Awful weather - typical Brits talk

ArbitraryRandom

Is that middle bush a holly? I know some don't have spiky leaves (older and larger plants); the waxiness and berries suggest so. 

The flower is defo some variety of fuchsia (a plant I always need to check the spelling of ) 

Dustyevsky

ArbitraryRandom said:

Is that middle bush a holly? I know some don't have spiky leaves (older and larger plants); the waxiness and berries suggest so. 

The flower is defo some variety of fuchsia (a plant I always need to check the spelling of ) 

The fuchsia could be Hawkshead, as Eeny says. I went searching for my Hawkshead to photograph it this afternoon, but it's gone off to visit  the fjords, apparently, so no luck in comparing them! I have another similar fuchsia on the driveway, but it might be one of the Whiteknights series. Anyway, I need to shoot it in daylight for the photo to be any use.
I'm fairly certain pp's other plant photo is holly, quite possibly 'Van Tol.' It's certainly not Van Morrison's, though I've had a few good wee ones out of there!

In other news, the car is not quite as bad as I feared, though certain things that are useful, like brakes, need some input. There are a few niggly faults, like a split gaiter, and a ball joint. That's normal. Anyway, with the usual discount scheme, it may come out the right side of £500, so I'll need a few trips to the fast vanishing ATMs.

goldfinches

Fascinating and delightful photos on here today, I particularly liked the gull's bum and think the moss probably counts as homegrown insulation if you squint a bit. The orchids are lovely and the dog definitely counts as adorable.
We had lovely bright sunshine here today with not much wind although it did bucket down for most of the night so my walk today was very muddy and the river is running so fast it chuckles and swirls past the bridges. Excitingly I think I have finally succeeded in capturing the ring-necked parakeets on camera even though my phone was so low on battery that it wouldn't zoom properly so here they are.



They seem to prefer the tallest trees so when I spotted them quite low down in this maple I hastily snapped away before they moved into hiding.

I also thought this curation on Art UK was worth a look What is your birth month flower? | Art UK, I'm April and do like sweet peas and am pleased that sweet pea signifies intense pleasure, good wishes, kindness, gratitude, and friendship. That all sounds things I'd like to be, what do you think of yours?

-taff

BLimey Arbitrary, that's a bit of a journey...

pink poppy, loving the gulls bum too

The MOT doesn't sound too bad Dusty, when I had my fathers old transit [he thought I should treat it like an heirloom and keep it running forever] it used to cost around a grand each yearna d most of that was for welding....I persuaded him to let me sell it eventually. To the neighbours.

Mine will be in for a split boot cover before the joint starts getting crackly the week after next.

Bagged up all my saved seeds this year, all either with proper names or my own because I've forgotten what they are, like Orange flower, drought tolerant, Pink flower, drought tolerant etc. My szechaun pepper, of which I was very proud has died but there is one shoot at the base [ snails ate the bark off] and I do have a few seeds to sow next year. I haven[t done anything in the garden, except chase the fox off who keeps taking my plants out of the pond, house is being primped a bit, and defiitely emptied of junk, clothes, you name it, whatever I can throw away.

pink_poppy

Stunningly beautiful starry sky at 6.15 this morning - DH will be scraping the car when he goes to work though. I looked out again just before 7am and saw the ISS going over   I didn't expect that and it's made my day  

Another one who has to check the spelling of Fuchsia, AR. I kind of say it in my head how it looks to remind me haha.

The fuchsia in question is actually a very pale pink, not white, so not a Hawkshead I don't think. It is very pretty.

I thought the berry bush had a look of a holly, but wasn't sure. Nice to have that confirmed.

How exciting to see the ring-necked parakeets, goldfinches   Lovely pic.

I thought of Dusty when I read this article on hungry snails Snails eating mail in Lewdown village postbox - BBC News

YoungBlueEyes

Trumpets for your bin Farway! Parp prp prp prp parp parp parp paarrpp! Has the refilling process begun in earnest? 

Proper twinkly starry sky here first thing too, it felt kinda weird cos it wasn't cold enough to be so starry itms. No ISS though

The fuchsia looks like the interwiggled one at the end of my road, I can't remember now what yous said it was. Very pretty whatever it is. 

