Awful weather - typical Brits talk

YoungBlueEyes

Funny you should say about sticking 1% on everyone's probate bill Farway cos that's her area of expertise - wills/probate/poas/estate planning etc. Deffo into the wise-vs-clever territory. Happy birthday to DGD - hope yous all have a lovely day and have got lovely weather No blackfly or nothing inside the curly leaves, they're just brown and crispy... When I go out again I'll take the top off my tree, thank you    

I agree with pp, I know which woodland I'd rather have gb. I think we're lucky that some landowners allow folks to wander across their land (presuming no rights of way etc). Kicking up a fuss and whining about it would make me withdraw priveliges tbh, but then I'm getting more ersey and intolerant of people the older I get. Even himself is on shaky ground some days ha haa!

Wow I love your boat/ship/vessel pp, another pic of the week candidate there imo.  Speaking of which - the carousel on the home page has a pic for "Gardening Week" and it's your one wm @Working_Mum :clapping:

Right off back out again now the drizzle has stopped. Yep "no rain for 10 days" does not include drizzle evidently. I've a full line of washing out too. Erseholes.

Paspatur

YoungBlueEyes said:

Trillium Chloropetalum - thanks pas How you doing? We've not seen you for a bit. Is it you that got the allotment in the gorgeous old walled garden...? 

Not me with the allotment. Got more than enough garden without that. No gardening here until the recent warm  spell of weather. Lots and lots of weeding and cut the grass for the first time. Now back to too cold and windy. Heating up again hopefully by Friday and then can get really busy planting out the contents of the greenhouse and getting the tomatoes into the greenhouse. And more weeding of course.

Dustyevsky

I'm glad you folks liked the stitchwort. It may have done extra well because there were no sheep to eat it back to zero last winter.   Relating to that, I visited our farming partner last week. He's not well, and very sadly, it seems unlikely he'll overcome the aggressive illness he and several others locally have contracted in recent times. He's talking about repairing our fences in the autumn, but his mate has something similar, so I've some doubts it will happen. We may need to look for another solution to keep the land in good heart. No, definitely not horses!

It's much cooler here, too, Paspatur. A nippy wind and nighttime temperatures dropping to 4c means gauging when to plant out tender things has become difficult. I'll probably do an Abba (take a chance!) with a couple of courgettes and cover them with fleece at night. Looking further ahead, the Exeter imbibers say it's likely to be mainly dry down here, with average sorts of temperatures for mid-May. Hosepipe bans incoming then!

Mrs D and I finally removed the last bits of invasive aster and grass from our main border at 17.00. We now have a large space to fill once the soil's been improved. We managed to save the most important plants swamped by the invaders, but lots of primroses and poppies were lost. They'll replace themselves by next year, I expect.

Well done to WM for having her much enhanced garden on the Forum home page in National Gardening Week....whatever that is. Every week's a gardening week for us here, isn't it? 

Speaking of invaders, here's another that does far too well around here. This one is on our soil heap and uncharacteristically light in colour, showing off the spadix within the spathe. I'm sure there must be a good reason why one colloquial name is 'Lords and Ladies,' but for the life of me, I can't think why!

twopenny

Been sunny spells with a cold wind.

Got the grass mowed and spring bulb pots tucked further away to die down. Some turf cut, fountain sorted out and went to lay the missing block pavers where I'd cut the spaces some time ago and - they didn't fit!

Gave up at that point. It was too cold out there to deal with a hammer and chisel again.

We've a May tradition in small town that I followed and photoed late yesterday after a long lunch in the park with singers for the VE day celebrations. That was lovely. Flags all over the town. But wore me out a bit.

I love Stitchwort. That's my sign to look out for in spring. Once you can loudly pop the seed pods, that's spring. Anyone else do that as a child/adult?

Hope you had a good social day Farway. Any bargains? I'd guess not being spring and lovely weather. They must be doing a bomb.

Lol Bluey, you never know about dogs. The collie that only behaved when he wanted to suddenly got all perfect when the little terrier came along and showed her what she should be doing. Perfectly. It made me chuckle.

As did - 'I've learned to keep quiet'. I struggle to believe that

Could do with some animal in my life now. No one round here has one. But the Blackies must have babies out and about already. I went out to get some Kale for my tea and got shouted at. I had to have words about who's garden it was

Paspatur

Dustyevsky said:

It's much cooler here, too, Paspatur. A nippy wind and nighttime temperatures dropping to 4c means gauging when to plant out tender things has become difficult. I'll probably do an Abba (take a chance!)   

I am having a serious cull of what I pamper in the greenhouse over winter. Although pamper may not be the right word when it hit minus 5.5 in January. I don't like giving up on plants that are not dead but if they don't do what they should do like flower. 5 year old oleander outside for about 3 to 4 months and inside for the rest of the year, has never ever flowered. No idea what colour it is. Purple chocolate silk tree. Beautiful colour outside in summer, goes back in greenhouse sheds leaves then green again in spring but never gets any bigger. Little Miss Figgy had little figlets a few months ago but a cold spell turned them into brown dead bits, the plant is green and healthy but claims you can grow this in my climate seem unfounded. The 6 pots of platycodon which I take in and cover with compost over winter can do an Abba next winter. Outside I have a Garrya Elliptica James Roof which is now a triffid but the catkins never fully develop.Time to concentrate on what grows without much care. Aquilegias, geums, huecheras, rudbeckias, astilbes. Greenhouse can be for seedlings and cuttings then tomatoes. It's all a learning game and I need to learn that I need easier stuff now

pink_poppy

Well done W_M - it really is a lovely garden and totally transformed 😊

I really don’t like those Lords and Ladies, Dusty. We’ve got two patches in the back garden, with one of them creeping further and further into the grass. I’m not really sure what to do with it other than dig it out, but then I’ve got a big hole in my lawn 🤷‍♀️ 

twopenny, ‘my’ Mr Blackbird 🐦‍⬛ appears every time I go outside, he always makes sure I can see him so that I’ll throw some food out. So cheeky.

