Awful weather - typical Brits talk

twopenny

Just seen one of our photos on the blog. Worts I think. Crocuses? Croccii?
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2024/03/forum-highlights-28-03-2024/?from=forum-homepage-sidekicks

Abs, have you got one of these? A weed gouger.....i tried to find an online photo but they were all fancy jobbies. Just a hand tool with stout prongs. I can posta photo tonight.
Hands and knees, lift a lot of the grass up at the roots and pull. Not difficult, quite meditative.
The lavender is only just starting to shoot here and it doesn't like grass much. Keep it clear and a sprinkle of bonemeal for roots till it gets going. 
If you have any grit and sand (horticultural) give a good dose of that. Should be fine.

Bluey if you're bad what hope is there for the rest of us? Hope all feel better soon or can put their feet up.

What was weird yesterday was that the garden has been so squishy for ages but when I dug the turf it was fine and crumbly where the beds were not. Shows just how much water the lawn soaks up.
Where I used to live all the youngsters have concreted for cars and paved for easy maintenance.
They now have deep floods all along there.

Sunshine this morning but a wild east wind so it's all mouth and no trousers still.
No idea what today holds. My body clock still decides  9o'clock is 8 o'clock so a late start, lots to do but no inclination to do it. 

Dustyevsky

twopenny said:

Just dropped in to say - internet not streaming and then suddenly torrential rain straight down, hail, thunder

Such a switch around.

Looks like it's right along the south west but missing Farway and Dusty.

According to the radar, it was running right along your coast, but we had one rumble, and that was enough to freak the cats out! They go inside the sofas....   It was also enough to send me inside the house, not the sofas! I didn't take any photos, just gathered the tools up. However, the rain only lasted minutes.

The radar's showing heavy rain over us right now, which is accurate. You're due to have it too by 11.00, so I'm not keeping it all to myself!

YoungBlueEyes said:

Dusty I hope the family are ok and it was nothing serious? Bread and jam and pints of beer for your dinner yesterday then was it ha haa!

Oh and Lovely Neighbour left a couple hours ago for Spain for a week, and I'm on cat duty  

Everything's serious when you're 88, but happily the NHS services were working well and taking no chances. They get a lot of stick, but the folks on the ground usually do their best.

Cat, chicken and ferret duty here. The first two are normal. The other one leaves me smelling stronger and differently than usual. Enough said!

Some of you may remember the 2 Australorp pullets we bought last year. They are now fully grown and laying regularly. This is the one with character, gradually working her way up the pecking order. The other one is larger, but a wimp!

Looks like today will be a near repeat of yesterday. I'm tidying and weeding, as and when the rain allows.

Dustyevsky

twopenny said:

Bluey if you're bad what hope is there for the rest of us? Hope all feel better soon or can put their feet up.

Bluey's young; she'll soon bounce back! I'd bounce more if I didn't have to wear wellies so much. It's asking too much of 'waterproof' hiking boots to tackle all the weather's throwing at us, but when I can, I wear those. It certainly helps. That's my tip, especially now lightweight boots without massive, inflexible soles are available cheaply. I got these new for £30 a week ago. Shop around for offers.

https://www.cotswoldshoes.co.uk/products/33996-black?variant=40269247742050

Farway

twopenny said:

Just dropped in to say - internet not streaming and then suddenly torrential rain straight down, hail, thunder

Such a switch around.

Looks like it's right along the south west but missing Farway and Dusty.

It hit me about 9PM, the lot, thunder, lightening, Heavens opened up. One strike was so close it lit up the entire room through the curtains and shook the house . And this morning is sunshine.

There was a lovely picture to be had, if I had a camera to hand, this morning, raindrops hanging on the branches of my pink tinged Judas tree with sunlight shining through.

Welcome to the Sick Bay YBE, Matron will see you soon . Flashes image of Hattie Jacques, not Barbara Windsor.

The clocks have mixed me up, not that I was going to do much anyway. Certainly too damp to do any gardening outside, if my internal clock gets sorted I may sow some Cosmos in place of the no show pot marigolds.

This is my weed wild flowers woodland bit, Celandine & Snakes heads, with sunshine. I leave them where they are because it is an area behind my pear & no way I can reach there these days, so may as well enjoy what there is.

Dustyevsky

Farway said:

There was a lovely picture to be had, if I had a camera to hand, this morning, raindrops hanging on the branches of my pink tinged Judas tree with sunlight shining through.

