As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

jamanda

Talking about education - my efforts with DD seem to be falling on deaf ears or I'm a grumpy old woman - or both. SIL is self employed so funds are lumpy. DD had no money for last few weeks and I've helped out. Last lot I lent her rather than gave her and told her it was savings for our holiday (2nd in about 18 years). She visited on Saturday as usual, no mention of repaying any of the money, and then went to meet her friend and her kids to go to the fair (because it is cheaper in the afternoon!)

My grumpy is about the fact that in spite of everything I have tried to teach her, she takes the kids to the fair instead of buying a few extra bits of food and building a store cupboard, which in all honesty I would rather she did than pay me anything back.

I know it is lovely to want the kids to have fun, but my view is that some security in the food cupboard would do them more good in the long run, and they aren't deprived of anything.

I haven't said anything...... but I could have!!

Now is it me/generation gap/priorities or what?

grandma247

Hippeechiq If you are planning to stay there a while you could buy one decent pyracantha and take cuttings. All you do is push them all into a large pot of compost or better still half compost half sand mixed together. Leave them outside. You will know when they have rooted because they will start to throw new leaves. They should be ready to transplant next may/june. I have some growing in a dustbin, a couple of sturdy storage boxes and a large plant pot, all were cuttings. The best is the dustbin and I think the roots need the depth. In your case I would be hiring a stone cutter saw and making a channel all down the side of that fence and putting my plants at two foot intervals.

jamanda

grandma247 wrote: »

Hippeechiq If you are planning to stay there a while you could buy one decent pyracantha and take cuttings. All you do is push them all into a large pot of compost or better still half compost half sand mixed together. Leave them outside. You will know when they have rooted because they will start to throw new leaves. They should be ready to transplant next may/june. I have some growing in a dustbin, a couple of sturdy storage boxes and a large plant pot, all were cuttings. The best is the dustbin and I think the roots need the depth. In your case I would be hiring a stone cutter saw and making a channel all down the side of that fence and putting my plants at two foot intervals.

Or even better, take some cuttings off someone else's plant if you know anyone.

hex2

It was neat powder Hippeechiq - it was BnQ 'cat off' stuff but when I read the destructions it was just garlic powder. Stank, but it broke their routine which was critical.

ETA we have big pyracantha hedges, and it doesnt seem to bother mine. My big fat stupid ginger sleeps underneath it.

grandma247

Might well keep the kids away. Those spikes hurt.

ChocClare

Just realised it's bank holiday weekend this weekend and I had better get moving to clear the last patch of garden before my *free* veg pack turns up. It worries me slightly that it was supposed to be dispatched mid-May, but I will hang on for a few more days before phoning up to see where it's got to.

In related news, DH went to work for this chap he knows who runs a letting agency in a rather unsalubrious part of town. This chap had just broken up his second drug factory in one of his rented flats in the last three months. All the plants were destroyed, but there was a vast quantity of compost to be dumped. So DH actually had the presence of mind to tell the chap to bring it round to ours and dump it at the bottom of the garden. He does have his moments of lucidity, bless him :T It's really good quality John Innes, so that's saved me lots of trips to B&Q to get all my potting done (no pun intended). I think DH is hoping there'll still be a few...er...seeds... dormant in the soil :rotfl:

In still more related news, I pinched a couple of cuttings from a beautiful black and purple fuschia at work today AT THE EXACT MOMENT that the gardener came round the corner. Not that he minded, it was just the timing! Anyway, he told me not to mess about with cuttings, as he'd potted up far too many of these fuschias, and he proceeded to give me an ENORMOUS plant, which was very sweet of him, and will fill a nice large gap in the garden. The cuttings, meanwhile, are in a glass of water on the windowsill as I couldn't locate my rooting powder. They will hopefully fill up a nice small gap in the garden.

DH had to feed his bees yesterday, as it's so dry that there isn't enough pollen in the flowers :eek: I know you chaps in Scotland don't want any more rain (and I'm not that great a fan, tbh), but we could really do with some here. I'm going to have to do a rain dance soon!

EstherH

Hi, I didn't mean to be controversial or upset anyone with what I said about grammar schools. I was just reading all about the Latin and universities and thought I only went to local comp and left at 16 with one o level and one CSE grade 1 equivalent to o level and a few lower grade CSE's that weren't worth a jot. But on here I don't feel inferior at all.

ChocClare

maryb wrote: »

Funny thing is Sister Pauline (the nun who taught me how to make a very simple fashionable dress) was a real terror during term time who unpicked everyone's sewing. So much so that I never got as far as learning how to insert a placket into my obligatory dirndl skirt so she must have been quite surprised when at 16 I suddenly wanted to learn how to make a dress. I think she was probably quite glad herself not to have to do things by the book that half term when there were about three of us left behind to rattle round the school. I have very happy memories of that weekend and of wearing the dress afterwards, yet when I mention it most people think they have to feel sorry for the poor little orphan

When I was in the second year (didn't take needlework after that), we had to make a skirt. There were two girls in my class who were very good basic seamstresses. They made their skirt in about two minutes' flat, wore it out at the weekend, then unpicked it and re-inserted their tailors tacks for the weekly Wednesday lesson.

I can still remember my friend Siobhan taking her skirt up to the needlework mistress to have the seams examined. Mrs Roper (in horrified, clipped, received pronunciation): "But Siobhan, where is your tacking? You surely don't mean to say you've machined this skirt after simply pinning it together?" And, holding up the offending article so that the rest of the class could share in her shock: "Gels, you must look at this. Tacking is essential. Otherwise you end up with this, which looks like something you might buy in"...(struggling to express the extent of her horror) "somewhere like Chelsea Girl."

Mind you, she always looked like she'd stepped out of the covers of Vogue (clotheswise, anyway ), and this at a time when schoolmistresses seemed to favour either a tweed skirt suit or a crimplene two-piece, so maybe she was right...:rotfl:

lotti379

Haha all this chat about "remembering pineapple upside-down pudding" makes me remember my own schooldays fondly!

It was one of the few things, along with rock cakes (for some odd reason) we were taught to make in home economics aged 12-13 at my girls' school... I'm 22 now. Our home ec teacher hadn't really moved with the times!

lostinrates

EstherH wrote: »

But on here I don't feel inferior at all.

Neither should you.

or anyone. (I'm different again in education, including a couple f specialist schools). People are all very much more similar than we realise. I'd hate to live in a world where my friends....who are from all different backgrounds....approached those things we all want/tink about from the same way. Wealth of experience comes in ALL backgrounds...regardless of where you were educated, lived, what you do for a living.


I've been MIA from OldStyle. TBH I'm struggling to get through the days since going away at the beginning of the month. I just can't catch up, I'm chasing my tale and spending chunks of day exhausted and feeling ouchy and ill.

Ugh, and moaning doesn't help! We've stared reputtying windows at the weekends. The frames are rotten through in lots of places, but hoping we can patch them up with car filler and paint for a couple of years.