Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Fifty-two

LewesWildlife
, 08 May 2020
Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Fifty-two

As the world shuts down around us the uplifting role that wildlife plays in our lives becomes more vital than ever. So, for my own sanity as much as anything, I’m going to keep a daily diary of what I find around my garden.  Photograph the wildlife you can see from your window or in your garden and post your pictures on the ‘Sussex Wildlife Trust Nature Table’ page.  

Day Fifty-two

Way back in March, 57 days ago, I made a short video of my back garden.

(You can see what my garden used to look like here.)

It struck me yesterday that things have changed so much in the garden in that time that it's time for an update.

The first flowers are coming into bloom in the wildflower meadow, the pond looks healthier and I've gained some bee hotels and a compost heap. Not too sure my shaved hair dispenser has been appreciated by the birds though.

I've made another short film of the back garden for you to watch on the Bank Holiday. 


I wrote about my unusually shaped pond a few days ago (here). People seemed interested in this strange-shaped garden feature. In fact one lady even said she'd pay to come and look at it. So if you watch today's video I'm sure some of you will be sad to see the vulgar pond is hardly visible anymore. It is now overgrown and abandoned and it's been condemned. There's a story behind this. 


The Dark Secret of the Unusual-shaped Pond

A few years back we were restoring the pond in the autumn. We trimmed around the edges to reveal its suggestive shape and I was tasked with clearing the pond itself which had become clogged with pond weed. As I mentioned a few days ago, the pond also had a fountain feature and we thought it would be nice to get this working again. The fountain was powered by a submerged electrical water pump at the bottom of the pond.

2012 05 15 09.24.16
The pond before 'the incident''.

Removing the overgrown pond plants was really tricky. It was a thick tangled mass and in the end I had to resort to taking a hacksaw to cut the thick roots. I couldn't see what I was doing (as I was sawing in the black water) and I inadvertently sawed through the water pump's power cable. This now meant I had both my hands in a pool of water along with a sawn-through electrical cable (with its wires exposed) which lead straight to a plug in the kitchen's wall socket. I had no idea.

I wanted to see if the fountain still worked so, with my hands still underwater I yelled to my wife to turn the power on. In the kitchen she pressed the wall socket's 'on' switch and...

A year or so previously an electrician had come and looked at the electricity circuits in our old 1960's bungalow. He declared half of the electrics 'illegal' and noted that the whole place was a 'death-trap'. So we had paid him to Blencowe-proof the house and he installed every possible safety feature and circuit breaker just in case at any point in the future I decided to stick both hands in a pool of water alongside an exposed live wire. 

So, Clare pressed the wall socket's 'on' switch and the entire bungalow's circuits tripped. The house lights turned off, the washing machine stopped and the record player's turntable slowed down. The music silenced mid-song.

On my knees in the garden I pulled out a severed cable from the black water and stared at the three exposed wires. I felt a chill as I realised how close I was to electrocution. Each time I see the pond it reminds me that I almost died right there. I think of friends gathering each year in the garden, dressed in black and laying wreaths alongside this erotically-shaped pond in memory of me. That's probably why we've let it become overgrown, the bindweed and brambles hiding the memories of that (almost) fateful day.  



Leave a comment

Comments

  • Dilys:

    Thank you for showing us your garden again, your dark secret has really put me off paying to see your pond, so I withdraw my offer! Glad you’re still alive and kicking.

    08 May 2020 13:26:00

  • Ginny-Vic:

    There really are two extremes in this entry; the uplifting progression in the garden and then the shocking pond story. I think I need to watch the garden video again to recover. P.S earlier my niece told me she’d learnt how to pigeon and then demonstrated how you do it. I wish I could speak pigeon. It would be so nice to chat to them and find out where they’ve been! Have a lovely day!

    08 May 2020 15:26:00

  • Christine Dafter:

    Wow. What changes you have made in your garden. You mentioned your spider free greenhouse. It reminded me of a tiny spider I found in my kitchen sink a few days ago, and have finally identified it as a Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus) it says in my book. I have never seen one of these before, and wonder how it ever came to be in the kitchen sink! At least I didn’t electrocute myself scooping it out of the water !! Keep up the good work Michael, and stay alive !

    08 May 2020 18:17:00

  • Vince Massimo:

    Your stories are a joy to read.
    As famous last words go, “turn the power on” is right up there with “don’t worry, it’s not loaded.”

    09 May 2020 11:00:00

  • Lisa:

    Very glad I read about the incident first, so I could end on the more positive thing – watching the video. Since I don’t have a garden, it was great to see before the before and after…or should I say middle view – I’m already looking forward to seeing the wildflower meadow later in the season. Did I miss how the greenhouse became spider-free? I wanted to find out just how much you’d exaggerated the size of your nemesis ;-)

    09 May 2020 15:22:00

  • Jane:

    My father in law, 30 years previously had completely rewired our 450 year old house. I was weeding our front pond and cutting through some knotty bog bean roots with secateurs, underwater. The pond fountain had a cable the exact thickness of the roots…. here I am surprisingly still alive but the secateurs died, the blades useless because of two large semi circular holes! Terrific blogs Michael. Always uplifting.

