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Daydream fund challenge part 4
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Just poking my head in to see if I can join in?
Currently living in the town centre, but getting married this Autumn to the lovely OH, who is from the nether regions of Dartmoor.
He proposed to me a week after we'd been down there visiting his family. We'd been sitting on the wall beside the leat at about midnight and I'd asked him why he'd stayed in the Big Smoke after university when there was all *this* to go back to. He answered '...I don't know...' and I knew then that he wanted to go home. So I told him that if he wanted to, I'd be behind him 100%, specially as I'm not really an urban person, considering that I spent most of my time at my Grandfather's as a kid anyway.
Not sure if that made him decide on proposing, but maybe it helped...
Anyhow, we're skinter than skint, but at some point maybe something will come up that's affordable to rent (seems like the rental prices are about a third of what we pay here and I don't earn anywhere near enough for a mortgage with houseprices as they are), available long term and has enough land to be able to feed the two of us for some of the year, space for some fruit trees, a wildlife pond and two or three chickens. Would still need to work, but a mixture of permanent part time and some music teaching should pay the bills.
In the meantime, I'm faffing around in the city centre postage stamp growing largely weeds, veg and pollinator attracting plants. Which has made the postage stamp Bee City Central.
But I can still daydream about being able to breathe properly. And see the stars at night again.I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll0 -
Of course you can join in, Jojo. Many people do, but only the select few stay the distance! I suppose we are a disparate lot, but we all share the dream of having a plot of land and a bit of self-sufficiency, real or still in a stage of development....
And some do other stuff, like making rather tatty houses more habitable, because often, if land is an objective, a rather imperfect house might have to come with it.
I'm near Dartmoor.....and Exmoor. I can see both from my house, but not at the same time, of course. Devon is a great county, and if I'm honest, that's because it also lies alongside Cornwall and Somerset, so an hour or so's drive opens up a huge number of different landscapes, from the flat wetlands to the tors, or wild Atlantic beaches to sheltered Channel coves.
I'd say go for it!
Here, not much to report, except the hottest day of the year so far.....0 -
...
So while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
It's what we need in here, some young love! I think we cover the "love" side quite well, just it's all covered up in wrinkles and bruises!
Good luck with the enterprise - marriage and smallhold!
Oh, my latest bungle? All those wire and barbed wire fences I'd taken down? Didn't clear the wire in time and, with the rain, grass and weeds have grown through them. Loading it all into the trailers should have taken an easy couple of hours, now it's a hard day, and I'll need a metal detector to be sure I have all the fragments.
Idiot of the week award!0 -
Not that young, unfortunately!
Small children on their way home from school regularly rampage through the front garden and on/over the wall - just heard one particularly small and noisy one saying they were 'just going to get some flowers' to a parent, so that'll be a few less bits of lavender or violas out there. I hope none of the others copy this one.
Bit sad, isn't it, that little children have to raid a scrappy block paved front path to have flowers, isn't it? (I'm studiously ignoring the irritation that the parents don't seem to feel the need to stop them).
In OH's village, he says there was a witch's cottage on the way back from the primary school that had lavender and herbs, etc, all over the front garden - I wonder if that started because of small children going in there and picking flowers?
I must look out my old Halloween party costume...I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll0 -
Poison ivy?0
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Poison ivy?
The thousand or so combined masses of Honey, Bumble, Mason and solitary bees, plus assorted stripey cousins will put paid to some of it once the lavender blossom comes out in about a week.
Maybe a tape recording of me calling 'Fly, fly my pretties!' would help? Or a sign on the wall saying 'Stray children will be caught and eaten'?
The Idiot Cat doesn't seem to help with the witch story, unfortunately - when he's asleep on the windowsill, he has a mini fan club of four year olds that bash on the window to get his attention.
Wandered out the back to check on the veggies to find that some of my chard and bean leaves have disappeared overnight. But the bee numbers are increasing greatly, going by the flypasts as I was transplanting some more into their spaces.
I did think about keeping bees when I have some space, but not only are the bumbles/solitaries more useful in pollination, I'm not fond of honey and I don't think I would be comfortable with taking honey and leaving them to cope with mostly sugar water over winter.
