Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

Weather is much the same as everyone's, dull, dry & mild, and supposed to continue for next week. 

Which gives some hope the self sown Shoo Fly at the volunteer patch will still be flowering come the remembrance service, make a change from poppies, never did mange to get them flowering at the “right” time

We have an offer of one of the Soldier silhouettes for the memorial there. If it comes off, I spy a photo with silhouette & shoo flies. If it doesn't, at least it's tea & cake after the service, so not all is lost.

2P, the rose, I think I'd lop off the long bit and replant. Removing long bit will stop wind rock, replanting now because ground is still warm & roots can settle & grow a bit before the plants shuts down for winter.

Top Tip, use the long bit for cuttings, just poke lengths, burying about 6 inches or more, into ground and leave alone, hopefully at least one bit will take

That Picanto sounds similar in size to my Citroen C2, mine has no boot room either, but rear seats go down of course. With such a low mileage for year, I guess it was an older person, trip to shops and then left in the garage apart from annual service at main dealer.

A friend bought an older, low mileage Toyota, just shops & service sort of mileage and it was a very good buy. She wanted to but a newer car thinking age trumped mileage, but everyone told her otherwise, and we were proved right.

Worth looking into, I'd think, and every year of low road tax you'll count your blessings. I've no experience of Kia's but suppose to be reliable & well-made.

Just check you have a spare wheel and, if fitted, the security wheel nuts socket plus pare key, or haggle over price and check on spare key price, it can be hundreds.

Welcome Taff to limp along corner, hope your ankle lasted, very annoying when you want to get on but can't

My knee is twinging, but far better than it was, just have to be cautious really.

No robins, or any gardening here, not seen GW, it's not on YT yet, has it finished?

Just checked, seems it missed a week for some reason.

Dustyevsky said:

All the same, those who follow certain pundits on the interweb, or who just read their tea-leaves, think it might be wise to consider what the ancients did, and maybe lay in a few supplies, some water, and a torch or two, just in case.

P.S. You can eat the dahlia tubers, if it comes to that! 

May need to, I think the Rains In Spain have put paid to lots of greenhouses where lots of Europe's food is grown.

YoungBlueEyes

Good to hear dahlias are edible, himself might find he's got a plateful for his dinner if I’m presented with any more boxes of chocs… they wouldn’t fatally kill him to death though would they? I don’t wanna kill him off entirely Slugs get short shrift from me I'm afraid, they're the only part of gardening that I don't hold to #Shawshank standard. 

I don't know about GW, I only watch BG now and that finished a few weeks ago Good to hear your knee is improving  

twopenny

Thanks for the key idea Farway, hadn't thought about that seeing as I still use the manual ones. Another thing where the labour saving invention (how hard is it to insert and turn a key?) makes more problems. And spare wheel thing. Not sure any cars have those now I've been told.

Can I dig out stuff? We wait to see...... there are two options. It will or it won't. Or it will let me then have me on sticks for a week. My stick has a whisky flask in the handle. Purely medicinal don't ya know  

Taff glad to bring you some of what others have done. Remember it was tidied up specially for the open gardens. I tend to get the veg and fruit bits to myself as few are interested. Which is fine.

Bluey, how are you bits and pieces that went wrong? Are you all better now? 🤞

Dusty, have you got the log burner going. It's that sort of day, weather same here, dark, cold breeze and wet drops, not really raining and a day to have the heating and fire on. So wish I had a proper fire because that's just what's needed to snooze in front of to gear yourself up for more of the same.

pink_poppy

I'm sure I saw some Beechgrove on BB2 on Friday?? Unless it was a repeat.

I love that Cistus plant, Dusty.

It's misty and murky out there today and so quiet t's like time has stood still. I've just had a wee sparrow looking in the bedroom window - of course pussycat missed it because he was too busy cleaning himself...

twopenny

How goes the spinning Poppy?

Taff to compensate for the ankle here's some more veg.

The lady down the road has been growing tomatoes in pots in a Lidl diy greenhouse thingy on her driveway and she always has loads. Really annoying when mine are tended in a bed and sit sulking so I'm trying this next year.

I'd post the dead things that were mine but it's too depressing for a grey sunday.

I'm also thinking of doing potatoes in pots. The plastic ones in our little diy shop are very cheap.

Dustyevsky

Farway said:

I think the Rains In Spain have put paid to lots of greenhouses where lots of Europe's food is grown.

 A coincidence, no doubt. Even if not in the worst affected area, (can't recall) wort must be thinking she had a lucky escape with the timing of her holiday!