I decided to start snipping the branches off the Christmas tree from last year that I have propped up in a corner, only to spot a wee nest inside 🪹 It has speckled blue eggs in so I think it’s a robin ❤️ I’d only snipped off 3 branches before I saw the nest and luckily hadn’t moved the tree at all, so I’ve laid the branches back on carefully and I’m really hoping Mr & Mrs Robin will be back 🙏

It’s another beautiful evening here - 8pm and it’s still sunshine and blue skies.

YoungBlueEyes

If it wasn't you with the allotment pas.....I wonder who it was then? My memory's shocking. I hear you re the weeding - when we get the research lab can we breed slugs that only eat weeds please? Doesn't seem like a big ask frankly, when you look at the nonsense they accumulate spend big money 'researching'  

Sorry to hear about your farming partner Dusty   Will the property go up for sale..?  What will you plant in the newly emptied big border? I'm sure I don't know what a Gardening Week is either - since I found you lot there always seems to be something to do/research/buy/plant/try to save/bin  

Don't dogs just make your heart smile 2p  We're gonna have to have a goodly selection of dogs at the research lab/Rottery Acres...  I do keep my mouth shut quite a lot at work tbh - the main one that gets me is the aforementioned solicitor (I'll call her Rose as this is the gardening thread) telling people to put inherited houses into their name 'so it'll sell quicker' and then charging them handsomely for it, without ever mentioning the downsides I claimed to be an ignorant lump when I got the job, so I can't very well start pulling up solicitors on their job 6 months in really.... and what would my argument be?  "Yeah but I know you're wrong cos it says xyz on this forum all the time!"  Anyway. 

Still sunny blue skies at 8pm is lovely eh pp   I'd be fine with just blackies and robins tbh, with a few little tits of whichever variety thrown in. The popping and bubbling sounds they make are one of my favourite things  

Cissie made me laugh last night. She answered the phone with "I can't answer the phone for I'm stocious (drunk), then spent an hour and 40 mins telling me about the neighbour's newest grandchild and the ridiculous name they put on her, a couple of stories she read in the paper, what the weather's been doing, how it'll be a sore year for purdies, the price of a fill of oil now it's turned cold again, how she can't find anything to spend her xmas present M+S vouchers on, how her sunflower seeds aren't showing any signs of wanting to grow at all, and the state of the traffic in general. Then she finished with "what are you doing still talking to me? Didn't I tell you I was drunk!" and hung up.  

OT cooler, 7'c and cloudy out there it says (wrongly). It's no more than about 3' and the sun's fully up and out. None of them gave rain last night but it rained anyway cos my patio's covered in little puddles  

pink_poppy

Cissie is hilarious, YBE   No idea what purdies are though??

Was it RAS with the walled allotment?? My memory is atrocious too    

Another beautiful morning here and the weather looks amazing for the next two weeks - sunshine every day and up to 20 degrees, which should be fine for me (I hope).

Dustyevsky

Paspatur said:

Dustyevsky said:

It's much cooler here, too, Paspatur. A nippy wind and nighttime temperatures dropping to 4c means gauging when to plant out tender things has become difficult. I'll probably do an Abba (take a chance!)   

I am having a serious cull of what I pamper in the greenhouse over winter.

At the old place, we had an inner sanctum in our greenhouse, which never fell much below zero. On arrival here, we inherited only a homemade polytunnel. Nine months later, there were > 50% fewer plants!  It was cruel, but inevitable, and all the better for being quick.

pink_poppy said:

I really don’t like those Lords and Ladies, Dusty. We’ve got two patches in the back garden, with one of them creeping further and further into the grass.

I used to think they were benign, and they do provide food for birds. However, they've taken advantage and multiplied alarmingly, so only the ones in the field hedges and wild areas are tolerated now. Well done for spotting the nest in time. Robins aren't easily put off.

It's taff with the allotment, Bluey. Paspatur gardens in the Arctic, or somewhere like that.

I don't know what our farming friend will do. I expect he'll consider his options, and then carry on as normal for as long as possible, perhaps taking on fewer external commitments. That would mean giving outlying land, like ours, a miss. I can't think of any real farmers who've retired. The guy bordering us did, but he wasn't a hands-on landowner.

Blooming cold and windy here this morning, but still bright. We're supposed to lose the bright for a time, so maybe it'll feel like a maximum of 9c if we're lucky. It could be a pottering day. After 3 days of digging, I'm looking for some respite, so we'll not be planting-up the newly vacant part of the border yet. There are shrubs like a magnolia to go in. I've propagated lots of walking friend's penstemons, so they could feature for a while, until they trot off to Norway, like they always do here.

I have featured this shrub before. It's a less common elderberry, and one I'll be striking some cuttings of. While digging the border, we noticed it was rocking, having become too tall for its own good. I'll reduce it, but there's no long term remedy, except a new one.  They're easy-peasy to propagate, fortunately.

pink_poppy

There was a random, strange looking UFO/cloud in the sky last night when I went to bed (pics at the end because I’m on my phone now)…

A self seeded poppy that popped up in one of my pots - it’s like it can’t decide if it’s yellow or orange, so it’s a bit of both…

And a lovely ‘skeleton’ that I spotted when I was sat on the back step this morning…