Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

I'm another one up early, failed to get back to sleep, so thought I'd crack on while sun's out.

Congrats on new DGS Dusty

twopenny said:

Picked and ate 7 strawberries yesterday and another today. 🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓
These were the ones that I got from T&M of 4 varieties. I'd like to make a comparison for you but a) the blackbirds dug up the labels and b) frankly they all taste like strawberries.
There's one called Honey something. That was a bit sweeter.

Well done on the strawbs, mine, not T & M, are coming along nicely.

My T & M rhubarb is doing well, very tempted but Must Leave Alone this year

YoungBlueEyes said:

Farway ring your council and tell 'em I'll do it for £249,999 Explosion of aphids here too, I'm at my roses twice a day squidging the beggars off. I'd leave them to the birds but they'd never get through them all. How did your volunteer meeting go? Are there ructions afoot?

Mixed meeting, ructions avoided, just. Teeth gritted, tongues bitten.

What us gardeners see as compost, others see as rubbish pile.

Ivy is seen as untidy, not bees food in spring, fennel & toad flax growing in cracks is seen as weeds.

Us volunteer gardeners will liaise with paid ones and then they [paid] can get on with it and watering of pots will be no one's job.

One of the mature birches planted by insurers is already dead or dying already, due to drought.

Anyway, enough of that, post meeting I went into Morries to find more dead plants. 

No wonder they are losing money, for the sake of watering there were racks of dead plants.

I came away with some Non stop begonias & French marigolds, plus two huge poncy grey plastic pots for my, yet to be sorted, trees.

Plenty of plants in Morries, a bit of limited choice and still no veg.

The begonias will fill gaps at the front, and provide vine weevil food later in the year, assuming I do not spill any Jeye's F near them.

wort said:

Farway I ended up digging out my pyracantha, it was huge and grew too much I couldn’t keep it under control, I put root killer on the stump, but it’s gone under the fence and grows in the field at the back 😳 I just keep the the top from growing above my fence!!! 

Farway any sign of your Erigeron? 

My pyracantha seems to be self limiting, it's dry there so that may be why, but I do trim back where it overhangs the path.

Erigeron, no sign of any seed sown ones, but the plant I bought from Morries is flowering, and I have high hopes it will self seed

I also have swift / swallows, but no signs yet, not really looked though

Pic is my Helen blackberry, the berries seem to be longer than Merton

-taff

pp, wherever you put the geum, make sure it will be at least moist for it. Mine out the front lives where the rain run off goes but not much rain means it's like concrete and it is very unhappy. I don't know what the difference is between beds...

greenbee echoing 2p, take soem time out to smell something at least before you see something else that needs doing and rush off to do it.

2p, I like your blackies thwarting identification...

ybe thanks again, spirea crossed off the list...happy potting on! sorry about the shed though...

Dusty, you are a dad joke specialist...congrats on child arrival too. That picture is stunning, you really feel the space and everything dancing around. Who used ot post pics of the birds living in a sandbank? How are they doing now btw, have they make it as big as it was? I like your geums too, those are two I don't have...yet....

wm -- couldn't see your bee bum, i couldn't enlarge the pic! Just leave it big next time

wort extra plants/roses is nothing to be sneezed at

Farway, what a shame your ideas are colliding instead of meshing with the paid ones. Cn someone point out having made compost is less work and cheaper than buying it? Make them watch some chealsea shows, then they can see it's a posh thing to do now too! And offer your watering services ot morries for a small fee might get more free living plants out of it.

Nothing much here, sunny, will be watering later and attempting to put what is in the kitchen into the greenhouse which will only work if I can plant out some sweetcorn. If the ground were better I'd stick the dahlias in there too...

Dustyevsky

wort said:

Still not caught up, but hopefully congratulations are in order now for Dusty ? Is the new GC blue or pink? Hope Dd is doing well.

