Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Woolsery

twopenny said:

Yes bucketing down last night. 
 Just the way as I was finially looking forward to my holiday at home this week now the tourists have left.

Yes I was looking forward to 'Back to School' as well. Mind you, I had 35 years when I used to hate it!!   However, I've no trips to anywhere busy booked till next week, when I'm hoping to do Rosemoor at least once and maybe a trip to another nature reserve where there seem to be more butterflies than the last place.

No stream here yet, but once this current crop of heavy showers soak in, it may start to flow again. At last, I'll be able to plant  down near there and maybe improve the diversity. Buddleias apart, there's only some Joe Pye Weed and Verbena bonariensis lightening the green down there....oh and Saponaria 'Betty Arnold,' who can survive anything, but she's double and doesn't count as a natural, wildlife-friendly plant.

Once the rain fell we had a surprise group of guests pop up in the Secret Garden grass, so we left one to spread its spores and ate the rest!

Hope you are soon on the mend, Farway. Don't worry, I'll have plenty more of the Lakemont to turn into winter cuttings if all else fails. Don't think I will get any ripe grapes though this year.

Apodemus

Spent a couple of hours in the sun today, pruning back a big holly bush.  Each autumn I carefully prune it with secateurs so that each shoot is back to the berries, both for winter show and so that the redwings, fieldfares and long-tailed tits can get easy access.   Two hours only took me about a third of the way round the bush and my left hand feels like it has been used as a pin-cushion.  I still need to do the back of the bush, but that is the shady side, so has a lot less growth and fewer berries.  Then it will need topping - its about 15 feet high at the moment and needs bringing back to about 9 or ten feet (it's about 12 feet across).

All the time I was pruning it, I kept wondering if I should be putting my outside Christmas lights up.  I'm not one of those Christmas-tree-up-by-Halloween sort of people, but doing the outside lights on a nice sunny day in early September seems much more appealing than trying to do it in early December, when you need to work without gloves to have enough dexterity for all the wiring...

Farway

Another thunderstorm last night, the garden is certainly catching up with the water now

Nice to see the toadstools Woolsery, reminds me to take my camera along next visit to volunteer garden, there's often a crop spring up in the grass there, giving me a chance to get the super macro shot that I've never got

No gardening today, my gouty foot has eased off but still painful walking so just lolling about today

Woolsery

Also not a lot of gardening here so far. I had to wait in for a supermarket delivery, so started hoovering and things snowballed with several indoor jobs cropping up. Everyone's somewhere else, but I can't take advantage, because every time I pop outside, it starts raining and it's blowing a gale! According to the Met Office we should now have a decent afternoon, but the power's just gone off and back on, crashing the computer etc so I'm not convinced of that!

One bit of bright news this morning was a a lady handing over £50, being the top prize in this months village raffle. Perhaps my share will buy me one posh wellie, because I'm suffering in the steel toe-capped things I normally wear and it looks like a pair of Bekinas are called-for: https://www.totallywellies.co.uk/ProductDescription.asp?Product=Bekina Steplite X Wellingtons

DB had a pair of those, but now goes for the short ones. In grass beyond my knees sometimes, I don't have that option!

I saw this at first light today. Didn't want to, but at least it's been a good season for them, with more returning last spring than in many years previously: 

Farway

Nice photo Woolsery, but everything is now closing down it seems, so I guess they've taken the hint

More rain last night but with my newly wonky leg still nothing doing in the garden, I'd like to go down and check some more apples for ripeness, but I'm not physically able to get there right now

Woolsery

Oh dear, you are in the wars with that gout, Farway.  I shall try not to whinge about my knees. After all, they still work and yesterday afternoon they even let me brushcut the stream garden area in my safety wellies. That was one tank worth of petrol and I was ready to stop, but I remember a time when I'd re-fill and go again.

Today I helped SiL unload our van which he'd somehow filled with joists and roofing timber whilst out on a site visit yesterday. Apparently, it's from a 1960s build, so plenty of arsenic in the treatment and no woodworm in sight! We have all the materials to build a big wood shed out front now, but I still need to finish things with the building inspector before doing that. I know building control don't often go into planning's territory, but I'd rather not take the chance.... Neighbour has had one in front of the building line for over 10 years, so I reckon another won't be much noticed.

It was so blustery and threatening today I decided to work in the wood sheds we're currently using. This meant bagging-up over 20 sacks of logs and moving them into a new shed so the next two loads don't get mixed with last year's left overs. I could easily spend a week chopping up stored timber of dubious quality, but that polytunnel nees more input or we will miss the boat with the weather........or has that happened already?

Farway

I think you've missed the weather boat Woolsery if mine is anything to go by, tipping down again, then followed by sunshine.

No gardening today, but may get round to watering the last of the toms in the conservatory now I can hobble a bit better

Woolsery

Farway said:

I think you've missed the weather boat Woolsery if mine is anything to go by, tipping down again, then followed by sunshine.

No gardening today, but may get round to watering the last of the toms in the conservatory now I can hobble a bit better

Next week looks a bit better, though it always does.....until we get there!

Good that you're at least hobbling today. Personally I'm much encouraged by the appointment of the new Health Secretary, which just shows what a bit of inclusive thinking can do. If we all identify with her as a role model, like the weather, things will seem much more hopeful. I've identified as a lithe and virile 27 year old for some years now, but the change will probably do me good.

