Posted on

Lockdown – Garden Photography

With the lockdown in force I decided to record some of the action happening around my garden . Things were happening both in the air and on the ground.

I was particularly impressed the day the red Kites decided to swoop low over the house. I soon got to learn their high pitched call, which gave me a bit of a warning of their approach, giving me a chance to get a half decent shot of one.

Being Spring there was life bursting forth in all corners and it was great to see all the new colours appearing.

While clearing the ditch out by the side of our house I was distracted by these two beautiful Damselflies.

You can see them in action in the video below.

Finally it was great to hear the sound of an approaching Chinook – more of a man-made birs of prey but one that brings back many memories for me,

Stay safe everyone.

Cheers, George

Posted on

Building a Single Hammock Upright

Over the years building hammock stands have really intrigued me.

My Freestanding Hammock Stand is great for popping up in the garden or putting in the back of the car to take to events – however I have only one and with this current Covid crisis found I have been spending more time in the garden – so more hammock stands were needed. I did not have all the wood I needed for another Freestanding Hammock Stand however I found I had a lot of old fence posts that could be turned into something.

I have only one decent tree in my back garden and an old swing frame (they are too far apart to use together) that I can hang a hammock off so I needed some kind of ‘Hammock Upright’ that did not need to be dug into the ground.

The ‘Hammock Upright’ you can see below is the one I built and it shows it being secured by land anchors. It is not portable (well I can move it around the garden easily) but it is robust. I know that there are ways to make them lighter however I wanted to use the wood I had on hand.

Land Anchor Secured

While making a video on the upright it struck me that iron pins would do the same job as the land anchors.

Iron Pins

So to see how it is all built have a look at my video below.

Cheers, George

Update (02/05/2020) – Brought the two uprights together and used pins on both.