New GS is brownish. According to the midwife, DD was a model expectant mother and stayed calm, didn't grumble etc. This time last week, she was still working at the store! We're missing the freebies already. 

wort said:

Dusty I normally have swifts / house Martin / swallows , never sure what they are as they move so quickly ! Not seen them yet though.

Territories are quite local. We only get swallows and house martins here. A mile away, in town, it's swifts. Swallows are currently nesting in our barn, but may not stay. Young cats have been seen up on the beams, trying to reach them. Our cats are too old and lazy to bother, so I don't worry about them.

-taff said:

Dusty, you are a dad joke specialist...congrats on child arrival too. That picture is stunning, you really feel the space and everything dancing around. Who used ot post pics of the birds living in a sandbank? How are they doing now btw, have they make it as big as it was?

I dance like a Dad too! With ref to WM's comments on babies, I'm sorry, but apart from those I was responsible for, I don't like them much, until they start walking & talking. I'm terrified of dropping them, yet when ours were very young, I'd carry them around any old how. I well remember what I called the 'zombie walk,' where you trundle about the house with baby at silly-o-clock, almost asleep yourself, rocking side to side. Sometimes, I'd be doing that, not even noticing that baby had dropped-off some time ago!

The sand martin photos came from pp. She updated last year, I think they'd staged a modest comeback.

-taff

Well that made me laugh, I don't like them much either until they get to about 25...I was doing my best to be polite but I'd rather have a kitten or puppy or a cat or a dog any day

Farway

wort said:

With ref to WM's comments on babies, I'm sorry, but apart from those I was responsible for, I don't like them much, until they start walking & talking.

Same here, I wouldn't pick up the baby grandchidren in case I "broke " them, and they aren't much fun anyway until they sit on your lap with a Ladybird book, or sticking a Spitfire together

Taff, I had best of both worlds, kids, dog, cat. They soon learn to trust, or avoid

Gardening, just had  e - mail, DT Brown has free P & P this Bank Hol weekend, just in time for that chunky rhubarb or Erogon thingy

I expect T & M etc will have similar, so hold off a bit, just in case

pink_poppy

Congratulations on the new baby grandson, Dusty and Mrs Dusty 😊 and well done to your DD2 - I had a similar timeframe with my DD1. I was so tired and hungry by the time she arrived that I ate the mouldy toast I was offered by the midwife 😳 True story.

Koi rings a bell, taff, I think you’re right, so it wasn’t a carp guess (nods to Dusty 😉). I was thinking of planting it in the front garden, alongside the orange quince, but forgot today, which is probably just as well given what you said, because I think it might be too dry there.

Aye, it was me with the sand martins. I haven’t been to look for them this year. I’ll check on them in the next few weeks and report back.

A parent thrush has been back a few times, but no babies. They’re still scooping up beakfuls of sultanas though, so they must be still feeding them, or it’s another family.

I had Mr Blackbird keeping an eye on proceedings when I was cutting the hedge with the shears today (that certainly gave my bingo wings a good workout 😂) and then Mr or Mrs Robin got really close to me when I was digging. I think it was after the ants that were in the viburnum pot I inherited. I decided to use the viburnum as my privacy plant, even though I don’t think the one I’ve got is evergreen (Dusty suggested Viburnum Tinus). I relocated the tiny berberis and silver birch at the same time, but I don’t hold out much hope for them tbh.

We finally have rain tonight after weeks of dry and sunny weather - the garden is parched so I don’t mind.

Wee robin pic…

wort

We have rain ☔️ hallelujah! The cat just came in like a drowned rat ,he’s presently drying himself off.

Dusty pleased to hear all are doing well. Congratulations. Poor Dd must be exhausted. I don’t usually get freebies due to shifts. Though dgson does.

Taff those free pots are great, one would make a great water feature with a few pebbles in.

oo yes the sand martins Pp , update please.