Your MOT sounds bearable Dusty, and at least then you'll be back on the road eh  

Love the parakeet picture gf, don't they blend in well! I remember watching a thing years ago about a huge old London cemetery that was chock full of them and the noise was incredible apparently. Probably nice to walk through occasionally but annoying to live near.

What's the house primping in aid of taff? You selling up or is it a general mucking out for christmas guests...?  

Mild but damp out there this morning so it feels cool. No wind though and plenty of clouds now My cosmos is looking a bit tired but it's still standing. They've all given sunshine for this morning and they're all wrong. The humidity is 96% and air is as damp as it can be without being actual fog.

Dustyevsky

pink_poppy said:

I thought of Dusty when I read this article on hungry snails Snails eating mail in Lewdown village postbox - BBC News

Well, I suppose Lewdown is in Devon, but it's pretty close to that other place with the black & white flag!

Strangely enough, Mrs Dusty and I do have a tenuous link with the next good-sized village, Lifton, and specifically the bit of it called Tinhay. It was there we considered buying a small nursery/garden centre in what had been an old quarry. There was no house, but room for one existed in one area not affected by potential flooding.

We weren't sure it was the right place for our business, so we let it go. Neither of us fancied buying-in much of the stock, and there wasn't enough room to do otherwise.

Sooo.....this morning I nipped down the road from Lewdown in my Google car to have a look. By using the date facility, I was able to travel back to 2009, when the nursery was still there:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6461,-4.2740352,3a,90y,324.74h,70.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sbUpJP460hWwcMJoKRrCrqQ!2e0!5s20090601T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu

You can see the little shop building is raised up. My investigations were confirmed by the very honest owner, who showed us where the water had reached in the past.

Rolling on to Street View in 2021 the scene is different. The nursery is closed and if the lane next to the river is followed 50m north-east, a house has been built where I thought one would be safe. Roll on again to July 2023 and now someone is building a very nice house on the site of the old shop. It looks sort of elevated, but not so much as the shop was.

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions in these times of climatic variation! 

YoungBlueEyes

It says my birth month flower is marigold - "often associated with warmth, love, and creativity." I'm ok with that, but I wouldn't have described my self as creative.

Well unless 'there's no reason this isn't working so why isn't it working...? I bet I can make it work. What did I do with that bit of plastic/string/bubblewrap/unusually long half rusty nail that I've been keeping these last 11 years for no discernible reason, that'll do the job' counts as creative. In which case it's 3 for 3 ha haa!

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

It says my birth month flower is marigold - "often associated with warmth, love, and creativity." I'm ok with that, but I wouldn't have described my self as creative.

You are creative with words, Bluey.

I can't remember what my birth month was supposed to make me now, but I was OK with it and we have plenty of  the associated flowers. Maybe it was forgetful? Loyal was one of them. One of Mrs Dusty's was 'gratitude'.Hmmm, she's just defected to Somerset for a week, so I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate.  

Parakeets sounds exciting, but I bet they can be noisy in numbers and might upset the local ecology too. Here, the poshest houses in the village are next to a rookery. While there's no chance of us affording one, I wouldn't live there anyway. Horrible racket!

It's still persisting down, and the drive is all puddles, so an outdoor shot is too difficult so far today. So, here's a rubbishy indoor photo of our surviving fuchsia of that type; if not Hawkshead, then possibly with some of its genes:

I think it might be 'Whiteknights Blush.' 'cos that was the only other one we had like it. No label, but then it was planted in 2010! 

YoungBlueEyes

The July 2023 hose on the not-your-old-nursery site is quite nice imo. I might've built it the other way round though, side on to the road cos then you'd get sunrises and sunsets streaming in the windows. I see what you mean about the height of it... well these things never go wrong until they do eh.

When I imagine 'creative' I'm thinking of people like 2p, artists or sculptors or musicians and the like. I was called loquacious in a school report once, and when I took it home and daddy read it he said he said "well they obviously meant verbose". Bit harsh was that, I was only about 10  

When the cat's away the mouse will play... so what you gonna do with your week of freedom Dusty? If you've inviting us all round it needs to be quick for I'm away on Friday!