By coincidence, I had my invite for a double jab emailed to me today, so after half an hour problem solving, I eventually cracked the code which gave access to a vast range of dates and times, but absolutely nothing as regards whether it would be a single prod, double whammy or you get to choose. Informed consent? Whassat guv?  I hear the booster has been tested on real mice, so that's encouraging for those eligible. I don't think I am. Missed the boat applies there as well.

Now, I just have to find the 30% bits of the day when I can go outside and attempt something without getting soaked. I think we can rule out lawn mowing, but I may get behind that brushcutter and do the chicken orchard. DB asked instructed me to do it before going off to visit the Outlaws a few days ago and she's going to be home by mid-afternoon.

PS. Speaking of tomatoes, the self seeded one is delightful and I've enjoyed the little fruits it produces....all 3 of them so far!

Woolsery

Earlier this year DB and I had to visit Slough. I say 'had to' because it's not a place one usually goes to without good reason. As a child, adults' dislike of Slough was a puzzle bcause the experimental traffic lights there, which stayed green so long as you didn't exceed 30mph travelling between them, seemed a boon. However, Betjemin had written that poem which began, "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.." and I just didn't get it. Given the current demographic make-up, I wonder how long he'd last doing that today....but I digress.

We went to Slough for the funeral of DB's uncle, who'd lived to the grand old age of 96. It was in a village church that had almost, but not quite been swallowed up by the spread of modern housing. Uncle had been a choir boy there and, unlike me, wasn't relieved of his post, so he rose to become a senior chorister. It was the same at work; a dedicated approach to engineering and an affable character took Uncle a long way through the ranks in his firm, making precision machine parts. Happily, or maybe sadly, he outlived the company, as the sort of work they did was eventually outsourced more cheaply abroad, but he and others retired before the inevitable shut-down.

To be truthful, the service for Uncle wasn't great. The hymns might have been vaguely familiar, but the modern renditions weren't and none of us could get our brains around them until the 3rd or 4th verse, by when it was too late. The vicar was also  hopeless, not seeming to know anything about Uncle and calling him by his birth certificate name, not the one everyone had used for decades. I was struck by the number of elderly men in the congregation and soon realised they were former colleagues, almost all dressed in suits that didn't quite fit and might have come from Dunn & Co when they did. In all, it was rather depressing.

Fortunately, the wake at a country hotel 25 miles distant was a different story. The guys in suits had skipped the family service at the Crem, gone on ahead and bagged a couple of drinks and tables together, so by the time we arrived they were comparing notes on how well their sat-navs had, or hadn't, worked.  They were also passing around photos of the old days at work, sharing them with us and laughing about incidents like large hyraulic pipes bursting and showering management with fluid. I could relate to that, having worked briefly in a shoe sole factory and witnessing similar spills in the 70s. Then the cry would be, "Get the engineers!" So these were the sort of chaps who lived in that seperate part of the factory making moulds and doing stuff with lathes.....Then I remembered, the factory had shut down in the 80s and the work went to Poland.

We had to leave sharpish because of the long journey and on the way home DB and I reflected on what looked to us like the end of several eras. It could so easily have been a sad and depressing day, but after talking with the guys at the hotel and with their laughter still fresh in our mind, we thought they'd rescued Uncle's send-off and shown us what was good about the old days. The sausage machine services and the limp sandwiches could all be overlooked. Some people still cared.

Being me, as we left the church, my eyes had scanned the surroundings and alighted on an aged  Cotoneaster, which in May seemed the only churchyard shrub which might oblige, so a bit of 'pruning' was undertaken. On our return, the cutting was inserted in my propagation bed and carefully watered all through the dry summer. Being handily shaded by some more obliging subjects, I held out hopes we would have a reminder of what will probably be our last visit to Slough, but alas, yesterday I noticed the one surviving leaf had fallen. The prop bed is due to go soon. It's in what's left of the polytunnel and must make way for a new track we'll be making. Of course there's a new, 'improved' polytunnel being made close by, though it's more compact. I think it will see me out, but I've not cut any corners with it.

Anyway, in view of recent events, I thought I'd go off topic a bit and share this with you. Ends of historic eras make us reflect on what's really been important and what we ought to preserve as best we can.

Sun's out

Farway

Thanks for the memories Woolsery, I know Slough from childhood days, it was Paradise, there were shops there with wonders never seen, I bought a whizz along car with rubber wheels that only needed to be powered / wound up by pulling the car backwards a few times, let it go and off it would shoot whacking into the skirting board with a mighty thump.

The always green traffic lights at under Thirty along the Bath Road, a joy. I remember a car load of us trying this out after a pint of maybe Worthington "E" in the "Peggy Bedford" and then up towards the pub on the corner of Harlington Road, now a Sheraton Hotel I think

Reminiscing about doing stuff with lathes & milling machines and the smell of cutting oil, it still goes on but no longer in huge factories, but I suspect if you are any good at it maybe these days at premium rates and with a space to park your bike

Shame about the cutting, my Hot Lips have failed as well But I'll try again when I cut them back a bit for winter

Sun out here but not much panned, leg still limping but much more mobile now