Magnetic Potatoes?

Celeste and Pip, and Ian and Patty and I spent the morning laying grouting around the potatoes in the front path at the CTC.

Celeste has devised a way of using PET drink bottles as "piping tubes", much as one would use to do fancy icing on a cake. She adapted the lids of drink bottles, to hold those pointy nozzles normally used for tubes of glue, and silicone etc. (You know, the tubes which are much regarded by plumbers and builders, and home handy-persons.) Well Celeste managed to adapt those nozzles to fit the tops of the PET bottles. That means the bottles could be used as refillable dispensers for the grouting material.

Celeste "piping the grouting in".
The grouting is an extremely fine form of cement powder. The powder is so fine that it flows like a liquid. So we could fill the bottles, put the lid back on, and go around squeezing this grouting powder (dry) in between the "potatoes" and then use fine brushes to disperse the material evenly, and to brush off any excess powder from the tops of the potatoes. A very neat system indeed.

Already it is looking very good, with a dark chocolate brown colour, which brings out the soft colours in the "potatoes".

Finally Celeste sprayed the area of the grouting with a fine spray of water. From tests which Celeste has already done, this will allow the powered grout to absorb the water, and harden into a true concrete grouting between all the potatoes.

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Pip brushing it in

Magnetic Potatoes?
We were speculating that the potatoes must have some special magnetic power, as we were being buzzed by the SCA's "Remote Sensing" plane, with its trailing "magnetometer". This plane is apparently doing a survey for the SCA looking for "magnetic anomalies", which is how they can trace Fault Lines and other geological features within the local rock base.

Although I cannot help feeling that Roberson is being spied on, I have to believe that the more information that the SCA's scientists have the better off we all are, when it comes to determining the safety, or otherwise of the proposal to drain the Kangaloon Aquifer.

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