Awful weather - typical Brits talk

pink_poppy

Welcome back YBE   Your garden is looking lovely still.

Farway, such a shame about the oak trees, looking at the size of them they must be a good few years old.

You have been busy, Dusty. Loved your spooky moon pic from a couple of days ago.

Thanks for the heads up on my bird pic, twopenny. It's not somewhere I look on the site, so I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said.

wort, hope you don't get snow tomorrow.

It's freezing here this morning. In the minuses and poor DH took ages to defrost the car first thing. The moon and Jupiter were lovely at 5.30am - no pic as I wanted to jump back into bed. It's a gorgeous day, sunny and bright and we have snow on the tops here...

A 'monochrome' photo from the other day when that was mentioned on here. Stretching the imagination a bit, but a black sheep and a white sheep   I'm not sure why they're all blurry, I think I probably pressed something random on my phone...

Dustyevsky

twopenny said:

Dusty that's some therapy cutting you've done there! What is the end result going to be?

The end result will be more branches on the hazels I've cut back and more hazel planted where they're sparse. I've tried laying hazel before, (some remnants are visible) but they don't last done like that here. Therefore, it's upright stems and cut back annually. Density, discourages blackthorn, which is mainly what the neighbours have on the other side. I don't mind that as a tree, (there's one visible in picture 2)  or on our tractor-cut hedge by the road, but tractors can't always reach this hedge in wet autumns, and I hate fighting with the stuff. Two big prickles stuck in me yesterday, despite gloves!

Anyway, day off today....sort of. The boiler man cometh, so I have to clear out & hoover the boiler room! 

Farway

Dull, just sorta indifferent, with bit of drizzle in the air, certainly not gardening or even GC mooching, unless decent café attached.

The oaks were there way before the buildings, but the buildings were before planners were invented, and when built were not meant as residential, just occasional use, Dr surgery, meeting rooms etc

The whole area is clay and there is a known underground fault line, so nothing over two storeys allowed

The TPO business is not worth the paper it's written on, when a cash strapped Council could be facing a multi-million £ insurance company claim for damage.

Of course the council will pursue a private no money person to the ends of the Earth, the sort who never had a View Master as a child and had to play in the mud

Dustyevsky said:

I would say Farway's oaks are older than the buildings. We have a few good-sized oaks, some maybe as old as me, but nothing that impressive.

When I was a lad, the middle class kids had the View-masters. We oiks were given air guns, cowboy outfits and Mr Potato Head.   I can't say I was unhappy with that. Unaided, my eyesight's abnormal, so I didn't 'see' the 3D simulation, although I pretended to. Those pictures that turn into something else if one stares at them long enough are another joy I seem excluded from.  Things could be worse!

To be fair, it wasn't the most photogenic spot, but at least the smudge on the lens didn't matter! (How on earth did Farway know my sandwich was cheese & pickle?  )

I'm another who can't see the hidden pictures, no matter how obvious they seem to be to others

Cheese & pickle are the only sort of sarnie you can rely on, no matter where or when made / bought

Congrats to Poppy for photo on blog.

And Dusty for the hard hedge work

Welcome back YBE, at least you have cosmos, mine were a cosmos allium cross I think, complete fail

Spud guns also fired chewed blotting paper on spudless School premises

Now I fancy pumpkin jam, but loath pumpkin soup. Too late now, but post Halloween would've been a good time to but pumpkins. Just looked up a recipe, seems butternut squash can be subbed,. Hmm, there's a thought, should I try & grow some next year? I'll have a think.

2P, best of luck with the crocus & squirrel mix, the devils eat mine, so I just can't have crocus, which is annoying 'cos they are so much a promise of the new Spring ahead. I've not tried burying in cages, which I suppose I could do, but CBA

No pic today, the one I had in mind is a bit blurrier than expected. I was trying for moon last night, had the ideal shot of it just coming out of clouds, but blinked & clouds covered the lot.

pink_poppy

I tried to get the moon last night too, Farway. It looked quite interesting behind the trees, but still visible, so I ran downstairs to get my phone and by the time I got back it had decided to hide...


That was taken at 8pm. I tried again just after 10pm and this time the moon was visible, but it looks like a lightbulb   


I don't think I'll ever get the hang of taking photos of the moon    

YoungBlueEyes

I don't know who was forecast to get the worst of the weather (possibly you up there pp, and maybe wort on that side?) but it's no so bad here at all. Not warm, it did sleet a bit before bedtime but it must have rained on top of it for it's nearly all away. 

Farway if you want someone to come down and do a Swampy on your trees I'll do it happily. Just give me a bit of notice so I can dig out me big coat Pumpkin jam is unopened as yet but I hope it's the same stuff they served in big open help-yourself jars at breakfast in the hotel. I'll report back. 

Hopefully the boilerman cameth and gave it a clean bill of health Dusty. I was gonna say do you not fancy laying that hedge or is it a bit far gone really?

