Awful weather - typical Brits talk

YoungBlueEyes

Morning all, on the International Day of Human Space Flight 🚀

I wish I was home giving those wee lambs a bottle 2p! She took them back to their home and I'm guessing they didn't get out again for she never rang me to say she had them now. Plus I'd have put up pics if I was 🐑 Hopefully you get round the open gardens and get more 4 leafed clover. Re your pond - have you tried hanging about in morries gc bit and chatting to auld fellahs/wimmin..? Once you get rid of the lurgy I mean. Fingers crossed your not long in shaking it off/drowning it with Eau de Vie 🤞

Good point about the petrol + smoking Farway 😮Mind I'm sure I've seen Stephen Fry eating crispy fried ants on QI, and witchetty grubs or similar. He near choked to death on an ants wing, jeez it was funny 🤐 Have posh dahlias appeared on your fb feed yet ha haa! D'ya know I think I do remember you saying DeadStickTree is a pear, hopefully it won't take years thinking about doing cos I like pears 😋 Hooray for Lazarus plum tree blossoming. I'll have to go check on mine - it's deffo doing leaves but I'll have to inspect closely to see if there's any flowers buds. It still might not have forgiven me for my Plum Crazy idea the other year…

Gawd what's your critter Less?! Looks a bit menacing to me, the sort of thing that'd give you a bite like a horsefly 😣 Your sweet pee planter made me laugh - it's a blooming great idea. Have you got a sink to go next to it? Fill it with stones and houseleeks and stuff 🙂

We've similar weather this side wort, it's lovely looking but stick your face out the door and you're nearly froze :shiver: Has work calmed down a bit now? That'll be your madness over for a wee while is it?

The thing that's going on over the water Dusty? D'ya mean the farmers on the roads…? I've read that on the Journal but I didn't know if it's made the news here yet. They've been at it nearly a week now mind. The tax is different over the border, they're properly hammered on fuel down there poor swines (iirr circa 70% of the pump cost is various taxes). It's about time they came out against it. Anyway. How's the dreaded lurgy? Hopefully you and MrsD can shake it off/drown it with Eau de Vie/sweat it out in the poly🤞And that's fab news about the hogs, so that's them all reared and out into the world then eh? Looking forward to seeing some of the pics 🤗

Quite nice here really, if you discount the cold breeze. The sun's lovely streaming through my front window (hopefully I'll not be long 'til I get some flowers on my toms). Good breeze and dry air = a grand drying day. rain around lunchtime, possibly. It did rain yesterday for a wee while, but only half-hearted drizzly nonsense and it was gone by lunchtime and it was a lovely day. Reverse for today, lovely now but rain to come, they say.

YoungBlueEyes

Right, pics!

The LadybirdBum is a strawb patch, but there is thug bramble there too -

Yes those are the boulders that fell off the back of a church, yes I wanted them incorporating into the wall, no it didn’t happen (they’re too irregularly sized, apparently) 🙄

Plum tree - it does have leaves but the open ones are all little faces that are laughing at me. It’ll not produce flowers now for badness with that mindset.

Farway

Welcoming 2P to the shiver club, and hope those with lurgy & after effects shake [or shiver 😉] it off. If it is like mine it comes & goes but at least not hanging on forever, a dose of Geoff Hamilton would help [or maybe Johnnie Walker ?]

It rained overnight, after I was forced to water the pots yesterday PM due to some wilting plants. At least everything has had a rinse & a water, sun's out, forecast is April showers may come my way.

Wow Dusty, first tom flower congrats on that, way ahead of anything I have

I asked AI what Less wasp thing was, seems it's a Black & Yellow mud dauber, solitary & beneficial, will sting if you grab it, otherwise harmless, spiders are it's prey, to lay their eggs in, shades of Alien. Sounds an interesting spot there Less

Pee pot, nice one Wort

The pirked out toms are doing well, except Gardeners delight, is looking un delighted and has the droops. First GD low to germination, now this. I suspect I will be GD less this year, luckily I have fresh seeds for next year, and my other toms are looking fine so far. No sign of any but I bet bajaja will be first to flower, it has really come along since pirking out

Off to late birfday lunch with DD later, I may qualify for a DD Roll Eyes because the pub is opposite a locally well known hardware store, the old fashioned type, sells all sorts, bag of nails to potted plants, and I could wobble into there ☺️

Pic is what I still know as Japonica but I think it has a posher name now, chlamydia or summat like that 😈 😁?