Dustyevsky

We have rain too. Not a lot, but more on the way. We also have guests arriving, and a baby probably coming home, so not ideal for the kind of settling-in we'd wish for. Life's bound to be somewhat chaotic in the coming week, so forgive me if I don't post much.

I was supposed to be tackling my walking friend's final few square metres of china clay today, but obviously, that won't happen now. Gardening on different soil in a different climate is interesting, though somewhat galling when most plants seem to do better in the other garden! It's a learning curve, too, with bay trees apparently loving the clay and revelling in several weeks off winter submersion. Salvia 'Nachtvlinder' also thrives in those conditions, while all the others turn up their toes and need annual replacement. Here, despite the altitude, most return, so that's one positive.

The deep bed in the polytunnel's being filled for the toms, but it's a slow job. (pp, 'raised bed' and 'deep bed' are interchangeable for me ) The soil I'm placing in there is virgin stuff from the base I'm digging out for a shed. Like all the virgin soil here, it's compacted and full of stones, so has to be 'processed' a bit. As I go, I'm mixing-in old compost from pots I've stored-up, old manure from the dung heap and well-rotted tree and bark chips. Anyway, it's still only half-full.

As it's rather dull this morning, how about some cheerful osteospermums?  Yeah, these also laugh at the winter wet and do well where they shouldn't , but this clump is in the south-facing bed in our new entrance splay.

YoungBlueEyes

Congrats all round on the baby boy Dusty Are mother and baby doing well enough to come home? That's a great pic of swallows swifts swiflows. I can never tell them apart either... is the difference that one of them never lands or is silent or summat? The skies used to be black with them round here, but that's 20+ *eek* years ago, now I get excited if I see 4 or 5  

Did you go back and find your original key wm. That'd chew me 'til I found it tbh. Was Romeo no help? Mind it wasn't a ball you lost so I'm guessing no  
JapAnes is another thing I'd love to grow but can't. I only seem to buy kamikaze ones... I see them all over in people's gardens so it's deffo user error  

Thanks for the tip about my fibbing Spirea wort. I'll give it a good chop later on in the year then. Or will I do it now - Chelsea chop...?  And look at you reinventing plant division  

Your fb birdbaths/planters made the front page taff! :clapping: Quite right too, they're a fab pair. What will you do with them..? 

Sorry to hear about your meeting Farway, that's the trouble sometimes when you can't pull rank with people, they don't bladdy listen Any way you could divide the tasks so that yous do some bits, the paid folks do their bits, and then get a watering system paid for out of petty cash...?  I think supermarkets are the same all over - my Aldi/B+M/morries are all dead plant societies, and all for the lack of a drink. 

Ooh lovely robin pic pp, so clear you can see all the feathers Sandmartins next :fingerscrossed:  Your Berberis and silver birch will either live or die #Shawshank so I wouldn't worry about that. Hopefully you've another thrush family there, just a bit behind the other one  

Well we've finally had some rain, a goodly amount too. Not before time either cos my mare's tails and wosname thistles were gasping :rolleyes: Jeez it's humid this morning, you forget what a difference it makes having lovely dry air... we were nearly down into the 30's% humidity wise recently. Didn't get my forest potted on (thinking of binning some actually cos they're just too far behind) because Old Friend's dog arrived, and it's a girl! She's nearly 15, half blind and mostly deaf but she doesn't let it stop her. Let's call her Merry (it suits her better than her real name!) Other than pining sorely for her ma last night she's not been a bit of bother. 

Lazy at getting up though - 

twopenny

Aw so much to catch up on I'll be back later 😵‍💫

Congratulations on the family increase Dusty even though you you didn't have to put much effort in 😉 yet.
The scraggly robin is putting more effort in by the looks of things. Good shot.
Gorgeous pots, that's what I wanted and deep envy of gorgeous dog. I miss having a dog curled up by the fireside. Love the fire surround too. Classy.

Cloudy and grey but no rain here. Lots of birds and babies making a heck of a mess which has bought the first rat in.