A new 'tougher' thread... and so it continues

fuddle

prepareathome wrote: »

Fuddle maybe we should call a new thread the' make do and mend for tougher times thread'

I love that PAH Should we do it? Do you want to start it PAH? Do we need a board guides permission?

It might be a good idea to have a new start after the political stuff. So scared it'll be trolled and we'll lose it again. :cool::(

GreyQueen

Robson65 wrote: »

GQ - Just de-lurking to say I've found out what you can do with the chickweed from your allotment !

http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/chickweed-pakoras/

Robson

Thanks for that, hun, I've bookmarked it for future perusal. Perhaps I could feed half the city, I certainly have enough chickweed. I'm also intrigued by the mental image of rice by the bathtubful.

Heads up; L!dl has red peppers at 39p each this Sat and Sun so I shall have a few of those. Love peppers but don't like paying £1.79+ for 3 so tend to wait for bargains and go without the rest of the time.

It's now after 8 pm and the Famous Double Glazing Company are still working. They've been here since 8 am. OK, the majority have gone home but there's still some here. Hats off to you for your hard work, gents, but some of us would like to be able to have a little peace before bedtime............

The humidity is ghastly and something in my flat is smelling mildewey. Yuck. That's a first. I have all the windows open and will be doing a sniff-hunt for the culprit but I'm beggared if I know what it could be. Never had that before. I don't have carpets and I wash, dry and air one load of laundry at time, so can't be that (I've sniffed the laundry on the airer and it isn't that). What a delightful summer we're having......

Was listening to the news at 6 and totally shocked at the terrible weather big stretches of the county have been experiencing. Hope everyone here (and their families and pals) are safe and dry tonight.

I went to the lottie after w*rk and went to transplant the second batch of my indoor-reared runner beans. Grrrr! EVERY SINGLE ONE of the last batch of transplants has been eaten down to bare stalks. Totally dead. If I was a weepy sort, I would have cried for sheer frustration. As it is, I have made a solemn pledge; next drizzly day I shall make time to go on a mahoosive slughunt and spade as many of the darn things as I can find. It's war.:mad:

On the upside, my blackcurrant bush has ripening berries and I have picked a handful and also some strawbs and will have them a little later. I had an omelette for tea which contained the snapped-off stems which the onions are sprouting (they're trying to set seed and you don't want this to happen). So they have to be snapped off anyway so I thought I'd chop them finely and eat them. It was a success.

I went to look for my red onions (I have reds and whites) as they seem to have disappeared. They have had their stems eaten down to the bulbs. I expect it was the slugs again, although I have never known them to touch onions before. You couldn't make it up. Does anyone know if they'll canniabalise each other if they run out of my veggies? It's my fondest hope at the moment. Possibly my only hope.:(:p:(

Oh, and my broad beans are chest-high and starting to set pods but they have developed blackfly. The ladybirds are doing their bit so I shall just let them get on with it. A few losses to aphids are a lot less worrisome than the blinking slugs........

The times we're in are calling to mind the early 1980s for me. I'm seeing the same shell-shocked casualties, those people with good careers and stable employment who thought that unemployment was something that happened to other people. People who could be dismissed as f e c k less idlers, not people like themselves.

It's painful to see how quickly many a comfortable "middle-class" (whatever that might mean) life can come unravelled. It makes me nervy, although I don't have a profession or anything fancy, it's still my life and I don't want it to deterioate. With several chronic health problems which may worsen at any time, I'm always scared that I may slip from being employable into dependancy on the state.

All we can do is look to the essentials and forget the flim-flam which is offered up to distract us. This forum, indeed this whole site, is a wonderful example of how people, by pooling their skills and know-how, can become a part of something which is greater than ourselves.

Grandma, Mum does what you do with yarn, albeit in knitting rather than crochet. She has several knitting machines which she has been going to get back into use since before I graduated (more than a quarter of a century ago ) and a loft full of yarn, a lot of it coned for the knitting machines and it tends to be 4-ply. She'll knit 2 x 4-ply to make a double-knit equivalent (it's slightly thicker than a DK but not enough to make a DK pattern unusable). Or she'll knit even 3 to an Aran pattern. You can get some superb subtle colour combinations like that.

Another thing she's also doing with the stash is combing two colours into the same sweater by means of stripes or by having the body in one shade and the sleeves in another. This is because the stash has quantities of yarn left over from earlier projects which are too much to discard but too little to make a garment.

Mum's yarn stash is a family joke but she's laughing now that yarn prices have gone up and the stuff she got for a pittance is sitting there ready for use. I suspect it will more than see her out. Occasionally, we go prospecting up there; it's amazing what you can find. I call it Domestic Archaeology, and it's a very MSE rainy-day pastime.:D

One thing I will say to anyone who is looking at coned yarn, say at a boot fair or a c.s. and thinking that it looks/ feels a little bit odd compared to yarn in balls; it's oiled to help it run through the machine. When you wash it, it will bulk up a bit and lose that funny feel, so don't be discouraged.