Just received yet another packet of wildflower seeds through the post, this time from Friends of the Earth. I think I'll chuck 'em in the dried out window basket out the back - still don't know how I acquired a mini cornfield in there over the last few years, but it's down to just a couple of plants this year, so I might as well risk the packet containing giants like wild carrot and viper's bugloss (which grows really big when it isn't grazed down by sheep or rabbits. And prickly) in there.I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll0 -
hi jojo.... welcome
I used to live in an old gatehouse surrounded by woods.. it was almost derelict when I went there and an old man lived there who [trying not to be unkind] resembled a wild looking tramp [one eye too] which according to locals ,their children were scared of....
so along comes me !
still a bit wild looking but with 2 eyes
as I kept various unusual animals [foxes, owls, a very large pig...etc ] I got the nickname "the witch in the woods"...
but to counteract any "fear" I decorated the whole house that xmas in white lights, the roof line , the great wall/rails that surrounded me and trees etc... I lit it up like blackpool and the kids loved it, visited all the animals and I was accepted as weird but not scary ....:rotfl:0 -
hi jojo.... welcome
I used to live in an old gatehouse surrounded by woods.. it was almost derelict when I went there and an old man lived there who [trying not to be unkind] resembled a wild looking tramp [one eye too] which according to locals ,their children were scared of....
so along comes me !
still a bit wild looking but with 2 eyes
as I kept various unusual animals [foxes, owls, a very large pig...etc ] I got the nickname "the witch in the woods"...
but to counteract any "fear" I decorated the whole house that xmas in white lights, the roof line , the great wall/rails that surrounded me and trees etc... I lit it up like blackpool and the kids loved it, visited all the animals and I was accepted as weird but not scary ....:rotfl:
Foxes and owls? Amazing. OH raised a wounded Jackdaw when he was little, but the most I've ever done was run a mini wildlife hospital in the back garden when I was a nipper. Mostly irate pigeons, the occasional starling, a slow worm, concussed sparrows, that kind of thing.
I've just got the two cats now (and they were purely because [strike]I'm a mug[.strike] I felt sorry for them), and had a grumpy hamster for several months after it escaped from somewhere for the Idiot Cat to bring it in to show me. I'd love to be able to look after something, but the odds on anything turning up is fairly limited here. I do think of the leafcutters and masons nesting in the garden as 'my' bees, though.
I'd love to live somewhere like that. And the bright white streak that's appeared in my hair straight out of my crown since I was 21 would definitely help the image. As would my intention when these two move on to the great petshop in the sky to get a black kitten.I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll0 -
Oh, my latest bungle? All those wire and barbed wire fences I'd taken down? Didn't clear the wire in time and, with the rain, grass and weeds have grown through them.
Growth at this time of year is amazing. The sheep, currently next door, are not keeping-up with the acre they're on, so if we're not hay-making, we'll need around 50 of them shortly, after I've zapped the main crop of weeds. Thistles are done, but the docks are well behind this year, and I'm due to hit the bracken too, as it's 3 or 4 years since they were last targeted.
On my patrols, I've been finding quite a few litre beer bottles, which is annoying. I know who's throwing them, but at least he isn't pulling-up my freshly-planted hedging, as that's become too tricky. This is probably to make me reconsider laying the rest of the road hedge over the next few years. I'm supposed to think the local yoofs are chucking them, which indeed they might, if they had access to the premium brands and all drank at exactly the same rate on their way home from town, but I'm sure they don't! They're more likely to have cans of White Lightning, or similar.
I'm afraid I have to report that the badger didn't make it. Found what's left by the stream yesterday.
Speaking of streams, I was down at the river last night. trying a method I'd thought of for fishing a fly on spinning tackle to reach the places I'd not tried last time due to bushes and trees. It worked, but only a couple of 8" trout were fooled. Still, that's 2 more than I had on the last outing!:rotfl:
I put them back. :A
Conservatory co. have arranged to return at the end of June.0 -
Had a casualty this afternoon. Kid fell off the wall with a loud thud onto concrete. Wailing and keening like a banshee. Mum picks her up, spends five minutes calming her down, then forces her to walk on my wall whilst she screams that she doesn't want to ever again.
Idiot.
If I could get away with the witch thing here, I'd go for it. But it's an area with a large number of very religious people from, let's say, Non-traditional Churches held in old office buildings, led by Pastors rather than vicars or priests. They'd probably try to burn me at the stake - and I rather inconveniently work at a church school in the area that their older kids go to - so any notions of witchcraft would get me fired.
I wonder whether planting things like henbane/hemlock/digitalis/the previously recommended poison ivy/aconite/wormwood and suchlike would get the hint across subtly? Unfortunately, the besom we used to have was nicked and the badger skull I was incredibly proud of (and used to leave in the front porch of my old place to keep away Witnesses and Mormons) was ceremoniously buried.
Oooh, that's a thought. A skull sculpture on the windowsill. You can get plaster skull replicas online. And they aren't weird/satanic, they're just sculptural art works.
I'm off to Amazon...I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll0
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