Awful weather - typical Brits talk

greenbee

Catching up on GW at the moment. Lots of lovely tulips.

I've divided and replanted a very boring geranium that will provide ground cover under the hydrangeas at the side of the drive. I've also dug up and relocated about a billion crocuses. Tomorrow I need to move iris sibirica so I can make the 6m raspberry bed. Although my mum is muttering about buying magnolias which means I'll have to dig some holes to put them in...

twopenny

Phew! It's taken me ages to catch up - I started this morning but didn't have time.

I'm exhausted........it's been really warm in the back garden and I started to just read a bit before getting on with something essential and just kept reading. Had to change into a teeshirt and shorts

But I did get the seeds resown and everything watered.

This peat free stuff is a nightmare. Dunked the seed pots in the water (remember the ones that drowned because it was too wet, well now they've dried out to a frazzel!) and this 'compost' just floated to the surface and virtually disolved    I had to refill the pots.

Literally money down the drain.

But a day of sunbathing has left me exhausted and now I've finished reading I'm too tired to download/upload photos.

I've got tons I took specially.

Love the gardens. They are all looking good and no two the same.

Isn't it amazing that we're all so different in what we want but the essential bit is the same, sitting out in it

Farway, did you see GW last night? Oddly I photoed some Cannas at the Cemetary and they just mulch them through winter. They're sprouting again and the result is always impressive.

Are you going to give it another go this year?

Bluey, sorry about your pear. Are you sure, sure?

"Early blight spots start as irregular brown spots that grow in target-like rings around a bulls-eye of dead tissue. The surrounding leaf turns yellow, then brown, then falls from the plant."

There was something about the bits going like shepherds crooks and lumps of canker....urggg!

My plum developed something I asked about on here, decided to wait and it's spent the last 2yrs giving me lots of plums Fingers crossed for your pears

Dustyevsky

pink_poppy said:

Spot the robin keeping a beady eye on me as I was digging this afternoon... ❤️

Ah, I had one of those too, but mine was swearing. It wanted to come down and see what I was disturbing in my clean-up, but I had Wiggy the cat keeping me company!  Nice sorbus to sit in for yours, or does it cast too much shade?

I can only hear blackbirds at present. This looks like the last sunny morning for a time. Fortunately, little rain is forecast for our major landscaping work this coming week, so it shouldn't be as messy as it would have been two weeks ago! Still not very warm, though.

-taff

Weather is looking good so far, haze to be burned off follwed by what I call Greek weather, very sunny, and a bit windy at the same time. OH wants to paint fences today, so off to the HellMouth we go to get some more, and he wants me to take down the rickety log store to paint behind it. All fine by me, I can persuade him to measure up for the goth box then. To the right of those pots in yesterdays picture there will be an extension [ potentially next year] and I've been potting that stuff on since it was babies, so they're not going in the ground until they're going to be there permanently. I didn't sweat over that fatsia to see it squashed by builders carnage. All change after that, grass up, a bit of properly laid patio and a bed for the fatsia and palm, and some, wait for it, self binding gravel...The olive trees appear to still be alive so yay, the medlar has frown six inches and the quince has/had flowers. They;re very pretty, they kind of fold all over themselves, not like the japonica ones, the leaves do have some windburn though

I saw a very noisy black tit this morning which is the first time I can remember seeiing one. He was singing his little heart out. Or being very noisy at half six anyway...no pics of him..ybl, how's the pear?

YoungBlueEyes

Ooh I like that bed taff. Will you clad/cover it with anything? Like wood slats or something I mean, cos won't it get burny hot in the summer..? 

Those tulips are a sight Dusty. I deffo think I did mine wrong this year, I much prefer clumps of rather than random ones dotted about. Next year, next year!

Buddy 'ell 2p, tshirt and shorts?! You'd be nithered if you dressed like that up here. Your book must have been good  
No I'm not sure sure about my pear, that's why I put a pic on here for yous to comment on. It's no worse this morning, no more black leaves and the rest of the leaves are starting to uncurl a tiny wee bit, maybe. It can stop in quarantine for a while longer just in case though. My apple tree's been through enough and my roses are getting going now so I don't want to risk it.  This bit was interesting - "Early blight spots start as irregular brown spots that grow in target-like rings around a bulls-eye of dead tissue. The surrounding leaf turns yellow, then brown, then falls from the plant." It didn't do that, just the ends of some of the leaves darkened and virtually all the rest of them curled up. I'm keeping a loving eye on it.  

Ah magnolias gb Do you have crocuses in your grass or in beds/borders..? If you run out of room for either of those you can fetch them round here and plant them in my garden  

Fingers crossed you get a good long spell of dry weather Dusty so you can get cracked on. 