Well, I need to wander across the web and see what "my" sites (the ones I check in with regularly) are up to.

Have a good evening, peeps, and a sweet night's rest. GQ x

Byatt

GQ, I think it's a losing battle with slugs but have you thought of having a mini pond using half a barrel or half of something like half a barrel? Back in the day I had a small pond using said half barrel and I then acquired a frog or two (they became squatters) and slugs were a lot less. In fact a plant pot would do as anywhere there is water and weeds, a frog/toad appears.

I am thinking of turning to drink, if it wasn't for my DD I wouldn't just be thinking about it. :eek::o My plan for my dotage is to commit a crime punishable by prison and then I will have my 3 square meals, and the chance to get an MA...I'm only half joking. :cool:

L!dl also had wall maps of The World and Europe, for £2.49, for any decoupagers out there.

GreyQueen

Byatt, I have a lottie which is alive with frogs and toads. Disturb at lease one of them every time I garden. Trouble is the slugs are bigger than the frogs at the mo and the foodsupply is grossly-outcompeting the predators.

Having a wee pond is a long term ambition for when I finally get to grips with that green hell which is The Rough (the scruffy bit at the top). One day, there will be no couch grass, nor brambles, nor mics piles of carp, there will be peacefulness. An arbour. Climbing roses. Night-scented stock. A small pond with a lilypad and a frog.............I can see it all so clearly..........

(Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!)

OMG, those flying pigs nearly got me that time.........:rotfl:

Byatt

GreyQueen wrote: »

Byatt, I have a lottie which is alive with frogs and toads. Disturb at lease one of them every time I garden. Trouble is the slugs are bigger than the frogs at the mo and the foodsupply is grossly-outcompeting the predators.

Having a wee pond is a long term ambition for when I finally get to grips with that green hell which is The Rough (the scruffy bit at the top). One day, there will be no couch grass, nor brambles, nor mics piles of carp, there will be peacefulness. An arbour. Climbing roses. Night-scented stock. A small pond with a lilypad and a frog.............I can see it all so clearly..........

(Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!)

OMG, those flying pigs nearly got me that time.........:rotfl:

Oh dear, I am always great at useless advice! :cool::rotfl:

GreyQueen

Byatt wrote: »

Oh dear, I am always great at useless advice! :cool::rotfl:

Never useless, hun, not for a moment. I'm all for letting nature take care of itself (I'm an organic gardener after all) but sometimes there just ain't enough amphibians on the job, that's all.

Nope, I think it's down to me and the business end of a spade deployed with murderous intent (and I felt plenty murderous when I saw my poor dead beans, believe you me) which is 100% organic and has the advantage of being good exercise.

I suspect it's utlimately futile as the lotties on either side of me are derelict and 4 feet tall in grass which is probably full of slugs and snails. So they'll just commute across into mine.

Wanders off, fantasing about surrounding lottie with moat of slug repellants. This is what gardening reduces you to. At least I'm enjoying the strawbs and blackcurrants right now.

thriftwizard

my hubby had a letter this morning from JC saying that they say he is well enough to get "..limited employment".Well how did they work that one out when they havent called him in for a interview....Poor !!!!!! is wheelchair bound,severe epilepsy,with 24/7 care, carers come in,cognitive probs, severe tiredness due to haemmorage ,left side hemiplegia and blind....and few other less severe health problems that go with the stroke........Im fuming.

:eek:

Shegar, I am horrified for you & your DH... I knew it was bad but that is just appalling. I hope there is some kind of appeal possible? I too am an ex-civil-servant & I'm gobsmacked to hear of things like this - what the 'eck are they playing at?

oldtractor

I've just seen the future. A programme on BBC iplayer about Greece. Frightening.http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01kbz15/Coming_Here_Soon_Greece_Bust_and_Broken/

Mrs_Chip

Have you tried Slug Gone pellets GQ?

These are wool pellets that expand to form a nasty scratchy mat around plants. I used them for my runners and not one got noshed.
Not exactly cheap, but search around t'interweb for best value. Mebbe club together with other allotmenteers next year to buy in bulk?

Cat501

thriftwizard wrote: »

:eek:

Shegar, I am horrified for you & your DH... I knew it was bad but that is just appalling. I hope there is some kind of appeal possible? I too am an ex-civil-servant & I'm gobsmacked to hear of things like this - what the 'eck are they playing at?

I agree, it's horrific This is one of the worst cases I've heard, and I've heard about plenty, although they are mostly after ATOS medicals (and don't start me on them) If you can stomach it, look up the Black Triangle Campaign.

Between that and a few other things my FB news feed is constant rolling feed of misery and horror