AI tells me the Kia Picanto came with a space saver spare wheel until 2015. You can still buy a wheel and jack if you don't like the cheapo alternatives.

twopenny said:

Dusty, have you got the log burner going. It's that sort of day, weather same here, dark, cold breeze and wet drops, not really raining and a day to have the heating and fire on. So wish I had a proper fire because that's just what's needed to snooze in front of to gear yourself up for more of the same.

We've not lit the wood burner yet. We're reasonably well-insulated, and it's still warm enough to be sitting typing this without calling on the central heating. It will probably kick-in around19.30ish. We've been outdoors most of the day. Mrs Dusty has been hedge cutting, and I've been mowing the grass and picking up behind Mrs D. This morning we spent an hour in the mini woodland, labelling trees that are harder to ID with no leaves. We're choosing which ones must go.They don't all fit in there now!

Those tomatoes look very cosy in the picture you posted. It's good if a wall can be used as a heat bank, and to stop a 'blow away' blowing away!

pink_poppy

Swaying, rather than spinning now, twopenny, thanks. Although I'm struggling with this 'cold' now too, which is why I'm up early taking paracetamol   I'm starting to think it might be covid, so will do a test later. I'm not happy that I've picked it up at the Drs surgery

I wonder if the secret to the tomato success is shorter plants?? The two I had this year were like triffids, ridiculously tall, they would have blown over easily if they'd been outside. Looks like a nice sheltered spot too, so that must help.

We've had our fire on for weeks, Dusty, or that's how it seems, I can't see the logs lasting until Winter. It's usually 15//16 degrees in the front room when it gets lit, which is just not warm enough to sit comfortably.

Still pitch black outside.

YoungBlueEyes

2p your stick has a whisky flask in the handle? Why does that not surprise me   My bits and bobs are about back to normal now thanks, I can feel my back twinge if I get up wrong or sit down wrong but it's far better than it was thank god. Good job too cos I need to get Domestic Nonsense properly done today, it's been a bit half hearted recently. I was talking to Beloved Cousin last night, she has a Kia Ceed, she said she'd never drive anything else again (unless someone gave her one of those new big Defender things). Her last car was a Volvo C30 and this is the better car in her opinion. Have you decided about the sharp raspberry Raspberry pink Picanto? 

How will you pick which trees face the chop Dusty? No grass cutting here, it's all far too wet out there still. We've had no rain for days but it just isn't going anywhere *shrug* You all ready for bonfire night..?  

Hopefully you've only got a cold and not covid pp :fingerscrossed: Good that your spinning has downgraded itself to swaying. so the tablets have kicked in then? You'll be tootling about the garden by the weekend  

OT Well it was dark when I started typing this but it's lightened up now. No real dawn to speak of but we did get a lovely sunset the other night. It changed so fast, I couldn't move for watching it Still, mild and cloudy here, 9', which is warmer than Astana at 4' right now. 

YoungBlueEyes

In the sunshine my swish rose looked like this - 

…and then the sun set a bit - 

…and then it set a bit more - 

….and my rose looked like this - 

Made my heart smile  

Dustyevsky

pink_poppy said:

Swaying, rather than spinning now, twopenny, thanks. Although I'm struggling with this 'cold' now too, which is why I'm up early taking paracetamol   I'm starting to think it might be covid, so will do a test later.

I wonder if the secret to the tomato success is shorter plants??

We've had our fire on for weeks, Dusty, or that's how it seems, I can't see the logs lasting until Winter. It's usually 15//16 degrees in the front room when it gets lit, which is just not warm enough to sit comfortably.

You've really been in the wars recently, pp. Hopefully you’ll have overcome health difficulties by the time we reach the real winter weather, though this grey 'nothingness' saps energy too.  You'd think with all the £billions spent on an 'effective' remedy, Covid would be behind us now, as it seems to be in sub-Saharan Africa, for example.

With tomatoes, experiment and do what works for you. Ours are now about 9' -10' tall, so that works for us, but the 2' remaining two Veranda Reds are still producing as well. We've rarely had toms last until November, but it's down to no significant frost, and defoliating to thwart the whitefly. You've had success with potatoes, so I wouldn't get too concerned about the more finicky members of the same family! 

With the delivery of logs last week, we are OK for those now. Our big mistake was taking our eyes off the ball with the trees we planted in 2013/14, allowing the fast-growers to go beyond safe felling by amateurs like us. We'll have to pay someone to take down a few of them!

The Cistus you like was actually at Rosemoor. The one's here haven't re-bloomed, but I noticed on my way to the chickens half an hour ago, our Japanese water iris are trying to bloom again, and the first primroses are showing.