Awful weather - typical Brits talk

YoungBlueEyes

Ah 2p that video was pure brilliant! It's amazing what dogs can learn when they're tret properly. And he looked like such a happy wee fellah  

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

Ah 2p that video was pure brilliant! It's amazing what dogs can learn when they're tret properly. And he looked like such a happy wee fellah  

Dogs are pack animals. They want a strong leader to teach them, make demands, and then reward them, not necessarily with treats, but simple praise. That's easy enough to say and understand, but how many owners follow through? Sadly, dogs don't live as long as humans. Mrs Dusty and I have had 3 between us, and we don't want the pain of separation again, so it's cats for us nowadays. Of course, cats are different; they own us!

Still dull here, despite the sunny start and a promise of more bright stuff later. Here's a photo of the dull landscape we walked through yesterday:

And because my post is a little depressing today, here's a birthday communication I received last week.  I'll delete it later!

Now deleted before any easily offended elderly people see it!

Farway

Dull but sort of OKish, it's dry & mild anyway

I knew I'd come a cropper looking through the fruit catalogue, now I want another apple, Purple Haze. Probably tastes awful because no one mentions taste, but it's columnar growth and purple fruits with red flesh, and early purple foliage, bet it looks a stunner. Very tempting.

twopenny said:

I've got my first daff, just one little tete a tete but that's fine 

Mine could be T A T, but some old fool never labelled the pot , so I'll have to wait until they flower. Shouldn't be too long.

YBE, PB, still on my list, I saw someone saying it went off track after series 2, and they fell out with it due too obvious to them, lack of historical research. I suspect that though is like the folk who spot a “wrong” tank used in some battle scene for instance.

I can never overlook HM Dockyard train wagons I saw in some film, or Call the Midwife cycling in Chatham Dockyard.

No gardening again today, may just pop out to check on daff progress

LessImpecunious

Re. the gnats, my son (who is a novice gardener, and mostly pots, but acquires lots of (sometimes good) info via t'internet) says that the recommended method is to water pots only from underneath, and not to get the surface layer of compost moist...

pink_poppy

I woke to yet another frosty winter wonderland this morning, so more windscreen scraping...

I think the single snowdrop is a goner, YBE, DH did some tidying up in that area last year and knowing him the bulb probably got dug up. I'm pretty sure the plants that Dusty identified have popped up, but just all leaf at the moment. I do like the flowers though - will take a pic when/if they emerge.

That's a good idea about flypaper to catch the compost gnats - I wish I'd thought about that last year.

I forgot to say welcome back to AR. Love that you hid your stones in appropriate places   I keep getting stone pics popping up on FB - the latest was two red fingerprints in a heart shape with little faces/arms/legs drawn on them.

I'm still watching The Wire (think it's the last episode of Series 1 tonight) and VEEP. Both good now that I've got into them - both quite sweary though.

Work today and I'm seriously thinking about handing my notice in - the timing is tricky though...   

Farway

pink_poppy said:

Work today and I'm seriously thinking about handing my notice in - the timing is tricky though...   

Any hints about redundancies? I clung on, wanting to go, until voluntary redundancies appeared.

pink_poppy

Thanks, Farway. I don't think VR is an option, sadly. We're only a small team and the timing is tricky because two of my colleagues are retiring in the next few months. If I left as well it would give my boss a real headache. I know we're all replaceable, but it's not the sort of job you can just walk into, unless you've done a similar role before.

YoungBlueEyes

I’d have a look at the pensions + annuities etc board pp. They might show a way to manage your finances ‘til pension kicks in, so you could maybe leave now. (Making an assumption about your age there, based on the average of us folk, forgive me if I’m wrong!) Or could you do your job at another firm? 

Your bang on there about dogs Dusty. Dogs that aren’t given a job that they can do to please you will find themselves a job and it almost certainly will not please you. The bulk of my work when I trained dogs was teaching people how to be alpha - the dogs were invariably fine. Money for old rope that was! 

Yep fly papers are great at capturing gnats, but watering from the bottom never occurred to me cos the pots are that big they don’t have holes… screwdriver time I think, thanks Less. I nipped into a gc this morning and asked the woman there. You can buy nets of wee stones now to put on top of your soil and the gnats don’t like that she said. £16.99 a net and I’d need about 10 of them Just looked like pretty gravel to me *shrug* 

I’d agree with that assessment of PB Farway. Series 1 was brilliant, 2 less so but fine, 3 umm I would say hard work but I did get to the end of it, 4 is back to fine. I might have been better with The Wire but I couldn’t find it on freeview anywhere so my choice was made for me. 

OT erm sun’s out. 

Also there will be no more cold weather coming whatsoever absolutely definitely guaranteed, cos I was in a charity shop earlier and found a beautiful as new sheepskin that fits like it was made for me for £25. So get your shorts and bikinis washed folks!  

Right I’m gonna go see about the interwiggled fuschia bit. 

LessImpecunious

YoungBlueEyes said:

Yep fly papers are great at capturing gnats, but watering from the bottom never occurred to me cos the pots are that big they don’t have holes… screwdriver time I think, thanks Less.

Could you poke some kind of tube deep into the pot and water into that?...

YoungBlueEyes

Aye that’d make more sense Less, I’ll do that cos I haven’t got round to the screwdriver thing. I’ll see what I can scare up that’d do. 

Here’s the bit-dropped-off. I brought it home for a drink cos it looked that thirsty That’ll go on tomorrows To Do list too. It sat in a bucket of rainwater currently. 

I knocked on the door first but nobody answered and the curtains are all shut so…. 

Is fuschia liable to be like lavender where it’ll not play the game, or will it be alright do yous think? I’ll let it drink tonight and plant it tomorrow.