Awful weather - typical Brits talk

twopenny

Abs, I bought a chest freezer and filled it with veg soups which are real meals if you make them with garden veg, stuffed marrow saved as slices, fruits and crumbles. 
Would batch cook stew type meals once every 6 weeks so after work I could have quick  good food. No idea where I got the energy for growing, cooking and commuting but I guess we didn't have the internet and multiple tv channels.

My friend used to salt runner beans. Much nicer than frozen. 
Reminds me that I have 2 great books I used to use. Must look them out.

Well it is raining but not heavy enough to get wet. Potential showers this week maybe.
Defo not enough to get into the soil 

Feeling sad about the dog talk. I also had a Ben who was the love of my life. Always mischief. Loved everything. You could yell at him and he'd wag and say 'and what are we going to play now'
He sneakily waited for strawberries to ripen then paw each side squeezed it through the netting! I couldn't work out where they were going till I caught him at it.

Murphybear

Farway said:

Dull, Beeb tells me I'll be up to my neck in floodwater by tonight, assuming I'm not consumed by a forest fire of course

Just in case they are lying I went up and watered the volunteer large pots, dry as a bone but not quite fried, so I think I got there in time

DS & family are on hols, just arrived in Cornwall, and they've sent a pic, it's tipping down, near Bude so maybe your turn next Dusty

Wort, love the lily, one of my favourites, named "Stargazer", looks so exotic but is quite tough, and the scent just wafts in warm air. I have planted some in the volunteer pots near the fence, out of finger pinching reach but within nose distance for passers-by.

Gorse, the sedums can be brittle, but shorter ones are around. The broken bits will readily root, and the broken stumps recover easily. Have to agree with Dusty, hardy geranium would suit as well, Rozane sounds ideal and were it not for price I'd have bought some for my volunteer patch years ago

2P, I used to follow Alys F when she had her prog, found it quite informative, something happened in her personal life, best not mentioned or my bank will kick me out , and she went a bit "outside the box" garden wise to my mind, I think she has a column in the Guardian now

OT Care homes, by coincidence when we were looking for one for Mum we found a lovely one, run by Methodists I think. But had a waiting list and by the time everything was coming together it was too late for her, she did at least get out of the Devil's Hospital and into a more Cottage Hospital setting with caring staff

Dogs, all my Labrador style did was dig holes and race around knocking things over. Still a lovely dog though

Nice Glads, YBE, do yours keep coming back or is it the first year?

Last night, I harvested five of my runners and scoffed them for dinner , still no aphids or snail damage, very odd, but glad of it. Looks like plenty more flowers & beans to come as well

Here they are pre picking

It will soon be time for the glut of runner bean chutney 

Dustyevsky

I think we were on Buddleias a few days ago. This is one of my favourites, though hard to photograph, apparently. Here's one seller's version:

And here's another's:

Here's mine:

Whose picture is most accurate? As one nursery says, "Plants may not arrive looking like our photos."

OK, I ordered some new trainers today, but if they don't match the photo IRL, I'll think, "That was a con!"

OT: The mizzle is fizzling out now, though MSN think I'm in Bridgwater (perish the thought!) and tell me it's raining hard! 

wort

Rain,rain and more rain, heavy turning to thin wet you through stuff yesterday. Today is bucketing down the heavy wet stuff.The cat raced in this morning looking like a drowned rat.
I used to like the Alys programme,it was fantasy life I wished I had!

I have Rozanne given from my sisters cutting, I have a lot of the pink hardy geraniums, they flower forever again they were from sister, if you give them the Chelsea chop they bloom all through summer into autumn, tbh,I chop mine whenever and they do ok.
I do have a white one which I particularly like but of course that doesn’t seem to spread as much!

My cat thinks he’s a dog!! 🤣

pink_poppy

My cat thinks he's a horse - he gallops instead of running 

YoungBlueEyes

I'll start OT before I further the derailment ha haa! It's raining, my god it is raining. It's rained all day and all night and it's just gonna keep going for another 36 hours. Drunkards nailed it. My lovely expensive only-a-few-months-old guttering is leaking, water drips from where it sits in the bracket and our ladders aren't tall enough to get up there. So I rang the guy who said he'd try and get round next week some time. On the bright side, the drips have filled my water butt twice over, I have to keep opening the tap so it empties down the drain And the wheelbarrow I was going to sink for a pond has leaks in it, so that's saved me finding that out after I've buried it and planted it up. Every cloud eh. 

