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THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

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  • Here too BOB and a really good drying day so all the bedding is hung out blowing on the line, I saw the very first tiny blue butterfly of the year too when I walked Cookie dog. Think it's spring at last !
  • Cappella
    Cappella Posts: 748
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    Ivyleaf said
    Cappella I love the chickens' names Kirsty is the odd one out. I thought she must be in the Johnny series (haven't read them since DS was a lot younger) but had to check by Googling

    Yes, she is in the Johny series - one of my favourite characters !!!128522;

    Karmacat I am so very jealous that you have met Larry Niven:eek: I loved Ringworld and Fallen Angels (the fandom one) is one my go to comfort reads.

    My people are here too :j:j

    MrsLW - just had our first asparagus of the year from our allotment here, how far behind you are we in terms of time. I think you’ve been cropping yours for a while now but I may be wrong?
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
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    edited 13 May 2018 at 4:02PM
    About 3 weeks and it was late starting this year but it's been producing like mad since this warmer weather arrived, in fact there is a lovely cutting there for supper tonight! yum, I'm the only one who likes it!!!.....lucky, lucky me!

    Just been up and cut 26 mostly succulent spears, just a few are sprew but still tender and delicious, roll on supper time!
  • Cappella
    Cappella Posts: 748
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    Thank you MrsLW
    Manchester must be 3 weeks behind you then.
    Just had ours and it was well worth waiting for. Here only my daughter and I like it and we make the most of the season :)
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    :D Funny how many SF/Fantasy afficionados are regulars here! My people, indeed.

    I've been reading these genres for about 45 years and can remember where and when my life changed; I picked a remaindered paperback, with a gouge cut through the pages, out of a basket outside the bookshop in the hometown.

    A book about a flat earth (Strata), by this guy called Terry Pratchett whom no one seemed to have heard of, when I went off raving about how brilliant it was. That 30p changed my reading life forever; I joke I have dual nationality - English and Discworld.

    :) Weather's iffy here, threw it down overnight, lottie was wringing wet but I gardened anyway. Got muddy to the knee and had to come home and de-grunge myself before heading out to a pal's for luncheon. We also had a little jaunt out in her car to a Sunday-opening chazzer one town over - delightful.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • Karmacat
    Karmacat Posts: 39,460
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    Elona wrote: »
    OOHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

    I loved Anne McCaffrey DD,Eddings, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey etc. I got my dds into reading on their own by starting them on "The colour of magic"

    Has anyone else read L.E Modesitt jnr or the Raymonf Feist books?
    I've read Raymond Feist - in fact Wol, from the dfw board years back, got me onto them :)
    ivyleaf wrote: »
    OH has the Katherine Kerr books, though hasn't read them for years. I started to read them, and did enjoy them at first, but eventually got fed up trying to remember who everyone was this time, and who they'd been last time round. Other people who've read them will know what I'm talking about!
    Me me me! I know! I kind of let who-was-who ride after a while :o I'm sometimes very bad with detail. I did have favourites though, so sometimes I skipped a bit :cool: Teared up at the very, very end.
    Cappella wrote: »
    Karmacat I am so very jealous that you have met Larry Niven:eek: I loved Ringworld and Fallen Angels (the fandom one) is one my go to comfort reads.
    Sorry! I planned the trip for ages, but meeting him was sheer luck, I didn't know he was going to be there. Exactly like you, loved Ringworld, and Fallen Angels is a comfort read.
    My people are here too :j:j
    :A:A:A
    2023: the year I get to buy a car
  • thriftwizard
    thriftwizard Posts: 4,652
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    We've not had much rain lately down here, and our 'lottie is now baked solid; two weeks ago, every time I pulled up a tuft of grass I had an 8" clod of solid clay underneath it. And we have hundreds of different kinds of grass, this was still a pasture meadow this time last year! Not to mention nettles, creeping buttercups and brambles... Now it takes me about 5 minutes to wriggle the fork through the crust, but once I've done that the roots do slide out easily. Not my favourite method, I have to say; I'm one for heavy mulching & excluding light where possible, but rules are rules, & bare earth & spade cultivation is The Only Way allowed... except, apparently, next door, who just Roundup everything, despite the fact we're not supposed to use chemicals in any way, shape or form. I'm not amused that they've "helpfully" sprayed the path, and half of my strawberries...