That's a delicately pretty flower taff, looks kinda dog-rose-y to me. Is it as fragrant as it looks? 

I might soon be able to join in with the 'builders are chowing up my garden' talk. Himself works with a guy who went to school with a guy whose father is a retired builder, and he's coming round today to see about getting something sorted for the middle bit of garden. The old decking had big wide steps off it down into the garden but now we've the patio the back side of it wants finishing. Hopefully my ideas it won't be silly money but we'll see. 

Still not very warm out there but the sun's out at least. It sure ain't shorts and tshirt weather tho! Well unless you're a sort with sexy ladies tattooed on the back of your calf, then it's always shorts weather evidently  

ArbitraryRandom

Cool and overcast here, but I think it's going to be dry. Apparently yesterday was a high of 12/low of 4, but it felt much warmer in the afternoon sun. Today is supposed to be 8 or 9 with no sun all day. 

Being brave and I've potted up and put out my tomato, squash and courgette seedings for the day so they can see the sky... not doing much else today - I should do some housework, but want to save myself for the soil delivery next week - so hot chocolate and a dvd seem to be on the cards  

Farway

Blue sky but still chilly. When it warms up a bit, I'll go and look at my beans to see what is left. 

I looked out last night & it was a clear-moonlit night, ideal for freezing my beans off, snigger.

YBE pear blight, the brown spots type. I've had that, when I looked into it, it seems to be one of those unsightly but not a problem really things. I picked the leaves off and left it to get on with it, it crops up now & then, this was a couple of years back and the pear is still there.

Of course, this will be because I don't care if the pear lives or dies being a mislabelled cuckoo foisted on me by Lidl.

twopenny said:

But I did get the seeds resown and everything watered.

This peat free stuff is a nightmare. Dunked the seed pots in the water (remember the ones that drowned because it was too wet, well now they've dried out to a frazzel!) and this 'compost' just floated to the surface and virtually disolved    I had to refill the pots.

Literally money down the drain.

Farway, did you see GW last night? Oddly I photoed some Cannas at the Cemetary and they just mulch them through winter. They're sprouting again and the result is always impressive.

Are you going to give it another go this year?

Agree about the compost, my stuff is lumpy, I want to sow some cosmos later but although I'll do it I'm not sure the compost is friable enough.

I did catch GW on YT. and saw the cannas, so yes, if they survive I'll keep going while Dusty send pics of exotic ten footers in flower growing in paving cracks somewhere in darkest Devon.

No friendly robin while I was weeding away yesterday, but did have a butterfly in the sunshine

twopenny

Ooooh Arbs, that sounds wonderful!

No birds singing sadly, just the little brown bird thats nesting in the tree giving a chirp or two. I really must look it up.

The sun is out but it's freezing. Just put the heating on for an hour. I suffered the cold last night but enough is enough. So sitting in the sun by a radiator with my enormous cup of tea and the book.
I'm sure Bluey must be an author because the words sound just like her 

Got some decorating to do while it's bright. Not sure about the garden. It's bitter out there. If it warms up I must get some lawn dug up for more veg plants.

I think I know why the blackbirds gone. There was a rat on my bird table yesterday afternoon came through the fence. So some imagination is going to be needed to feed the birds and not the rat. Urgggh!

-taff

ybl, no they don't really smell of anything much just a hint of perfume. I won't be covering the bed, it shouldn't be too bad except maybe at the edges because the weight of soil behind it won't heat up too much in turn. It will probably be drier at the edges though.

Farway, that made me laugh too, about the cannas being supersized I have only zantedeschia, but I do love them, they were a small division from my mothers but are now filing the half barrel [ for frost protection, it's empty and bottomless]

Does stripey tiger grass sprout at a particular time? Asking for a friend because I got given some and it hasn't yet...

YoungBlueEyes

Whispering cos I don't wanna curse it, but I wouldn't really mind if pear died cos I went a bit mad with them being so cheap and don't really have room in the area they all need to be. So if it wants to die it can do but I'm not letting it take anything else with it to the fjords. Plus Ska is a pear so I wouldn't be lacking. 

Anybody looking for good compost, I can't recommend the big purple bags from B+Q. Some of the bits I'm filtering out of it are big enough to be kept as little dibbers. Which saves buying little dibbers I spose but I was perfectly fine before using a dead biro so it hasn't really solved a problem ha haa! 

Have you got rats 2p or have you them coming in from somewhere else? If they're 'yours' I'd ring the council and get ratman out, they don't care about anything you can buy in shops and the council have the good stuff. 

I'm not an author sadly, I'm a confirmed voracious reader. They say big readers make the worst authors so I'll not disappoint myself by trying Who writes like I speak? I've not come across that before...