I think I waited too long to investigate the Solar Battery situation. The guy has not replied to my emails or my texts.

Actually, most people are rather bad at responding to my emails and texts. GRARGH.

Anyway, looking at other solar battery quotes, his looks very cheap, which...I'm mostly okay with tbh.

I'm thinking of this as a stop-gap measure, really

until I can set up a longer-lasting nickel-iron battery - the kind that old Nikola Tesla came up with, and which work for 100 years. Yes, it takes a little maintenance, but I'm more worried about losing access to electrical technicians than I am about having to replace the electrolyte solution once a month.

Yes, that says where my priorities and fears are right now. Frankly, I'm more worried about robustness of our supply-demand chain (newsflash: it's about as robust as your grandmother's crystal in a quarry) than I am about having to do things manually.

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My garden is open on the 21st-22nd March, for guests, and it's seriously 'underdone' right now. Everything is wild (it's that time of year when the weather is hot and the rain is happening, and EVERYTHING GROWS). I had some friends by last weekend to put together some garden beds, and they're done and set, and now I just have to fill them.

And that's where this weekend and the teenager I'm hiring to do the work comes in.

A pile of woodchips is being delivered this afternoon.

We dig out the back paths (carefully! there are pipes in there!), discard the runner grass, and put it in the garden beds (bottom).

We dig out the chicken yards and all the lovely soil that's down there, and put it in the new garden beds (top).

We fill the back paths with the woodchips, then the chicken yards, then the chicken tunnels, then the banana circle, then the composts...

And all this after going for a 5km run on Saturday (maybe I shouldn't have committed to the run).

Then, Sunday morning is a Crop Swap!

OOF.

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Yesterday, I made the sudden realisation that I've been writing Maria Hill (all my agents, in fact) like they were Australian SAS, not US Special Forces. An operative goes out and is given the trust to deal with the situation as needed rather than having to go up the chain of command as US Forces (even special forces) have to do.

The difference is rather telling.

I wonder how recent this doctrine is

- the military doctrine of minimising possible fuck-ups by ensuring that decisions have to be approved up the command chain. I wonder if (pragmatically) there was a significant cultural difference between the WWII Howling Commandoes and the way the US military worked (at least pre-2025) such that Steve would have found it distinctly difficult to work with the modern US military units, who are trained not to go off-road and make their own decisions: the YT video says that even units like Navy Seals and Delta Force are reliant on communications and up-chain decisions to go/no-go.

Anyway, it's a thought.

Not to mention, I can use this in my novel: if the MC is more inclined for an Aussie SAS mentality (although she is American) and doesn't quite fit into the paramilitary organisation she's working with (which runs off a US military authority mentality) then I can make that work.

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Finally, Jima-wu, our remaining chicky-babe, is still with us. Survived and thriving. Back to what she was before the sickness, still on medication, and will be for a few more days.

*sigh* I'm still sad about Nien-go, and a little tired. It's a lot going on right now.