The clocks have mixed me up, not that I was going to do much anyway. Certainly too damp to do any gardening outside, if my internal clock gets sorted I may sow some Cosmos in place of the no show pot marigolds.

This is my weed wild flowers woodland bit, Celandine & Snakes heads, with sunshine. I leave them where they are because it is an area behind my pear & no way I can reach there these days, so may as well enjoy what there is.

The picture of Celandines and Snakes' Heads is lovely enough. You and pp are putting me to shame! 

As it happens, I did have my camera with me just after the shower deluge this morning, and strangely, I also tried to capture the water droplets on our Hawthorn. The result, shooting into the sun, wasn't quite as wonderful as reality, but what is real? Although the picture is rather average, it seems I caught a glitch in the Matrix; if you look closely, there's a pigeon flying by.... with no wings!

No such luck ten minutes later, though. A woodpecker passed at speed, and although the shutter seemed to fire in time, it's not there.

You have no-show marigolds and I have the marigolds, but no-show cosmos. As for the clocks, because I'm currently on my own I can have one unaltered to show me what the 'real' time is.

Farway

That was the sort of raindrop image I saw Dusty, no bird, but who knows when the shutter clicks?

Cosmos sowed, white with red edge, but being T & M maybe tartan . There was no sign in the compost of the no show marigolds, not even the rotting corpses of the seeds. Very odd.

Dustyevsky said:

As for the clocks, because I'm currently on my own I can have one unaltered to show me what the 'real' time is.

I rely on my car clock for “real time”.

ArbitraryRandom

I rely on the cats expecting to be fed at the same time... but I do need to be careful as sometimes they think I'm getting complacent and try to sneak their meals earlier and earlier in the day - perhaps in the hopes of getting an extra one eventually  

kiss_me_now9

Got the potatoes in their pots today. Decided I'm not going to bother trying them in the ground this year. 

Any ideas about getting a harvest from our cherry tree? We have a medium sized one in the middle of our lawn. The people who lived here before us had two big greyhounds that were out most of the day so birds generally didn't bother with it and for our first year we had a great harvest - which my then pregnant sister ploughed her way through so I managed to eat about 3 of them... In the five years that have passed, the birds have realised that the big dogs have gone and been replaced with two lazy and some what inept cats that don't go out very often ( a few times a month if that) so our trees have had a lot of nests in them. I don't mind that, and would like to carry on supporting the birds as much as possible but we haven't had a single cherry off the tree since that first year. The problem is threefold - 
1) we have about 8 big, fat pigeons that land heavily on the upper 2/3 branches and the weight of them shakes any immature buds off
2) the blackbirds and smaller birds attack the immature fruit and throw it on the ground
3) all the birds seem to be keen to wreak havoc on the tree in any way they can, as it's starting to bud up they're on it several times a day and I can already see the top few branches have been stripped of their buds. 

I'm wary to net it as I don't want anything getting caught in the netting, especially as we have lots of smaller and younger birds visiting. 

I saw a youtube video suggesting that birds do this because they're thirsty, but I dare any animal in our area to be thirsty at present given the sheer volume of liquid that has poured out of the sky for the last month and a half. We don't have a bird bath (because of the cats) but neighbours do and have ponds etc. so I don't think that's what's going on here. Last year we tried hanging a few bird feeders so that they ate the seeds rather than the cherries but no success. 

We've tried hanging shiny bits in the tree, does nothing. From what I understand putting a bird scarer or deterrent in would also deter them from nesting in the other trees which I don't really want. 

ArbitraryRandom

Not sure how effective it is, but my mum had a huge cherry tree in one of the houses she lived in for a few years - she swore by the wind chimes she'd hung on the branches. Not sure if it was the movement or the sound, or maybe at a pinch the light reflecting off the metal (like that metallic bird scare tape or how people used to use CDs back in the day)?

Any corvids might get used to it after a year or two, but I don't think pigeons are that intelligent... 

The alternative might be very fine netting fabric - like voile or the fancy stuff that's to keep butterflies off cabbages - with no holes to snag birds while still letting light and air through.  

twopenny

Poundland and other cheapie shops do a very light fleece. Comes on large sizes. Throw over some branches and clip with those fat grippy clothes pegs.

Wonder if foil sheets layed under the tree would reflect up and deter?

I seem to remember the cherry farms and something to do with making sure the rain doesn't get on them at the vital ripening moment so a huge umbrella over them may do the trick both ways  .