YoungBlueEyes

Have a good lunch Farway, and happy mooching in the hardware store 😀

LessImpecunious

Thanks Farway - I got several different suggestions for my waspy thing, including Sceliphron caementarium when trying to id it, but couldn't get a good enough photo to show all it's features properly, so just left it at waspy thing…

The Japanese Quince is otherwise known as Chaenomeles, think it always was, just commonly referred to as Japonica…

Hope you enjoy your birthday toddle around the old ironmongers, not to mention posh lunch!

The pee pot was mine BTW…😁

Wet but actually warmer feeling here this morning….

twopenny

Ooooh that's a lovely drift of alpine strawberries Bluey ♥️ mine perished in last year's drought which is sad.

Farway hope you had a good time whichever way you managed to take it. But you make me jealous with the japonica. Mine is still sans everything but the wood remains green underneath. I may hack it back in a do or die scenario because I'm all out of ideas.

Less, glad you got some decent weather. You deserve it.

It's been one of those annoying days. Cold with heavy hail or rain mostly and sunny and warm intermittently. So you feel you should be outside but as soon as you stick your nose out it chucks ice at you so no gardening. Did try to find a reasonably priced small shredder but no luck.

Seedlings are showing some secondary leaves but looks like micro greens. Tempted to transplant them into my compost but they are very small to do that.

I did have 8 tiny apricots growing but my bad, I moved it against the wall for heat and they got knocked with the winds. 5 left. Like the bottles on the wall 😐

On the other hand I think I have some plums and those of the overwintering sort have swelled and ripening! I only kept 4. I need to climb to get them 🙄

And the wisteria is out 😲

There's a reason for this.... Can you guess? Think I should swap it for tomatoes 😉

LessImpecunious

Wow to plums and wisteria 2P, not sure about reasons!

Your weather looks good in pics, no doubt the sunny intervals - our damp and mild soon changed to much like yours - sun (quite a lot) with black skies depositing hail or hard rain every now and then… in fact just like the old-time April showers of my youth…

Farway

Sunny but cold, now my bones are even older I'll stick inside for a bit before I poke hooter out into garden

Less said,The pee pot was mine BTW…😁Wet but actually warmer feeling here this morning…. There's a smutty joke in there somewhere if I could put my finger on it.

Birfday lunch was great, olde pub, nice atmosphere. The Old style hardware was a let down, it was OK but everything was double the price you'd expect. I was looking for plant sticks / supports for my broad beans, the thin canes about 18 - 24 inches, were nearly £8 a dozen pack 😮Much as I'd like to support local there are limits, so it's off to flea bay

Had an update from DD on super secret security check DGS, it's Lockheed he will be working for so plenty of scope there. He completes his degree in June I think, so is looking for interim job & place to live before he starts at Lockheed next year, maybe they have one intake a year or maybe some projects gets funded then? No idea but I see Brockworth is HQ for the software development & security.

One of my pressies, from DGD , is a Bonsai tree, looks nice but now I have to look it up and see what it is. Will it see another birthday? Not a big fan of them TBH, I can admire the skills and techniques involved and admit to trying to DIY once, but eventually CBA to carry on. Anyway, I'll do my best to keep it living and growing

Jobs for today involve more pirking out, the round courgettes, plus pot up the few Celebration runners that germinated, only 3 I think, so that should not take long

Oooh, wisteria 2P, I love that, and ripening plums.

twopenny

Brrrrrr it was cold this morning 🥶 condensation on the window.

I had urgent non dom this morning then hydrotherapy (swimming) by which time it was raining. Only bit of gardening was chasing a fat rat out of the garden again. It comes from annoying neighbour next door. More hole blocking to do.

Glad it was a good meal Farway. It's great to have someone else shopping/cooking/washing up. It makes it taste a whole lot better. Shame about the shop. I've made canes from old raspberry canes left over winter.

Yes definitely time to go back to making your own compost, support sticks and plant food. Watching Geoff Hamilton talking to one of the old school gardeners he didn't use anything bought. When I have time I must listen to that bit again. Trouble was I could only find it on YouTube and the second part had adverts every _5mins which I couldn't stand.

The wisteria has bloomed early because of the heating exhaust 😄 that's why I was thinking of putting tomatoes there. Not sure about the toxicity though 😐

The Cox is doing well.......8yrs to get them. Now if each becomes an apple I have problems 😲 I pruned the branches this year and last to try and fluff it up a bit but it continues to stay leggy. Pretty tho.