Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

A bit cooler today after a very humid & restless night, I think a weather front went over at breakfast, black as thunder then brighter but cooler. Quite pleasant for now

pink_poppy said:

Agree with Beechgrove - I'm never sure who's who. And one of the female presenters talks like a robot... drives me mad and I usually mute her and read the subtitles.

Not sure which one you are referring to, but one has a very mangled accent, which I find hard at times.

Poppy, lovely mix of flowers & colours in the pic

I think collecting seaweed is verboten these days, eco stuff, home for seahorses or summat. 

Certainly a home for flies. Maybe it's forbidden for living stuff, the dead washed up bits are just a pong factory.

But I guess it's like taking pebbles from a beach, a few in your pocket no problem, fill trailer & it is a problem

I think there is a seaweed harvest, for eating, down the West Country, but as we all know there are some “odd folk” down there

If it keeps pleasantly cool, I'll pot on a fuchsia, from yesterday Morries trip, into the last wall basket.

Plus I found a missed runner that I failed to spot last week, I'll get that in the ground as well

Dustyevsky said:

In the relative cool of yesterday evening, we did a trip to enjoy some fish & chips and gaze at the scenery for an hour.

I had fish & chips from chippie last week, first from the chippie since Covid. Nice but very expensive from pre lockdown, wars & pestilence

Amazingly I'd had F & Cs in Wetherspoon's the prevous week, treat from DD, which was cheaper than the chippie and included peas & a drink

Not that I will but it would be cheaper form me to pay for parking & have F & Cs in Wetherspoons.

Anyway, that's OT

Busy looking at apple trees now T & M have refunded my money, it’s for DD's new garden. Anyone any experience of Limelight or Red Falstaff?

Spotted this chappie last night, even though my “pond” is just swamp, he's perched on my bean poles

pink_poppy

Stunning photos, Farway. I didn't want to name names Lizzie on the robot-sounding Beechgrove presenter

My Hydrangea has started to flower, after doing nothing last year...

goldfinches

ArbitraryRandom said:

LessImpecunious said:

Think the trick with the quoting is to click (and maybe type a few letters) outside the quote first before staring to delete anything inside - you can then jump back outside...

There's also these chevrons at the top right. If you click there then it thinks you want to edit the code of your post, but you can just type a few characters right at the bottom and when you click the button again it'll take you back to the normal view with space to write  

 

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, brilliantly helpful info there.

I'm absolutely exhausted by this heat but did go to a local PYO farm with my friends yesterday afternoon which was lovely and the fridge is full of strawberries and blackberries now.

Can't comment on all the photos because there are so many on here but all of them are lovely and I'm very envious about everyone's burgeoning harvests. I've got some salad leaves that the slugs didn't munch and some swelling radishes but everything else is still catching up after all the cold, wet weather.

Farway I've tasted both Limelight and Red Falstaff and don't think the Falstaff worth growing because the flavour was very meh. The Limelight are very tart and quite juicy, a bit like Granny Smith but tarter IYSWIM.

alicef

@Farway - de-lurking. The dragonfly, I think, is a female broad-bodied chaser.  Very beautiful!

ArbitraryRandom

Farway said:

Busy looking at apple trees now T & M have refunded my money, it’s for DD's new garden. Anyone any experience of Limelight or Red Falstaff?

I've got limelight and it's doing great so far, I'm really happy with it. that's the one I posted a while back with the 30 odd fruitlets even though I only planted it back in Jan - It seems to be holding on to most if not all of them, despite my infrequent watering and complete lack of keeping the area around it clear, so give me another 6ish weeks and I recon I'll have at least a few fruit to taste test for you. 

On the topic of fruit trees, unfortunately I think the Grenadier and Laura aren't going to make it. It was a risk planting maidens - I should probably have gone for 2 or three year old like I did with the others. Just too much competing in my garden for the light/nutrients even with me keeping them clear of the bind weed and watering. Need to decide if I'm going to replace or just accept that I'd planted too many trees for the space anyway really.

But my stella (planted in 2023) has kindly given me a taste. It's only got two fruits this year and I decided to risk the more ripe of the two as something had been having a munch. Not the juiciest (could probably have done with a bit longer and a bit more water) but wonderful flavour.  Doubt I'm ever going to have enough for a pie, but I'm happy with the taste  

twopenny

Amazing photo Farway. Have you thought of sending them to the Beeb - though they don't pay. A competition anyway.

The clarity and detail are incredible!

What Goldie said about the apples. They're 'ok'.

Lovely scene Dusty, feels like you're there. Very Devon.

not even mentioning tomatoes. My plants are still only 6-8" high.

What a pretty hydranga Poppy........there's a pink and lilac one near hear on public land where the occasional bloom drops off so I rescue it and put it in a vase

I don't have any more room for them because they can become a craze and being easy care very tempting

Bluey, I wanted that app. Only reason for getting a new phone - that and the stars.

But the weather's too nice to trawl for hours though the masses finer details to pick one.

No gardening, some decent size raspberries appeared but not enough for a bowl, and some Alpine strawberries, same.

