Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Davesnave

Distinctly passable weather this morning, so one of my bonfires was lit and it + several dumpy bags of branches have now disappeared.

Looks like rain now, but too late to spoil the first really spring-like session outdoors.

I like Wickes. They have a loo. Quite important for a man of advanced years who lives about 22 miles from their store.

twopenny

Well it's gone up to 11C this morning. Even glimpses of sun. Still 9C tonight and the stars are bright

Getting fatigue and headaches still after the jab so can't even think straight about the garden.

I did buy a lovely scented white Pink for £2 from a charity stall and a dozen little Snowdrops for £2 for 6 or more @ £2 each. There are plants as cheap as 50p it's so tempting. Beautifully looked after all of them. The second stall sells Tomato plants in summer, specifically San Marzano my favourite for cooking.

Got some great ideas from the lady who does the first lot. She has an amazing array of plants of her own, including small trees, growing in raised beds

[Deleted User]

Davesnave said:

Distinctly passable weather this morning, so one of my bonfires was lit and it + several dumpy bags of branches have now disappeared.

Looks like rain now, but too late to spoil the first really spring-like session outdoors.

I like Wickes. They have a loo. Quite important for a man of advanced years who lives about 22 miles from their store.

.....or indeed anyone taking Furosemide 😬😬😬😖

[Deleted User]

twopenny said:

Well it's gone up to 11C this morning. Even glimpses of sun. Still 9C tonight and the stars are bright

Getting fatigue and headaches still after the jab so can't even think straight about the garden.

I did buy a lovely scented white Pink for £2 from a charity stall and a dozen little Snowdrops for £2 for 6 or more @ £2 each. There are plants as cheap as 50p it's so tempting. Beautifully looked after all of them. The second stall sells Tomato plants in summer, specifically San Marzano my favourite for cooking.

Got some great ideas from the lady who does the first lot. She has an amazing array of plants of her own, including small trees, growing in raised beds

Positively balmy eh, we had 14C for the past 2 days ..... i remember last Feb we had 18C for a couple of days ...wacky weather 😆

Farway

Bit drizzly but passable, and today is Compost Delivery Day . I had a confirmation text, due between 8 this morning & 1300.

I've cleared a space near the front door so removing any reason not to put them there.

According to web site they'll bring to front ground floor door, but I'm not sure that will apply when confronted with delivery drivers in the rain, time will tell

I'll try & remember to use my walking stick when they arrive, playing the sympathy card

Once that arrives & I have lugged it up more steps to the safety of my lobby it can stay there a day or so  prior to it's final move to the conservatory

Then I may be able to seriously look at the seed stash to sort out priorities, no rush though, early days

[Deleted User] said:

Davesnave said:

Distinctly passable weather this morning, so one of my bonfires was lit and it + several dumpy bags of branches have now disappeared.

Looks like rain now, but too late to spoil the first really spring-like session outdoors.

I like Wickes. They have a loo. Quite important for a man of advanced years who lives about 22 miles from their store.

.....or indeed anyone taking Furosemide 😬😬😬😖

Snap! Very limiting at times.

ruthber

I was only going to look at my seeds to see if I needed to buy anything but temptation was too much in the end. I sowed some lobelia and "Bishop's Children" it is probably far too early but we'll see. I have plenty of seed left if these sowings fail. Next sweet peas, as I have saved some loo paper insides. Just warming up the seed compost indoors. 

Davesnave

Ah, 'Bishop's Children' bring back memories! I was up to naughty things with dahlias long before the Bishop decided to admit to his indiscretions. In those days I named the very best of my creations after Dearly Beloved, and as I was in contact with a famous purveyor of plants I sent them a photo of it as a joke. They didn't 'do' dahlias.

Sadly, the joke was on me. The firm expressed interest, received a batch of rooted cuttings and told me not to sell any in case they decided to market in a year or two's time. It was at least a few years before I learned on the grapevine that this firm had a reputation for taking their time 'evaluating' plants. This meant they were out of circulation for years, so not available to their competitors!

So....'Flossie's Chocolate Orange' never made it into commercial production. (DB isn't really called Flossie. ) and we lost our own  plant in the awful winter of 2009/10 when we moved here. I don't mind. I have one that's even better now and the 'Mystic' series that came along a few years ago gave me a whole new set of genes to mess around with.

twopenny

Not a nice day. Cloudy, on and off light rain. Will it ever stop. The garden and everywhere else continues to be sodden.

So I decided to spend the afternoon just watching the birds in the garden from indoors. Blackbirds have paired and are feeding like mad, some ~Great Tits nibbling at the bugs on the plants and a little Dunnock to see what he could get. It was lovely when there was no garden here before.

Some plants are suddenly showing green buds today, the plum blossom that's usually out by Christmas has finally shown it's face.

Looks like Spring might finally be on it's way. Just need a bit of sun now

Davesnave

It was quite decent here till 1pm and then the rain set in. As my nasty neighbour at the other end of the field had gone out, I tackled a hazel near him that's half dead and in dire need of coppicing. Neighbour assumes all my actions are intimidatory, so it's better if they happen when he's somewhere else. Unfortunately, half way through, neighbour returned home, so I melted into the nearby foliage and began one of the most tedious jobs I do every year; cutting down baby blackthorn that have come up just the other side of the sheep fence, not on the hedge itself. If they stay, they take over. The lizards that live on that bank appreciate there being a clear view of the sun too.

After I'd done about 1/3 of the blackthorn cutting I saw a fencing contractor had started work on my neighbour farmer's land, so it became an ideal time to nip down to the stream and cut back more mature hazel stems to improve light levels. Again, this is always best done when farmer neighbour isn't around, as he believes he owns the trees, though he's not produced a scrap of proof and never maintains them. The noise from the post whacker covered my chain saw sounds, so by lunch time all the evidence was in our yard and a thin coating of stream mud disguised the newly cut bases of the trunks.

It's better to be discreet rather than confrontational.

Black_Cat2

Good work D, your neighbour sounds delightful 😹

I too spent some time watching the birds yesterday tp.  Didn't see anything special, just the normal pigeons and sparrows.  Must've been a hawk about as they spent a lot of time in the hedge doing that low clucky warning calling.  Can't imagine how tough it is for all creatures out there in this bad weather 🐈