Awful weather - typical Brits talk

LessImpecunious

Thanks for today's best giggle Farway - notching away at your figs! - you do have a way with words...

ArbitraryRandom

Huh. I while back ordered a couple of hosta 'Andrew' for my mum (They needed to be that specific cultivar they're intended as a memorial for my uncle Andy who recently passed). 

Two plants were delivered - and I contacted the company as I thought they were the wrong variety (they didn't have the distinctive leaf colour/pattern). Earlier, the company apologised, can't identify them from the picture and explain the label must have been switched/lost. I can keep them; they're sending a pair of replacement plants due in the next couple of days. 

Meaning now I have two free random plants, which I've never grown and only seen them as part of ornamental gardening - I google 'hostas' in an attempt to identify the variety and what to do with them. 

I find a few articles along this line 

https://foragerchef.com/eating-hosta-shoots/
https://www.ruralsprout.com/eat-hostas/
https://www.foodforest.garden/2012/05/07/hostas/

So, if I'm right, even not knowing the specific cultivar I now have, I can plant them on the shaded side of my garden and grow them as a spring vegetable...?  

YoungBlueEyes

Condolences for your uncle Andy Arb. It was good that they sent you replacements, considering it's for such a particular reason eh? A proper person will be up soon with advice re spring veg. I do like your manipulated desktop pic though, that'd make me smile every time I saw if for sure  

Dusty your fuchsia looks like the one mum had in the garden - same colour combo and petal shape and leaf colour. It's nice to see it again   Your helebore pic - is that a recent pic? Mine doesn't look anything near that stage... Mind, you bluddy suvveners with your mild and temperate climate  

I like your turn of phrase too Farway, you often make me giggle. Your bud notching article was interesting, I think I have a few buds on my trees that I could do that to. I'm guessing now is the time to do it - is now "a month before buds open"? 

Speaking of ...improving... pictures and you're never sure what's what in the digital age - I can 100% assuredly deffolutely certainly guarantee you all that my pics are natural ( ) Wiggly, wrong focus, badly framed they may well be, but they're really real. I wish I could do photo editing etc cos then I'd have a cracking avatar ha haa!

Grey out there this morning but mild still. I don't know if it rained in the night but it's all a bit damp out there. Blackie was in fine throat at 0530, robin was late up but he joined in eventually Oh and my blackie-a-trois is now a pair again. I don't know what happened but I haven't seen a body anywhere, so I'll say the extra one was a late starter and just moved out  

twopenny

Morning all 
Imps, you're right, Farway has a great turn of phrase. Often cheers me up.
Dusty that photo is a real cracker!
Abs, I've seen seen hosters grown in zinc containers, old baths, watering cans and such which stops the snails eating the leaves.
Bluey your photos are lovely. Manipulation apart from curiosity as another game to play just takes more time out of your life for something that most give a cursory glance to. Where a garden is somewhere people will sit and enjoy for hours enhancing their senses and wellbeing.
I skipped a morning course yesterday on AI in photography for a laugh and table tennis. Lifes to short for staring at a screen.
Used to play with Photoshop back in the day. Took all the people out of the photo of me in front of the pyramids. I looked like billy nomates after 3hrs.

Mind it came in useful for the one in my bathing suit. I became slimmer, white teeth, tidy hair.
That went on the wall but I kept the original to remind me to go on a diet  . 

11c here which is nice. Grey.
Weather forecast - 1 says rain all day, the other dry all day.
For sure it will be one or the other.
Had a fat translucent green caterpillar climbing up my fence last night. Think it was a moth one.
Whats wrong with these critters.

YoungBlueEyes

Well talk about life imitating art, or vice versa, or summat. Just went for a look at my tree buds to see if the notching might be a goer, and guess what I saw? The builders that are knocking hell out of carefully renovating the old school have put this up, so that settles the argument of the squiggly chimney pot v drunken camera eyes. Wasn’t that good of them? 

*sigh* I'm not liking the idea of a load of them spouting across the whole roof line. 

Dustyevsky

I missed Farway's gigglesome turn of phrase, because I was very focused on the bud notching. There's a tree that doesn't belong to me that could do with some, but dare I?  I'll probably compromise, just do one and see how it goes.

I'm similarly intrigued by Arb's discovery of edible qualities in hostas. It may be something I once knew, overwritten when my brain ran out of memory. It does sound familiar. Again, dare I try it? I once served rabbit stew to a bunny lover, saying it was chicken, but Mrs Dusty's prize-winning Frances Williams, dished-up as an 'asparagus variant' might be going too far!

You may have had the same early photo enhancer as me, 2p; I was always using the "Thinnify" button! Now, of course, AI will do all that and more, send copies to all your mates and one each to Billy G, MI5 and the CIA.

Yesterday's hellebore photo was taken this week, Bluey. It's not properly out, but the white ones can get black flecks on them, so I took it asap. Nearly all the hellebores are coming up and out now, but the sheltered ones under bushes are quickest, and photographing them is hit & miss. Here's another white; see the wee black spots already?

One of my bestest hellebores, a yellow with red centre was right in the way where the digger is going in April, so  I dug it up and divided it. I doubt if any of the bits will flower this year, but there are now 6 pots of it!