I like your sheep pic pp. My camera does that sometimes, it brings the foreground into sharp focus and then everything behind it gets woolier  

Christmas crocuses (crocii..?) that'll be lovely 2p if that bladdy squirrel leaves them alone. Floor sweepings coffee is right - I'm sat with a mug now and it's slow going Is your washing still out? On the weather last night the map showed Plymouth as 12' today and sunny with it! 

Getting the moon right is beyond me too, but I did get a pic the other night. I don't know what it is but my phone puts either 1 or 2 blue dots in the frame when I'm taking pics at night, and I don't know how to stop it. Occasionally I can line it/them up into the bright bit so you can't see them - 

OT it's either 1' with flurries coming any minute now (sobers) or it's 0' and sunshine coming any minute now (drunkards), which is at least 13' cooler than it is in Albufeira.

twopenny

Morning all, well I say morning but it's more like dusk! Dark with dark grey skies and the rain hammering down.

I do love the sound of the rain, makes me feel warm and cosy inside.

No Bluey, washing just dried after 1 week Been hanging in the bathroom mostly.

The spots on photos of sun or moon are 'flares' when you focus straight at the light source. Farway will know more and better.

Love the sky in that one. Though it's a weird sky, wonder what it means?

Poppy, is that stars you have too in your mysterious one? Very impressive if it is. What sort of phone?

Farway forget cages for bulbs, it's supposed to be horse hair in the hole.

And the next question is 'where do you get.........'

Plan today is to crawl outside all coated up and go for a swim, maybe a coffee with friend and see about swapping a table for a chimney pot for the garden - if it will just stop raining.

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

I don't know who was forecast to get the worst of the weather

Hopefully the boilerman cameth and gave it a clean bill of health Dusty. I was gonna say do you not fancy laying that hedge or is it a bit far gone really?

I like your sheep pic pp. My camera does that sometimes, it brings the foreground into sharp focus and then everything behind it gets woolier

We've just had an overnight gale and rain. Things are calming-down a bit now, and temperatures will fall through the day, so we'll end up with zero around midnight, apparently. A few cool days of 5c or so, and then back to more rain and double figures at the weekend. The frosts don't look too bad, so maybe the tomatoes will hang on in the polytunnel a bit longer.   I'm glad we've done the drain field work!

Boiler guy comes today. I just had to make sure he could (a) reach the boiler without climbing over carp, and (b) not need to sit among dozens of dead woodlice which go in there to die. He's a fitness fan, and gets into all sorts of weird places, doing his plumbing, but I'm being respectful, as he does a good job. Oil boilers need a little more cleaning and care than the gas equivalents.

Yes, I used to lay the hedges traditionally with a billhook , but I got the chainsaw around the time when it was noticeable laid sections in hazel were failing. I've noticed a similar thing happened at Rosemoor on the short stretches of hedge laid when I attended a day's course there to learn the rudiments. Oak, hawthorn and ash don't seem to suffer the same fate. Nowadays, with creaky knees, I just do whatever gets the job done fastest!

The background in pp's photo was definitely woolly! It's frustrating when the camera obtusely chooses something in unintended to focus on, but it happens to all of us.

We did no gardening yesterday, and I feel better for the rest.  Nothing looks likely to tempt me out there until the afternoon today. At present, the rain's still hammering on the office window.

Speaking of windows, this frame was set up in Rosemoor, just begging folk to look through it or take a photo. I waited until a couple came into view, walking normally, and took the shot, without noticing something drew their attention at that exact moment. I've no idea what they saw, but it made a fairly boring scene more interesting!

wort

The snow started earlier than expected and had a coat on everything by bedtime. This morning the snow is only a light coat on the grass and shrubs with walkways and roads all clear. Forcast is 2 degrees all day with the sun having moved from this afternoon to tomorrow. At least it’s bright the sky is properly white.

YBE glad you’re home safe. Surprised you didn’t get the snow over your side of the Pennines. 

Dusty that’s a job and a half cutting back that hedge. Hopefully the new neighbours may adopt it. 

wort

Melting fast 

pink_poppy

Your clouds look like cotton wool, YBE   Nice pic.

twopenny, yep, we've had clear nights for the last few nights and it's been freezing as a result. My phone is an iphone 15 pro max. It's really annoying sometimes, too sensitive (I set the emergency alarm off a couple of weeks ago) or doesn't take photos when you press the 'button' thing. I still haven't worked out why it does (or doesn't) do that, but I've missed a couple of bird photos, because obviously they don't hang around waiting for you to take a photo.

Your photo looks like a mirror, Dusty. I wonder what attracted their attention, it reminds me of the Homes Under the Hammer people who pretend to look and point at things    

Another frosty start this morning. I took this pic yesterday when I was out for a walk. Frosty thistles (trying saying that with a pair of falsies in haha)...