Your day apart from gardening

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I went to a Barnes & Noble Bookstore and purchased a book on Queen Victoria of England.
 

Logan

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Seems that I've strained my stomach muscles yesterday when i was planting up the 3 tubs. I have a slight prolapsed bladder and found it very painful to spend a penny but a bit better today.
 
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I ordered a new oak shoe cupboard (eBay, of course), for the hall. The original was getting a bit shabby and only held six pairs. This one will hold twenty pairs on five shelves, (I've only got six in total!)
It arrived today. (not self-assembly). The packaging was excellent, but there was so much of it. It was a major job to get the cupboard out of the box. The old one plus the packaging filled the boot of my car when I took it all down to the tip.

Anyway, job done and it looks OK.

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The colour is not far off that of the bookcase I made for the hall, over twenty years ago, from bull-nosed hardwood window sills. It's excellent for shelves as it doesn't bend with the weight of a lot of books.
The wood alone would now cost over £200, it's risen so much in price, so I wouldn't entertain making something like that again.


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Day before yesterday. It was so much cooler and most of the day showery. Sadly, I can't take the heat anymore, so this days conditions suited me. Did some work in the greenhouse then staked my lilies as the previous rains had bent some over. Top dressed some of my container roses and lilies. Today Wednesday, ventured into the GH, watered and pottered about in the garden. Outdoor temp. 83f too hot for me. Since my cancer started. As sson as I start getting hot, I break out in hives and have to run for cover.
 
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Just a bit of routine maintenance on my tenor saxophone. It's a Japanese manufactured, Yamaha YTS 62.

I've always considered them a mechanical marvel, little changed in over 100 years. Lots of rods and levers required as it has twenty-two keys and you only have two hands!
Some keys are open and others closed in the "rest" position. They are operated by the four fingers, thumb and palm of the left hand and the four fingers and the side of the index finger of the right hand, the thumb just used to support the instrument. They are very tactile and ergonomically designed, so your fingers naturally rest on the keys when you hold the instrument.

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Maintenance is just brushing off any dust, light oiling of moving parts and dragging "powder papers" between the pads and the ports to remove any stickiness. Theres also a long brush you can use to dust the inside of the body. With the mouthpiece, you just need to remove the reed, change it if necessary, or wash it under a tap and give the body of the mouthpiece a good clean out.
A box of reeds can have "good and bad ones," though they all look the same, so you always nurse a good one.

A further job was to replace two missing rubber "stops," which prevent part of the lever of a key from banging against the body of the instrument when the key is depressed. A bit fiddly as they are a tiny bit of rubber not much more than about 2mm square. So it's job with a tiny bit of glue and tweezers.

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Quality branded saxophones are expensive to buy, mine has risen a third in price in the ten years I've had it, but are supplied with a cheap plastic mouthpiece. The manufacturers know that the talented players (I'm not one) will use one of thir own choice rather than that supplied, often using the same one they had on their previous instrument. Mouthpieces have different gaps between the tip of the mouthpiece and the reed, identified by a number, a personal choice.

This is mine, it's a metal Otto Link Super Tonemaster New York and I use a Rovner fabric ligature, I use Vandoren ZZ reeds.

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Reeds come in different strengths (thickness) too. The higher the number, the louder it will sound. There's also a choice of exactly how much of the reed you have protruding (if any) from the tip of the mouthpiece and where you position the ligature, the choice is endless.

To give you an idea how ridiculously expensive is this is to to have as a hobby, a box of five of these reeds is now around £20.

Yet the "in joke" amongst saxophone players is,

How can you recognise a professional saxophone player's car?

It's the one with the pizza delivery sign on the top.
 
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