Gawd 2p, your strawb story made me laugh, it's that sorta thing that melts your heart! Aye Jack was above and beyond. Ben was good, he loved his training and was very obedient and happy. Jack was an absolute sponge though, I couldn't keep up with teaching him new stuff. He had a long list of commands and recognised a lot more words, and he could think for himself which I loved. Everything that he could do by voice command he could do by hand signals too - so I'd send him across a field, put him in a sit-stay, and then signal what I wanted him to do. I think a lot of dogs could be if people would put even the least bit of effort into training and disciplining them. I actually offered him to a military guy I knew who ran the dog section but he wouldn't take him cos Jack was too old - he was just over 2 iirc. But he taught me a whole load of new things for him (which were absorbed in a matter of weeks and he was looking for more).  I could write a whole book on him, honestly he was astonishing. I fully get that you wouldn't have another Dusty. I haven't got dogs now Gorse. I was looking for one a few years ago but the prices were outrageous. I wouldn't mind a good pair of black labs but I wasn't for paying the prices folk were asking. So I just make do with having Handsome sometimes

Don't question your lack of aphids and snails Farway, just eat the fruits of your labour before they realise you're there. Did the promised flood arrive? I don't know if my glads will keep coming back, they only went in this year. I really hope they do. I've a few more yet to come out and I can't wait to see what they look like... 

I agree with you there about how hard it would be to be genuinely self-sufficient Arb. I reckon it'd be good if you could do it, but it'd take such a lot of work and planning and storage and and and... I reckon you'd probably need a lot more land than you'd think too. And a forest of waterbutts  

Farway

Naturally enough, once I had been up & watered the volunteer pots yesterday the heavens opened later that morning, and it tipped down for hours and into the night, stopped now but windy. One casualty I can see is a tall tomato has gone sideways, I'm guessing the cane has snapped, but too soggy right now to check it

Amazingly, my lovely lilies seem untouched and I thought they would be the first casualty

At least on the bright side, that's the Boysenberry watered in

pink_poppy said:

My cat thinks he's a horse - he gallops instead of running 

Mine thought she was a blacksmith, kept making a bolt for the door. Boom tish!

Arb, self-sufficient, I think that the size of a standard [20 rods?]  Allotment was set because it was considered enough to feed a family of four for a year, but of course back then the diet was very repetitive, with the Hungry Gap filled by the likes of Kale, sprout tops & early sprouting broccoli. All root veg was clamped for storage, no freezers of course, and as mentioned, salted or dried beans / peas

Buddleia, The rain has bashed the white one, but I have a chance seedling, not yet flowered, which I think will be white so that'll be interesting to find out. Will it be my very delayed road to riches? Will I be able to afford a Rozanne geranium ?

Dusty Those buddleia photos remind me of the ones sometimes seen in fruit catalogues, or TV mags, the mini patio fruit trees with pounds of red & ripe fruit hanging off them

No gardening today, except get the tomato back upright ASAP

YoungBlueEyes

It’s stopped raining! It turned to drizzle about an hour ago and now it actually stopped! So the drunkards were wrong, all’s right with the world again  

Has your tom snapped near/completely Farway? I ask because one of mine has and I didn’t know what to do with it. So I snipped it off and it’s stood in a pot of water… I wonder if I did right? I wasn’t sure it’d heal itself if I secured it back up. Time will tell I guess. 

Bladdy weather. I bought a bit of beef and a load of veg for the dinner cos it was meant to be properly autumnal, and now the sun’s out and it’s really warming up. Grrrr. Damn you drunkards. 

twopenny

I'd have taped it together with duct tape (done that with tree and bush plants successfully) Bluey but the other option of sticking it in watet I'd guess it's a 50-50 chance either way.

So was to be rain all morning but it was dry and warm. I've just put cushion, book and coffee in garden and it's clouding over immediately. 

Last steak in the frezzer tonight with my runner beans 
Sheesh have you seen the price of stuff?! Did a sweep of the supermarket last night (rain and tv sport there's going to be bargains) and stocked up on reduced stuff. Menus will be interesting but fresh fruit and veg locally it's like going back to my youth - no money, got to keep going.

Time to dig up more lawn.

And it had to be done.

My Ben. I think the paw marks on the sand tell a story

Still miss him.........play came even before food. Permently happy.

Dustyevsky

Farway said:

 of the ones sometimes seen in fruit catalogues, or TV mags, the mini patio fruit trees with pounds of red & ripe fruit hanging off them

Yes, it must be disheartening for newbies. The gardening equivalent of the healing brush in celebrity magazines. Now it's AI. Apparently, it won't be long before the likes of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher can be their young old selves in new films!

Usually, I could take some snaps of fruit-laden tomato plants to make you lot envious, but this year has been an eye-opener, growing in pots rather than a deep bed in the poly. I'm still getting some blossom end rot and foliage doesn't look great either on a few of them. 

Instead, I shall give you the first in a sequence of photos featuring Theo the Thrush as he/she searches out our prized worms, now much more numerous than they once were. I just need to get the pics in the right order....

OT: After a damp start, we've had quite a dry and pleasant day. Some new planting and the usual weeding that goes with it. Our DD & spouse went to Rosemoor and felt inspired by seeing aubergines and peppers outdoors. I explained as patiently, as I could, they didn't start life there, Rosemoor's more sheltered than we are, but it's not sub-tropical!