Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Great to see you back posting again, craigy. My cousin and his wife and kiddie are just back from Turkey ,they go every year and just love it. You have a fine old time and forget about the rest of us for the duration.

Aha, see Short_bird beat me to it; it's in my library so may be in yours if you're not wanting to shell out.

This morning I walked to the allotment. Five mins after I arrived, there was a thunderstorm with torrential rain. Birds were plummeting out of the sky and screeching into the huge lilac bush to take shelter. One moment the rain was right-to-left, the next left-to-right. And pause after ten, cue hot sunshine for ten, rinse and repeat. After an hour and a half of weeding then running into the shed for shelter, I grew weary of the melodrama and came home.

When I touched the soil it was actually hot and with this rain every weed known to womankind will be germinating. Taters are looking good and I accidentally disturbed the baulk at one point and there was a tater this big (holds thumb and second finger together to enclose a rough circle -I have big paws, btw). I cooed with delight and carefully covered it over again.

Went into a Liddly and added some more preps to the stash; one each of puree, passata and salmon. Cannot imagine how that choklit fell in there, tho.........:rotfl:

maryb

LOL Grey Queen, read the second item in this piece and be thankful that you don't garden down under!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/g8/10120697/The-G8-summit-will-discover-how-poverty-can-be-the-bedrock-of-prosperity.html

thriftwizard

Oh dear, MaryB, I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of hot pink slugs, and willing to bet that chickens'd eat them too. But I'm absolutely horrified by the last item, about neonicotinoids & birds... :eek:

pineapple

There is far too much fun and frivolity on this thread so just to depress us (and especially the gardeners)......
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/14/uk-weather_n_3439346.html?1371187456&ncid=webmail1
According to Piers Corbyn of Weather Action we're heading for another ice age. Nick Abbot is discussing the weather on LBC at this moment.
Frankly if I was younger and richer I'd be heading off somewhere like New Zealand!
As for today we've had warm sunshine alternating with torrential rain, thunder and hailstones! I've got the flippin fire on
And I might yet take a hot water bottle to bed to warm the old tootsies :eek:

GreyQueen

maryb wrote: »

LOL Grey Queen, read the second item in this piece and be thankful that you don't garden down under!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/g8/10120697/The-G8-summit-will-discover-how-poverty-can-be-the-bedrock-of-prosperity.html

:eek:

"On a good morning, says Murphy, "You can see hundreds of slugs".

OMG, the man's a lunatic. There's nothing good about bright pink slugs up to 8 inches long (there's smutty joke potential in there; please don't). Ewww!! I've avoided Australia on general principles, my principle being that I loathe creepy-crawlies and they seem to have far too many of them, but that takes the biscuit.

maryb, pollen types from mud cores taken from ancient Irish lake beds reveal that the climate formerly went from temperate to an Ice Age in less than 20 years. Nearer 10 years. Scarey stuff.

Right, going out for a while to shop for specs. Which ranks about up there with shoe shopping on my personal joy-scale. Why cannot all retail be conducted in the sweetie aisle of a discount store, we ask ourselves.

daz378

ice ages are supposed to occur every 150 million years and the last one only ended 15000 years ago ... there was a mini ice age in 1700(paintings of people ice skating on the Thames) although we could be hitting cold spell hopefully not a mini ice age http://unmaskingevolution.com/11-iceages.htm

thriftwizard

Possibly it's worth remembering James Lovelock's original idea in the Gaia theory, that everything that influences the overall climate would attempt to re-balance the biosphere, so by pumping vast amounts of something that would tend towards warming into the atmosphere, we're forcing it to try to get cooler, temporarily at least. He reckoned that it wouldn't succeed for long, though, as we're going too fast for natural feedbacks to keep up, and that before too long only Britain, Scandinavia, Canada & Siberia in the Northern Hemisphere would be habitable. Oooooer...

elaine241

Right everyone wish me luck! Prepping this weekend has involved stealth and subtefuge! I have increased the chicken population ( gave away my old hens as pets) and sneaked in new young pullets. Now just off to purchase three aylesbury ducks and sneak them in. DOnt think I will get away with passing them off as hens!! I will have to keep them hidden for a while!! My OH thinks I am mad!! all prepping done under cover and new livestock frowned on as more things to look after. ( unlike his bl**dy sheep)

GreyQueen

elaine241 wrote: »

Right everyone wish me luck! Prepping this weekend has involved stealth and subtefuge! I have increased the chicken population ( gave away my old hens as pets) and sneaked in new young pullets. Now just off to purchase three aylesbury ducks and sneak them in. DOnt think I will get away with passing them off as hens!! I will have to keep them hidden for a while!! My OH thinks I am mad!! all prepping done under cover and new livestock frowned on as more things to look after. ( unlike his bl**dy sheep)

Love it! Tell him the Aylesbury ducks are bantams or silkies...........

He may think you're a bit cracked now but when trouble comes a-knocking and he has a missus with a stash of supplies and a 12 bore to protect them, and he will know your true worth.

I have just rotated some of the UHT milk forward (BB July) and put the remainding examples in date order in a cupbpoard. Freed up space to do this by evicting an elderly electric kettle which isn't in service atm (kettle is on the gas stove). No one wanted it on Freecycle so I kept it for the situation where leccy is on ang gas is off. Decided I will use it now and see if it's still working before I make a storage space for it elsewhere.

Righty, suiting actions to words, I am kitchen-bound. It's 3 steps away...........

[Deleted User]

ELAINE I love the idea of illicit, undercover stealth ducks, do you think you can teach them to cluck???