1st July 2026

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  Wednesday 1st 61F/16C [7.15] Bright overcast. Dry morning but increasingly cloudy. With showers this afternoon. Possibly thundery. 73F/23C in the room. 62F/17C in the greenhouse. Pond water at 71F/22C.

 Up at 5.30 after an occasionally sweaty night. 

 I have to be here around lunchtime for a delivery. I'd like a ride. Not far. I need to shop at another supermarket chain. There isn't a local branch. 

 8.45 It's getting darker. I have watered the plants. Indoors and out. Then stacked the massive paving slabs to make a step outside the new glazed door. Just to get  a feel for scale, width, etc. They need to be properly leveled. Preferably without scraping my shin! Silly old whatsit!

 I have spent the morning working on a solar telescope. I was dizzy mid-morning. So I sat in an armchair and rocked quickly back and forth. From head between my knees, To staring upwards at the ceiling.  Holding each position for over half a minute. Eventually I felt a bit better. 

 13.30 The Abigail's British foods chap has just left in his van. Two bottles of salad cream have gone in the fridge. We always have a good chat. I'll go shopping this afternoon. 

 16.45 Back from the village supermarkets.  

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30.06.2026 West Lawn Prep.

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 Tuesday 30th 61F/16C [7.30] Bright sunshine behind the overcast. A return to more normal temperatures. 73F/23C in the room. 61F/16C in the greenhouse. The greenhouse pond water us at 71F/22C after climbing much higher. It was 78F/26C at one point. Not ideal for goldfish but they seemed active, hungry and healthy.

 Up at 6.40 after a failure to lift off at 6am.  In the absence of my morning walks I did 2000 steps yesterday. Just walking up and down the drive. To do "gardening" or to follow the robot mower.

 No visit to my friend today. He's busy and I ought to be.. That West Lawn won't prepare itself! 

 9.45 69F/21C. Sunshine. I have given the West Lawn an initial blast over at maximum cutting height. The Makita mower didn't like it at all. It kept being bogged down in hollows between mole hills. Or by the mole hills themselves. I am hot and tired. Morning coffee beckons. Watching myself struggling with the  mower on the security cameras. Only reinforces the battle to tame the uneven grass. Now I need to rake out the exposed earth of the molehills. There is plenty of bag compost lying around to fill in the hollows.

 Of course the Makita batteries are already flat. Makita R&D never tried to cut anything but a carefully prepared bowling green. Otherwise they would never have released this piece of crap onto a gullible public. 

  They wouldn't want to tell the public how the grass is constantly blocked from reaching the collection bag. How difficult it is to remove the grass basket/bag [every single time] due to the the IMperfectly placed crossbar.

 The image [top right] shows only about a third of the extent of the West Lawn. The posh title is fully intended to be ironic. Delusions of grandeur. White House ballroom with cheap, gold painted stickers. That sort of thing. 

 The image [left above] shows the hideous reality. The brambles I cleared are back. The vast wood pile of chestnut logs, to the right, is no less ugly. Bags of compost are lost in the even longer grass.

 While I was tipping the wheelbarrow full of grass cuttings over the back. I pulled out a lot of weeds from the gravel parking space. They came out quite easily if one doesn't tug or pull too hard. Grippy rubber gloves always help.

 After lunch I raked the molehills out. Using the back of the rake worked best for leveling. after breaking up the hill with the normal teeth/tines/whatever. 

 Dinner was the worst poached eggs on the planet on toast. Both yolks broke as they hot the boiling water.

 

  

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29.06.2026 And, repeat!

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 Monday 29th 63F/17C [6.20] Cooler today but some sunshine. With a maximum around 22C/72F. A gusty, westerly breeze increasing slowly. 73F/23C in the room. 64F/18C in the greenhouse. I used the heat pump to cool the house yesterday but sparingly. 

 Up at 6.50 after a fairly quiet night. Again with weird, highly realistic dreams. Still coughing.

 The grass is too wet to send the robot mower out for a first spin. The grass cuttings would stick like glue to the undersides of the mower. 

 I had already noticed that the robot isn't recognized by the security cameras as "interesting." Yet they can see a cat in the far distance and will always record it as a possible security issue.

 The neighbour's cat caught a mouse yesterday and was chomping on it in the drive. The security cameras saw the cat and recorded its movements for later Playback. While the robot was ten times the size on the computer monitor but was only recorded for later viewing. Simply because of the presence of the cat. I use individual memory cards for Playback. Recording 24x365 involves expensive equipment and large hard drives. Is this lack of interest in mowers an AI recognition algorithm issue in the camera software? 

11.00 71F/22C After a nap I carried a 2m high stepladder along the drive. To clip the overhanging branches. The robot mower was trundling up and down but we avoided each other. I have taller stepladders but I am already breathless and sweating. The view along the drive is already clearer.

 11.15 The sun has broken through briefly. I have lowered the mower's grass cutting height to 50mm. [2"] I have also trimmed my beard.

 12.45 Sunny and more breezy. I just deleted the original map. To let the mower discover the drive all over again. I have cleared a lot of the obstructions along the edges. Which existed before the first map was saved to the mower's memory. The mower seemed inhibited from crossing the bare gravel strips to reach these grassy verges. It also seemed to strongly favour this end of the drive. Quite timid in pushing to the far end.

 I am now using my Windows PC via the Phone Link app to my Android phone. So I can use the PC screen and keyboard in the Eufy mower app. No more peering at the microscopic text on the tiny screen! I can instantly recall the Eufy app via the icon on the Taskbar at the bottom of the PC screen. All the wile monitoring the robot's movements. Live on my 28" HD monitor. Beside my main 32" 4k monitor via my 4k security cameras. Isn't technology wonderful?'

 14.45 75F/24C. I have been back out trimming the verges. Having watched the robot work its way along the edges. It doesn't like overhanging  plants and will treat them as valuable. So it turns away and/or goes around. All part of its programming to avoid damage to specimen plants. It's no use just letting trimmings fall. The robot will demand you tidy up! 

 This is interesting: Overlapping circles are appearing at top right of the security camera display monitor. It is trying to make sense of the robot! Is it worth recording as a potential hazard? Not so far. We shall see. Whoopee! The robot's movements are now registering as interesting. So they are recorded as short videos onto the camera's memory cards. 

 These Eufy mowers can show what the cameras are seeing. So called Live [view] on the phone or PC screen. It is fun to see where the mower is going and what it sees. Educational too. The reason for its occasional hesitancy is clearly displayed. Often just the arch of an overhanging weed. The log says the mower has had 34 trips, covered 900m^2 in 11 hours. The improvement in the drive is quite amazing.

 There are a number of options in the menus. Arias to avoid. Areas where not to cut but may proceed. Another is to treat all areas as lawn. Even where the grass is yellow or there is gravel. I have now chosen that option to see if it helps on the mixed surfaces of the drive. 

 Next I have to start the really heavy work. Getting the West Lawn into a condition where the robot mower can actually operate. The grass is foolishly high and the ground all bumps and lumps from hundreds of mole hills. I strimmed it and ran the big mower over it. "Ran" being the wrong term for a combat, tank training ground!

 Dinner was sausages, a fried egg on toast, mushrooms and Heinz baked beans. 

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