Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Monday 17 June 2013

Hortillery & Articulture...

...or something like that.

Big 'uns

Little 'uns
It's taken a while to get everything ready (because artillery is fiddly), but my ECW armies finally have guns. In fact they are rather over-supplied now, but there is an element of future planning in there (he lied). I still need to get a couple of big bombarding guns and a couple of mortars, since you can't do the ECW without sieges, but this will certainly keep me going in the meantime. A dozen new guns with crews are going into the boxes tonight - very good.

Topic 2

In the garden, Nature rears her formidable head once again. Last October I posted here to express our astonishment that our half-hearted attempt to grow Edelweiss from seed produced a single fine bloom. This year we didn't know what to expect. Are they annuals? We had no idea.

Well they have come up fine and strong, and we have the beginnings of a marvellous show. Unbelievable - and this is despite the environment in our garden being wrong in a number of ways:

1. Next to the sea - salty air and high humidity

2. Wrong type of soil

3. About 1000 metres lower than their preferred habitat

4. Permanently overcast, near-Arctic climate

We can only assume our Edelweiss don't know any better. Here they are, anyway - alive and well and living in entirely the wrong country. We hope our experiment is not endangering our Scottish ecosystem...

Bless my homeland for ever - erm - just a minute...


Late Edit...

Thanks to John P and Ross for comments - here is a relevant clip I found, which shows how the Sappers might have looked in action. It is a surprisingly long clip...


Strangely, all suitable clips I could find apart from this one were filmed in Oregon. Cultures obviously can be transplanted, like wildflowers.


5 comments:

  1. Congratulations on both successes.

    The Edelweiss are quite lovely. Are the Bavarian hats on the gunners a tribute?

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    1. Thanks John - yes - I guess so. If Uncle Marcus Hinton says they wore these hats, and buff coats and Lederhosen, we should just nod our heads and yodel.

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  2. I was just going to say how nice the gunners looked but now thanks JP I have this image of the gunners singing as they bob up and down and spin about while carrying out elaborately choreographed gun drill. Thanks John. -Ross

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    Replies
    1. I've added a YouTube clip to develop this idea...

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  3. Struth! - can you imagine the insurance claim for the damage to the ballroom floor? "Describe the accident as completely as you can, in your own words". - Lou

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