Introduction
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. That famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has never felt more relevant than here on River Island.
Alas, we are in the midst of a mini drought—or what they used to call a long hot summer. Cassius The Clay-Pit dried up completely despite numerous excavations, including a sizable extension which, in the fullness of time, will make a very pleasant pond for my various aquatic and amphibious friends… and anything else that wishes to get splashy!
This is a video log of those very real struggles for clean water—a tale of buckets, digging, and the relentless sun.
Part I: The Struggle
Part II: The Resolution
Conclusion
The clay-pit will eventually fill—the pond extension will become a haven for dragonflies, frogs, and perhaps the odd heron. But the memory of this mini drought, of carrying buckets under the scorching sun, of that paradoxical feeling of being surrounded by water yet utterly parched, will remain.
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" may be a line from two centuries ago, but it's never been more pertinent. Here, we're learning to work with what we have, to capture the rain when it comes, and to appreciate every single drop.
The rhyme lives on. The peasant persists.
Made With Love ❤️ And Open Source
This post and its accompanying videos were created using fantastic free and open-source tools:
- Zed Editor : Clean, fast writing and editing.
- Blender 3D Studio : Video editing.
- GIMP : Image processing and thumbnails.
- HandBrake : Video transcoding and processing.
All open-source, all brilliant. If you're documenting your own projects, I can't recommend these tools enough.
Thanks for reading — stay hydrated out there!