    I'm way behind on the planting, as it's been so cold & we have no greenhouse (we're allowed a 6' shed OR a greenhouse, and I'm not carrying all the tools a mile each way every time, and we don't have anywhere suitable for a greenhouse at home) but we're a month ahead of last year & we got plenty out of the plot anyway. That said, last year I bought in some of the plants from a friend who runs a nursery; whilst I'm very happy to support their business, I'd rather keep a bit more of our money in my pocket this year!
    Angie - GC March 24 24 £486.13/£500: 2024 Fashion on the Ration Challenge: 10/68: (Money's just a substitute for time & talent...)
  • dND
    dND Posts: 646
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    GreyQueen wrote: »
    A book about a flat earth (Strata), by this guy called Terry Pratchett whom no one seemed to have heard of, when I went off raving about how brilliant it was. That 30p changed my reading life forever; I joke I have dual nationality - English and Discworld.

    Strata and Dark side of the Sun are two of my most favourite books. Much as I too love Discworld I was sad he didn't write more like them as well :)
    Unfortunatly all the TP books I bought were as gifts to my ex; first priority once I get back to the UK is to rebuild the library from the Cs's :D

    Nice to know we're all mad together :rotfl::rotfl:
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  • DigForVictory
    DigForVictory Posts: 11,903
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    edited 14 May 2018 at 1:04PM
    I wandered into SF&F with Six Million Dollar Man & startled the local librarian by reading the original Caidin book. Not all of which I understood, being 9, but enough to get the idea on the human-machine interface & for years I was robust about being accident prone - if it meant I had to have a prosthesis, Brilliant.
    Met Pern at school (and joined one of several who'd slip out of RL into another planet thank you when things got too much) & thence the Talents, which was to come in handy & other works.

    As I baled off to University, joined the SFSoc, found people prepared to lend (to convert) and then had an epileptic seizure. All my plans to be part of cutting edge prosthesis research went west in that half minute.

    The SF&F world helped me cope with being 'different' when those I'd been to school with were wondering if epilepsy was a step along path to insanity (how the devil can you judge when we'd been equally eccentric together?), fatal (well everything is eventually) or even the hallmark of a witch (oh good heavens - they'd seen the complete havers I made of the biology & chemistry labs, did they imagine a cauldron & I would do Any better?!) - and of that cadre 4 went off to train as doctors.

    I wondered rather hard at the time & Haven't changed my views a great deal since. Most doctors may be superbly educated & qualified, but when it comes to Common Sense, they are several sandwiches short of a picnic. That said, when I need a bone setting I don't want Common Sense I want a radiologist, and an anesthetist & the full trauma team please & I'll keep my views on their ability to change a fuse to myself.

    So when I need to get away from things a bit, I reach for a book. (The kindle app was the first thing onto my phone.). And it might be cyberpunk, or Discworld, or Gibson, or Gaiman (I'll invite you to imagine the whoop of delight when I got a pair of free tickets to see him live in Liverpool, in what turned out to be the week before Pratchett left us) or McCaffrey or Niven or Eddings or Tolkein or EE Doc Smith - or even Jane Austen as frankly one Not-This Universe is all I require from a book & Shakespeare can conjure me into mischief as quickly and as remotely as any planet or Pemberly.

    And even as I leap gleefully down the rabbithole, or what/where ever, I am just thankful for the literacy that allows me to read for fun. As America has a direct correlation between the 10-11 year males who cannot, & their prison population.

    Amongst all our prepping, let us make darn sure the children can read.

    But also, read for your health & recovery!
    "University of Gothenburg. "Fiction reading as medicine." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 October 2013."
    Now I can load someone's kindle with a twinkle "doctors orders!"...
  • Karmacat
    Karmacat Posts: 39,460
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    Blimey ... I really thought I'd almost finished dealing with the hedges that surround my garden, and that I could start everyday weeding (I've already got weeds a foot square :( ). But I haven't finished at all.

    I've just been working beneath a rhodedendron "tree", and there were half a dozen bramble roots still in there :( Then, at least I managed to finish off cutting back the hedge and even cutting back the "tree" a little more. Two effects: the ground will get more sunlight, so whatever I plant there will be happier. And more sun is getting to the mahonia nearby, and has been for a while - new shoots are growing on that side, and I know mahonia berries are edible. Keeping the hedges pruned back is utterly crucial, I've realised.
    2023: the year I get to buy a car
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