It's grey here too, folks, windy, and still mizzling. I may get some concreting done, if only because I don't fancy being on top of the big hedge in that.

Dustyevsky

twopenny said:

Oh I like a good word.
So I had to look it up and found a load more
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/winter-words
I'd also like to read an interpretation of hard English words......

Ha, synchronicity or just coincidence? I'd just read through your link, and then went to YouTube for 5 minutes mindless R&R, when this randomly came up:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rCaiYSzLAYk?feature=share

The subtitles couldn't cope with the word Brumation, but I could, thanks to your winter word link!
EDIT: Just spotted your post, Bluey. What have the builders erected? Whatever it is, the chimney does appear to be squiffy!

YoungBlueEyes

It's a tv aerial I think Dusty, but presuming that it's straight it proves the chimney is ...not... so my camera's eyes are fine  

That's another pretty hellebore, and I see what you mean about the wee spots. Is that cos of critters or the weather or what? 

Just finished (unforecastedly) raining here. Big chunks of blue sky appearing between the scuttling clouds. Very pleasant out there now actually. 

Oh and Farway's phrase that had us girls giggling was about notching his figs. Sounds nawty but in a gentle way. 

Farway

Dull & grey, supposed to be mild but feels cold to me. My weather thing says temp may be near record high for 3rd Feb, brrr is all I can add.

Dustyevsky said:

I missed Farway's gigglesome turn of phrase, because I was very focused on the bud notching. There's a tree that doesn't belong to me that could do with some, but dare I?  I'll probably compromise, just do one and see how it goes.

I'm similarly intrigued by Arb's discovery of edible qualities in hostas. It may be something I once knew, overwritten when my brain ran out of memory. It does sound familiar.

Perhaps bud notching could become the alternative to bush trimming?

I am of course referring to activities carried out in car or public parks by some members of this forum

I never knew about hosta noshing either. Learn something every day.

Somethings to add to a CV to brighten it up.

Now I have a mental image of shifty looking gardeners skulking in shadows, notching buds, trimming bushes and nibbling on hostas

Good hellebore pics again, Dusty, is your camera one with flip screen, or how do get low enough to get the pic?

Following your YT link, frozen alligators, now that is another thing I never knew. 

That would spice up Skating on Ice , I'd even watch that series, if it was 'slebs it could be a variation of I'm a sleb etc, except the sleb would be the "tucker" and public could nominate who was next. At last TV worth watching.

Back to gardening, more daff buds spotted at the front, and this time I know they are Tete a tete

I'm getting tempted to make my first seed sowing now seeds are here, coleus perhaps as they are OK to sow anytime, only problem m may be light levels once they germinate. I shall ponder that for a day or so.

At last, I found a taste note for Apple Purple Haze, "Crisp and delicious but also kind of work of art.. Sweet and juicy taste with some acidity.. harvest between Sept and October ... Perfect for eating fresh from the tree"

Sounding better every day

LessImpecunious

Farway said:

Dull & grey, supposed to be mild but feels cold to me. My weather thing says temp may be near record high for 3rd Feb, brrr is all I can add.

Dustyevsky said:

I missed Farway's gigglesome turn of phrase, because I was very focused on the bud notching. There's a tree that doesn't belong to me that could do with some, but dare I?  I'll probably compromise, just do one and see how it goes.

I'm similarly intrigued by Arb's discovery of edible qualities in hostas. It may be something I once knew, overwritten when my brain ran out of memory. It does sound familiar.

Perhaps bud notching could become the alternative to bush trimming?

I am of course referring to activities carried out in car or public parks by some members of this forum

I never knew about hosta noshing either. Learn something every day.

Somethings to add to a CV to brighten it up.

Now I have a mental image of shifty looking gardeners skulking in shadows, notching buds, trimming bushes and nibbling on hostas

Good hellebore pics again, Dusty, is your camera one with flip screen, or how do get low enough to get the pic?

Following your YT link, frozen alligators, now that is another thing I never knew. 

That would spice up Skating on Ice , I'd even watch that series, if it was 'slebs it could be a variation of I'm a sleb etc, except the sleb would be the "tucker" and public could nominate who was next. At last TV worth watching.

Back to gardening, more daff buds spotted at the front, and this time I know they are Tete a tete

I'm getting tempted to make my first seed sowing now seeds are here, coleus perhaps as they are OK to sow anytime, only problem m may be light levels once they germinate. I shall ponder that for a day or so.

At last, I found a taste note for Apple Purple Haze, "Crisp and delicious but also kind of work of art.. Sweet and juicy taste with some acidity.. harvest between Sept and October ... Perfect for eating fresh from the tree"

Sounding better every day

Farway said:

Perhaps bud notching could become the alternative to bush trimming?

I am of course referring to activities carried out in car or public parks by some members of this forum

I never knew about hosta noshing either. Learn something every day.

Somethings to add to a CV to brighten it up.

Now I have a mental image of shifty looking gardeners skulking in shadows, notching buds, trimming bushes and nibbling on hostas

Don't forget the squeezing of plums and gooseberries (to check whether they're ripe, of course)...