Forgot to mention that I spotted a lot of wild strawberry plants in the lane. I may have to do another walk down there come autumn with a slightly bigger rucksack.

Temperature odd, it was hot but a cold wind so a bit like the tale of the wind and the sun by Aesop.

Blue sky and big clouds, came over dark grey then blue again.

I got to sit out with my book, cheesy rolls and a glass of dark red beverage which was nice. The fountain played off and on. Doing a bit better now I've moved the solar panel. I could do with it on a robot programmed to move round the garden with the sun

Dustyevsky

Farway said:

I think collecting seaweed is verboten these days, eco stuff, home for seahorses or summat. 

Certainly a home for flies. Maybe it's forbidden for living stuff, the dead washed up bits are just a pong factory.

But I guess it's like taking pebbles from a beach, a few in your pocket no problem, fill trailer & it is a problem

I think there is a seaweed harvest, for eating, down the West Country, but as we all know there are some “odd folk” down there

I had fish & chips from chippie last week, first from the chippie since Covid. Nice but very expensive from pre lockdown, wars & pestilence

Amazingly I'd had F & Cs in Wetherspoon's the prevous week, treat from DD, which was cheaper than the chippie and included peas & a drink

I made some enquiries, and it's still OK to collect seaweed, especially if you're foraging.   The laver is quite easy to ID, but it needs some processing before consuming. My parents used to sell it in their shop. I recall a journey to the salt marshes, where the seaweed gatherers boiled the weed in large coppers until it turned into the glutinous mass we all loved.....well, some of us did! It was a freezing cold, grey day, like something out of Dickens, and I always thought back to it whenever a new tin of laver arrived by train.

Now, it's really hard to buy laver at sensible prices. There may still be a butcher in Barnstaple that stocks it, but because demand is low, it'll be frozen.

As for fish & chips, we pre-order because they're 13 miles away. They time it to be ready just before we get there. Pre-Covid we had change from £10, while last night it was just over £18! There's a Weatherspoons across the road, but no views from there.

Great dragonfly picture! We hardly ever see those wide-bodied ones down here.

twopenny said:

Temperature odd, it was hot but a cold wind....Blue sky and big clouds, came over dark grey then blue again.

I got to sit out with my book, cheesy rolls and a glass of dark red beverage which was nice.

For once, you and I have had similar weather. I would have been strapped to find anywhere to sit out, though. Too much wind!

Pp your hydrangea is looking good, and being blue, you're like me with acid soil. Nothing wrong with that, unless you're a metal detectorist. Even decimal coins are unrecognisable after being buried here! 

YoungBlueEyes

You do take amazing photos Farway, the dragonfly/chaser is so clear and delicate. Lovely.

I like your hydrangea pp, I love a hydrangea. When we were house hunting one of the things on my list was 'space out the front for a huge magnolia and a huge hydrangea'. I'm putting my foot down for them in the next house. Now you've not named names about the presenter, I agree. She's pure awful. I'd be happy with George + the proper woman, with Calum and the Scots woman they always pair with the awful Kiwi (?) robot as spares. The rest can get down the dole office

PMA Arb, PMA! You will have enough for a pie as long as it's a teeny weeny pie That does look like a tasty cherry...

Re the app 2p, no hours of trawling required. I just put "Merlin bird ID app" into the app store and it came up. It's really easy to use and doesn't need sign ups or phone numbers or sacrificing your first born child to work. I just use the 'sounds' function. Hold your phone up and it lists which birds it can hear and highlights it on the list every time that bird sings, so you can see which birds are singing. So simple. Did you get your star one sorted...? 

Considering where we live the F+C round here aren't all that great and we rarely have them, which is a shame.  I've never had laver but we did get through a lot of dulse growing up. I don't know if people can go down on the beaches to collect it but you can buy it in wee bags (Beloved Cousin sends me some if she goes to Portstewart) I wonder how many people now would know what to do with it even if they are allowed to collect it. It’s that bluddy Rory McIllroy’s fault - all the newbies who can’t afford to live in Portrush buy in Portstewart instead, some of the prices there now are frightening.  

All change on the weather front, sounds like Dusty + 2p's weather has come up here. Beautiful sunny morning with quite a strong cool breeze - I've every window open and if it wasn't for that dam cat I'd have the front and back doors open too! Awful night for sleeping last night but we're in for a cooler period for a good few days now. They say. I hope they're right :fingerscrossed:

YoungBlueEyes

I didn’t put in my location. It does say it’s more accurate if you do and in this case it looks like they’d be right. 

twopenny

Dull grey and cold here. Not thinking much of this June

Chucked lots of the bath water on some plants out front. It's got Epsom Salts in but not much. I remember something about it being good or bad for plants and I'll look that up later.

Bladder Wrack can be smeared on as sunscreen. You'd have to be desperate because it would smell like??? and attract flies possibily.

Dulse Crisps? Seaweed is good for you expecially ladies. There was a survey for South Wales where it was eaten regularly with some interesting results. But most people would rather take their chances.

Dashing off, have things to post later which I'm sure will be riveting