Awful weather - typical Brits talk

twopenny

Lovely pictures Dusty. As a child I used to wake up to thrushes bashing snails on stones. They were everywhere.
Now we seem to have made urbanisation unattractive to them and are over run with slugs and snails eating our plants and just the sound of machines to wake up to
All this talk of dogs made me go for a doggy hug this morning. A friends gorgeous little spaniel.

I've just bought two huge Snap Dragons from morrisons. £2,50 for big plants. They remind me of my childhood. Couldn't grow them to that size for that price. Also some flowers for the dire state of my horribly dry garden.

Been raining on and off, cool but the soil (or me) not even wet 

pink_poppy

Does anyone on here want some white aquilegia seeds?? I posted a pic of the flowers a while back and have just snipped off the seed pods as I noticed they were drying out. I have no idea if they’ll still be white when they grow from the seeds - I was going to sprinkle a few in a different part of the garden or maybe try a few in pots?? 🤔 Will have some spare if anyone wants to experiment.

Dustyevsky

Thanks for the offer PP, but I'm good for potentially white aquilegia seed.Mrs Dusty marked a plant in our front area and remembered to collect seed. Now I must remember to sow it! I don't know about you folks, but I have a box of self-collected seeds going back to 2018 and only about half have ever been sown.

Farway, according to the RHS the problems I'm having with tomatoes this year are exacerbated if they're larger types. Because my SiL uses a lot of toms in his cooking, I went for some big types, expecting to have them in beds, not pots, so that was my big mistake. I'm only now getting the deep beds into the poly, thanks to 1001 other jobs that also need doing. Will be ready next year....famous last words!

It looks like the decent day the drunkards promised us yesterday is going to materialise after a slow start. Wall-to-wall sunshine by 11.00. After today, things seem to be going downhill weatherwise, but the worst is overnight Wednesday /Thursday, which suits me.  There ought to be plenty of worms around for Theo the thrush. Here's today's picture:

Farway

Decent day here as well Dusty, then it's downhill like yours

I've never done very well with larger beefsteak type toms, and quite accidentally seem to have gravitated to the cherry or small ones, which do seem easier to grow for me, or at least get a ripe crop off them. I started my tomato growing fifty plus years ago with Outdoor Girl because that was what my granddad grew but gradually became seduced by newcomers, like Shirley and that was a slippery slope, and now I'm a tomato tart chasing every one on offer.

I have a new one to me just colouring up, yellow cherry plum

If the weather holds, I need to get out & tie up the toms, getting taller and starting to wave about. I'll take the opportunity to remove the tops now it's nearly August and unlikely to ripen new trusses, plus maybe blight on the way

I'll also remove lower leaves on my conservatory toms, had another whitefly purge yesterday so fewer leaves for them to hide under

twopenny said:

I've just bought two huge Snap Dragons from morrisons. £2,50 for big plants. They remind me of my childhood. Couldn't grow them to that size for that price. Also some flowers for the dire state of my horribly dry garden.

And me 2P, we called them Bunny Rabbits, squeeze the flower, and it opens, mouth with two ears? Simple days when summer lasted forever and children, plus maybe the family dog, went out and never came back until tea time

Dustyevsky

I don't get seduced by any Shirleys now, more's the pity , but I've still got the snapdragons. Black Prince is one of my faves and Royal Bride is another. Sadly, Royal Bride was tripped by my hose early in the season this year and fell at the first altar, but I'm still rooting for her return in the autumn. 

ArbitraryRandom

For me, it's clover; I remember going around the lawn with my nan pulling them. She used to call popping the tops off beheading soldiers... which, now I come to think of it, was more than a little weird. 

That and the smell of the shed. They only had (with hindsight) a little house, so used to keep a cardboard box in the shed full of toys/games, and would put a blanket on the lawn on a hot day to tip them all out onto. There's a very distinct smell of slightly musty cardboard, hot tin (from the roof) and turps that just reminds me of summer. 

YoungBlueEyes

Loving the pics Dusty And aye it's a wonder they don't drop all the worms they're holding while they get another one...

"Tomato tart" that made me laugh Reckon I could be in danger of cheerfully falling into that category, depending how the current mini forest ends up. If they all succumb to blight I'll give up entirely  

Having done quite well with some things, they've decided to turn a corner. The 2 of the 4 fence eating triffid sticks that I was carefully nurturing and were coming along rightly have decided it was too much like hard work and now look decidedly forlorn. I planted some more lettuce and rocket seeds, they got quite big so I repotted them, they got even bigger, but now this morning they're all floppy and pale looking What's the opposite of green-fingered? *sigh*

When we were little there was a house we walked past that had a big old beautiful brick wall all along the front. There were pink+white/yellow+white snapdragons growing out of it at all kinds of angles so we called them jam/marmalade sandwiches. I still think of them as that now  

The weather was stop start showers and sun yesterday but I persisted with my washing - fetching it in and putting it out again 20 mins later cos it was promised to be the best day of the week. Well today is lovely. Dawn was quite nice, the clouds cleared and the sun's been out these last few hours. Breeze is just right and there's even a bit of heat out there    Swines.

YoungBlueEyes

Having duckduck'd aquilegia I'll have some seeds off you pp if you're sure you've got spare? 

pink_poppy

Aye, I’m sure. Send me your address and I’ll pop some in the post. We can have a competition to see who is successful in growing them 😂

YoungBlueEyes

Well if we’re racing to get them 1/3 grown I’ll accept the challenge! Fully grown could be beyond me 🙄