour's attitude to power, influence and ‘protocol’. For anyone thinking of voting for them in Scotland, please think again. They (Labour, Westminster, Hoyle) do not have your best interests at heart. They are simply involved in a tussle to maintain the status quo within the dUK and Scotland does not figure anywhere there other than a place to store Trident and a source of resources.

Helengraham,

@Wen Starmer has openly opposed a second indepedence referndum ,he made the comments entirely voluntarily .He also doesnt seem overly committed to devolution ,though he did suggest there were other options to independence that he hinted would be making more areas of govt devolved

Helengraham, to zerowaste

#OffGrid #Composting #CompostingToilets
I wondered if any one uses or plans to use composting toilets

Helengraham,

@sundogplanets would it be something like this ?plus straw /shavings

Helengraham, to animals

Helengraham, to random


To add to my bad start to the day (starlink is being installed even as I write :( ) a SparrowHawk has swooped down the garden while I was actually stood there.So I am wondering what size chicken is unsafe .My sebrights etc are in a protected run,but in the back are pekin sz birds, a bantam Scots grey ,dumpy ,Auracuna ,an Ayam cemani and bantam x all smaller than my Rhode Island red.I I provided covered eating areas but I cant cover the garden which birds need moving?

Helengraham,

also I suspect the neighbours heard me giving the Sparrowhawk a fairly seriouse scolding which involved shouting some NSFW words at the sky :(.They are such magnificently beautiful birds and such amazing flyers ,but I wish they would sod off :(

kristiedegaris, to random
@kristiedegaris@mastodon.scot avatar

Some recent drystone work. A complete strip out and rebuild of this garden retaining wall which failed after only 30 years due to traced stone. All stone reused and we brought in some local fieldstone too.

Super sustainable, beautiful, lasts for generations. What's not to like?

#DrystoneWaller #Sustainable #DeepAdaptation

A drystone wall with lots of differently shaped and sized stones that all fit together like a jigsaw.
A run down drystone wall in front of a house, there are stones lying on the ground around it and a red bucket full of stone too.
A close up shot of a ruined drystone wall. Some stones are missing and others and falling out of the wall.

Helengraham,

@kristiedegaris @sbourne @Healthcarer Broch of Mousa ,a drystone wall structure ,it was built around 300 bc and despite being on the coast of a shetland Island for millenia its still standing

Helengraham,

@kristiedegaris @sbourne @Healthcarer I love brochs ,I used to live a few hundred yards from a huge broch mound with another the opposite side of the valley I liked to think of them being inhabited and how busy the valley musr have been then ,,

Helengraham, to internet

#Internet #Starlink #5G #SolarPanels #OffGrid #Technology
I was hoping for advice /help please ,I am not at all clear about 5g and other off grid internet options.I had 4g my last place it seemed to use very little power ,but had to be ended when the forestry blocked the signal.Here we have highland wifi ,but my daughters getting starlink which I refuse to use ,EVER .I will carry on paying for highland wifi ,but need something portable for use in a tent/caravan at the off grid site below soon

Helengraham,

whatever it is cant use on grid electricty or have anything that has to be fixed anywhere as the house is being rented to me and restored to museum standards and steading ditto (both will be thatched so def no roof options ) .I wondered if 5g would run on a solar panel that was fairly cheap and not too hard to set up.or on a car batterty ,if theres a booster that would makle it would work even though theres no 5g mobile phone signal,the house is mostly on flat open ground but nr the sea

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