Daydream fund challenge part 4

lucielle

Well that's County Show out of the way. Will have to wait and see if it provides any new leads or customers. Absolutely cream crackered so off to bed shortly.


Weather was showery and quite cold which I think may have put a few people off.


L

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Lazy day today, as the eventual rain and a little bit of thunder and lightning last night did my main job for me for a change.

The soil in the permanently shaded side of the garden is always moist and full of plants, but the side that actually gets sunlight, so has to be used for veggies and fruit is always drying up, despite the vast amounts of cover I've ended up with - some of it weeds, some of it wildflowers where it's apparent that Himself scattered seeds exactly where I didn't tell him to chuck them - but it's not too hard to tell the difference between herbs and red dead nettle. I'd have murdered him had he planted mint out there - it's carefully coralled in a barrel on the front path precisely because I remember the forest of mint that grew in my mother's garden along with raspberries and gooseberries where she CBA to keep on top of them.

Mind you, she also deliberately planted a Buddleia and one of those godawful giant fir things, right in front of the kitchen window whilst moaning about the sycamore seedlings she did nothing to stop growing, so I have a feeling that she deserved everything she got, as she was told at the outset how invasive or overpowering such things were. But what would I have known? I didn't even have a garden at the time, I just read and watched programmes to learn about plants.

alfie_1

hi all
been a busy week here.
we had the fantastic lightening show a week ago and the odd bolt since but no serious rain.. we have had enough mizzle to aid the garden tho.


we have a sad "do" going on here in the forest at the moment
a young lad hit a pony last week , it was thick fog and at night [he wasn't speeding, in fact half speed]. the mare broke a leg and had to be PTS.. the foal ,aprox 2-4 weeks old was stood by the mare all night and mid morning the agisters turned up, took it into the gorse and shot it !! [sorry for that]
there has been an outcry as to why it couldn't be hand reared, it was a stocky solid fit colt.
alas colts have no value [have to be gelded or removed from forest by 2 yrs old and the owners wont pay for that so they end up at the sales where a large % go to the meat man]
so so sad for that poor foal, newspapers are picking up on it now and after drivers getting told how precious their livestock is to them , this stinks..


sorry to be doom and gloom but it was so upsetting as lots of us saw the foal and would have hand reared it..

Davesnave

Oh dear, alfie. I don't know what to say. I see it's down as part of the Agisters' job description to humanely destroy animals injured in accidents, but not uninjured stock.

Their names and phone numbers are all on-line, so I expect they have been....um....'busy.'

Sadly, our hens are getting quite long in the tooth (?) now and I've had to cull 3 in the past month or so. Half the hybrids have gone and they're the youngest. The oldest ones, the pure breed Vorwerks and Dorkings, are still laying!

Our builder hopes to resume again on Thursday, but he's bringing a mate to help, so it looks as if he is taking the need to slow down seriously. With building at a standstill, I've been knocking the vegetable garden into shape and planting out toms, cues etc in the polytunnel. Everything seems very late this year - I've had toms by 9th June before - but maybe it's just me being impatient.

DW has done wonders in the flower garden, so it's quite respectable now, which is just as well, because we had a flying visit from our old neighbours yesterday, whom we'd not seen for 8 years. They were passing-by, so only stayed an hour, but it was fun, catching-up. One of them is now doing the job I used to do. Plus ca change and all that. :rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Can't sleep. So I'm going to go out and water the veggies whilst nursing my bucket of coffee.

No point trying to go back to bed now.


ETA: out of the entire street, just bumped into the next door neighbour, who is up doing housework as she can't sleep either - her body clock has been messed about by two small children (who sleep through until 8am now) and a husband who used to go to work at 4.35am every morning. So there's the pair of us out the front in dressing gowns like a pair of old scruffs, me watering flowers, her putting out rubbish, because we didn't think anybody apart from the birds and a fox on his way home would see :cool:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Just emailed somebody in Himself's old village who might have a one bed cottage by the river for rent either now or in six months.

Fingers crossed...

Davesnave

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Just emailed somebody in Himself's old village who might have a one bed cottage by the river for rent either now or in six months.

Fingers crossed...

Hope you get it....:) By a river sounds great. .....I'll bring my rod!:D

No point in visiting the river here at present, as we've still managed to miss most of the local rain. It's often the way that the coasts and the moors get it, while we escape, but I think something pluvial is heading this way soon, and not before time.

With builder off to put in a kitchen & bathroom elsewhere, we are free now to get the garden sorted, so I've been digging through a section formerly covered with heavy landscape fabric, adding masses of rotted former horse bedding from Horse Woman's stables and planting up courgettes and squash. Believe it or not, we've only just finished last year's squash, although they were only fit for the hens.

We have re-planned the working garden, incorporating a new hen enclosure, as the old one won't last two more winters. This will still give each hen 6m2 of space, so it seems workable. Our current hens have too much room, as they spend 90% of the tme along only one side of their enclosures, so they can keep an eye on us and not miss anything! :rotfl:Never realised they'd do that when we set out the original pens.

Any news of our Nothern Correspondent? I'm thinking of sending Kate Adie to investigate.....;)

greenbee

Fingers crossed Jojo!

Spent the weekend working hard in the garden (tidying up after the landscaper mostly), sawing up rotten fence posts and burning them and generally trying to clear the mountain of rubbish he's stacked up. Of course, he may have planned on using some of it, but it was fairly difficult to work out the good stuff from the bad. Some of the middle bits of the fence posts might have been ok, and I know he has been reusing, but I do need to be able to keep on top of keeping things tidy...

I've also just fought my way back into my office - it's just about tidy enough to be able to work in, something I haven't done for a couple of months. Hopefully now the worst of it is done I'll be able to keep my work out of the rest of the house, and also make enough room in here to be able to clean it!

alfie_1

Any news of our Nothern Correspondent? I'm thinking of sending Kate Adie to investigate.....;)


YES


ive spoken to our "northern lass" and she is on the preverbial "naughty step":rotfl:


she wrote a comment referring to a political persons nether regions and got "excused from duties"


she is ok tho, puppy dog is a loveable loony apparently and loves to race around along the shore there.. only about 15 weeks old [welsh collie] health is still a bu**er for OH ....


had a good laugh about things
she says hi to everyone , misses you all..


ive just bought a 4 wheel carriage [ideal for weddings when restored ....not a lot to do ] BUT its in Yorkshire so I have to figure out transport


we have had a cooler few days, odd days of bit of rain , day of high wind etc.. bit mix and match at the mo but the hay fields grass is growing well so should be a good crop this year...

Davesnave

There's only one thing to do when placed on the naughty step......and that's be even naughtier!

Politics! Huh! I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'd certainly like to kick some sense into some folks' nether regions!

At these times I often turn to the non-visual, live version of this famous sketch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFc5kJUMFzM

Much wind, and not really that much rain here over the last few days. Still waiting for the river to rise a little, but coming close to our first few courgettes. Yum!

Will you be hiring the carriage out and driving it when it's restored, alfie? An ex-girlfriend of mine provides white doves for weddings, releasing them at the appropriate moment . Perhaps you and Dafty could get together.....:cool::D