    10 May 2020 12:00:00

Time Δ Debug Message - Perch Runway 3.2
1783206477.66170 [906] SELECT p.pagePath, pr.routePattern, pr.routeRegExp, p.pageTemplate, pr.routeOrder, s.settingValue AS siteOffline FROM swt_pages_staging p LEFT JOIN swt_page_routes pr ON p.pageID=pr.pageID LEFT JOIN swt_settings s ON s.settingID='siteOffline' UNION SELECT NULL AS pagePath, pr2.routePattern, pr2.routeRegExp, pr2.templatePath AS pageTemplate, pr2.routeOrder, NULL AS siteOffline FROM swt_page_routes pr2 WHERE templateID!=0 ORDER BY routeOrder ASC, pagePath ASC
1783206477.73360.0719Matched route: news/[slug:s]
1783206477.73370.0001Server address: 216.73.217.177
1783206477.73380Using master page: /templates/pages/blog/post.php
1783206477.73380Page arguments: 
Array
(
    [0] => /news/corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two
    [s] => corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two
    [1] => corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two
)
1783206477.73410.0003 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.7350.001 [86] SELECT DISTINCT settingID, settingValue FROM swt_settings WHERE userID=0
1783206477.73860.0035 [1] SELECT locationID FROM swt_shop_tax_locations WHERE locationIsHome=1 LIMIT 1
1783206477.73930.0007INSERT INTO swt_shop_cart(memberID,locationID,currencyID,cartPricing,cartProperties) VALUES(NULL,'1',47,'standard','[]')
1783206477.7760.0367 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=22631372
1783206477.77670.0007 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=22631372
1783206477.77730.0006 [nil] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_sales WHERE saleFrom<='2026-07-04 23:07:00' AND saleTo>'2026-07-04 23:07:00' AND saleActive=1 AND saleDeleted IS NULL ORDER BY saleOrder ASC
1783206477.77860.0012 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-04 23:07:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 10
1783206477.78570.0072 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1783206477.78640.0006 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postID=2136 AND postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-04 23:07:00'
1783206477.78750.0011 [13] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_sections ORDER BY sectionTitle ASC
1783206477.78840.0009 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blogs ORDER BY blogTitle ASC
1783206477.78920.0008 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_categories WHERE catID=33 LIMIT 1
1783206477.79010.001Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783206477.79040.0002 [162] SELECT catID, catPath FROM swt_categories
1783206477.79150.0011 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-04 23:07:00' AND postSlug='corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two'
1783206477.83840.0469Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783206477.83880.0004 [250] SELECT country, countryID FROM swt_shop_countries WHERE countryActive=1 ORDER BY country ASC
1783206477.84120.0024Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
1783206477.84150.0002 [1] SELECT regionID, regionTemplate, regionPage, regionRev AS rev FROM swt_content_regions WHERE regionKey='Banner image' AND (regionPage='/news/post' OR regionPage='*')
1783206477.84210.0006 [nil] SELECT * FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, c.regionID, idx.pageID, c.itemJSON, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_content_index idx JOIN swt_content_items c ON idx.itemID=c.itemID AND idx.itemRev=c.itemRev AND idx.regionID=c.regionID JOIN swt_content_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev AND idx2.indexKey='_order' WHERE ((idx.regionID=104 AND idx.itemRev=0)) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev ) as tbl GROUP BY itemID, pageID, itemJSON, sortval, regionID ORDER BY sortval ASC
1783206477.84350.0014 [82] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageDepth >=0 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783206477.84630.0028 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.85030.0041 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783206477.8530.0026Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template.html
1783206477.8530 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85360.0006 [4] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85410.0005 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85630.0022 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85690.0006 [7] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85730.0004 [9] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783206477.85940.0022 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' OR pageSortPath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.86020.0007 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageHidden=0 AND pageNew=0 AND pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition
1783206477.86210.002 [1] Using template: /templates/navigation/breadcrumbs.html
1783206477.86250.0004Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783206477.86270.0002 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='3' LIMIT 1
1783206477.86350.0007Using template: /templates/blog/author.html
1783206477.86390.0004 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='corona-wildlife-diary-day-fifty-two')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-04 23:07:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 1
1783206477.86590.002 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1783206477.86630.0004 [1] Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783206477.86840.0021Using template: /templates/blog/comment_form.html
1783206477.86930.0009 [6] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_comments WHERE 1=1 AND postID=2136 AND commentStatus='LIVE' ORDER BY FIELD(webmentionType, 'like', 'repost', 'comment', NULL) ASC, commentDateTime ASC
1783206477.93630.067 [6] Using template: /templates/blog/comment.html
1783206477.93820.0019Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783206477.93840.0002 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='3' LIMIT 1
1783206477.93910.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/what-we-do' OR pageSortPath='/what-we-do' LIMIT 1
1783206477.940.0009 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-002' LIMIT 1
1783206477.94060.0006 [7] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-002%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783206477.94260.0021 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.94320.0006 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783206477.9450.0018 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783206477.94610.0011 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1783206477.94670.0005 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1783206477.94710.0004 [38] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783206477.94920.0022 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.94970.0005 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783206477.95160.0019 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783206477.95460.003 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/visit' OR pageSortPath='/visit' LIMIT 1
1783206477.96690.0122 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-004' LIMIT 1
1783206477.96910.0022 [30] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-004%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783206477.97580.0068 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.98310.0072 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783206477.98530.0022 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783206477.98760.0023 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1783206477.98830.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1783206477.98880.0005 [11] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783206477.99090.0021 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783206477.99140.0005 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783206477.99320.0018 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783206477.99490.0017Request time: 0.3345
1783206477.99490Process time: 0.3343
1783206477.99490Memory: 1.6519