General Chat

Good morning all

Hope you all had a good night. Mine was so-so; I seemed to wake every hour on the half hour but went back to sleep quickly and at least I stayed in one bed all night :-D

It’s bright and sunny at the moment but it looks chilly out. I might try and do a few garden jobs today.

Morning All,

It's not often I am the first to post but I need to get showered if we are to get to the garden centre early.

Mel I was a bit dubious about having a delivered lunch but did wipe down the containers. I have been reading that any risk is low but advice to minimise it is to remove the food with a spoon after wiping the containers, dispose of the containers and wash hands and microwave the food for a couple of minutes if it isn' t hot and to use a knife and fork not fingers to eat.

I think we grew up with very waste conscious parents and grandparents with them living through the war and just not having the money young folk are used to these days. I re-use a lot of plastic containers for keeping my craft stuff in and for the fridge and freezer and still have a button box and keep rubber bands. Mum would never dream of throwing the giblets away from the chicken and would make stock from them and give us the liver with our meal. As a child we would go blackberry or bilberry picking and find mushrooms, all free food. I'd better get showered now!

Not quite the first. I beat you to it this morning Ann :-D. Enjoy your garden centre trip

Morning All
It is not this week I start the new Chemo.That will be a week tomorrow on the 17th.I have to have a pre chemo assessment first which is on Monday.
I am still in bed and haven’t looked out the window yet so have no idea what the weather is like.Hopefully dry as there is a ton of washing that needs doing.

I GIVE UP. TWICE I HAVE POSTED and lost the lot. UP COMES A PAGE OF WIDGETS. HOW I DO NOT KNOW. Perhaps I will try later.

Morning Vera Ann and Jane and all others,

Oh woke me at 9.30am amnd as I was making the bed after a visit to the loo I heard a motar and said to oh is that him to which he answered yes!!!! stay where you are. He had just come out of the shower so only had his dressing gown on. I came out when the lorry had gone and am about a third of the way through the wiping down. Oh is in the hot tub out of the way.

Nice to see Jane on here this morning and to know when the new chemo starts. Is it next Monday the first assessment?

Hope Ann and G enjoy their outing. Ann I got my Wiltlshire ham hock bake this week.

BBL off to wipe more down now. I am still in my jim jams!!.

Ha ha, how did I miss you there Vera?

That was good to have a trim of your OH's hair Gill. If you just cut a bit off at a time there's usually no harm done and it soon grows back anyway. I hope you trace some more relatives today.

Oh I got your chemo date wrong then Jane. Is it next Tuesday with the assessment the day before?

Frank it is really annoying how easy it is to lose a post. Have a break and try later.

Oh Mel, it's a good job your OH wasn't on his way to the hot tub when the lorry arrived!! Maybe he goes roman style with a towel round his waist though. :-) I expect you have finished the wiping now and that's good you got the ham bake this time.

They seemed well organised again at this garden centre, but we got a silly woman just in front of us (no-one else around!) who just stood dithering in front of the trolleys deciding what she wanted. Then she stood in the way of us getting one and started rooting through her bag! She eventually looked up and gestured us to walk by her to go in the store, which was impossible anyway if we kept 2 metres away. The trolley girl who was disinfecting pointed out to her that she was blocking us from getting a trolley so she moved towards the store entrance and was blocking that once we'd got a trolley. She then saw us and turned the big 2 decker trolley she had round, realised we still couldn't get by, so parked it under the hand sanitiser we wanted to use next and disappeared towards the cars to fetch something! :-S We found a couple of alpine pinks, two other alpines, one was a lithodora. I already have a really pretty one with yellow foliage against the blue flowers but I think it is dying and this one will do for the other island bed once I have rebuit my slate steps on it! I also got a pack of Salvias to get a bit more red in the garden.

Better check if the jersey royals are cooked now to go with our salad for lunch. It is warmer and sunny now so we can eat outside again which will be nice.

I am going to write this on word as, for some reason, my PC seems to have a mind of its own today. Good afternoon all. I have been around all morning but was doing the washing, writing an email out to the gardening interests group with photos, listening to the song by the Gloucestershire children (Every rainbow Drawn), wiping the few bits that Cynth bought for us and didn’t seem to get on here to write anything here

Jane lovely to see you calling in. So next week, Monday and Wednesday? We, as usual, will be thinking of you then. But right now I hope the sun is shining where you are and you can get some of it in your lovely garden

Mel, Good job OH didn’t get to the truck to find a lady driver delivering!! Hope you are all wiped down now

Oh dear Frank another post lost, you must be clicking on something instead of the submit button.

Vera, my night was like yours, I kept waking up too, for no reason and went back to sleep but it leaves you feeling a bit droopy doesn’t it?

I have now been given an extender to wear with my face mask, it is the type the nurses wore to stop their ears getting sore, a strip of material with two buttons on so the elastic attaches to the buttons not over your ears.

Annx, as I said in my reply to your email, that meal looked good, not sure I could have finished it all but it looked well cooked and tasty. And loved the butterflies
Sounds like you met the one awkward one this morning then, there is always one.

Still you got what you wanted which was good. Did you enjoy your Jersey Royals?

Gill it really is not good for you to stay in all the time, you should maybe make time to go for a short walk. The more you stay in the more you won’t want to go out

Does anyone else grow gooseberries? We have one bush in the garden and it is absolutely loaded with fruit. The raspberries have some fruit on this year, only their second year so hopefully it will get better each year.

Better go and get some lunch now.

we did'nt get our Jersey Royals again, we got small pots Jazzy. Hav'nt read Anng's post but must get lunch now will BBL.

Ann oh dos'nt have a waist!!!!!!!!! He just had his toweling robe on.

I haven't tried Jazzy before Mel. The potatoes I do have sometimes are Vivaldi as they are lower in carbohydrate and calories than many other varieties. Nothing beats the jersey royals though so they were very tasty AnnG The bath robe is ideal Mel.....no risk of slippage even if you have no waist! lol.

My knees have been worse today after lunging up the waterfall sides planting some bits yesterday so I am sorting the house insurance this afternoon and then may do more of my painting or crafts. I have a load of washing on the line so I hope the forecast is right about no rain today. Hubby has notes and other connected stuff to reply to and a meeting later, so I won't be interrupted.

Has anyone else suddenly started getting lots of emails about funeral plans! I hope they aren't fortune tellers as well. :-0

No, not had the emails re funeral plans lately. did have quite a few a few years ago so maybe that is just a sign that you are catching me up in age.

Last year we had some Jersey Royals and they were absolutely tasteless. we did grow Jazzy a couple of years ago and they were very nice.

A dressing gown could fly open Annx if not securely fastened!! :-D :-D

AnnG you say your goosegog is loaded this year, have you noticed that everything is loaded either with fruit or flowers. The only thing that is'nt so prolific here are the apple trees. The roses are flowering their heads off the ones on the wall, the lantern tree was covered earlier and still has flowers on now, the fig has a lot of fruit on too. The pyracanter is covered in white flowers so that will be baring masses of fruit for the birds unless oh takes it into his head to cut it back as he hates it its so prickley and catches him when he mows the west wall. The only goosegogs I have now is a sort of wild one that grows in the east hedge boundry. I shall have to go and have a look now and see if there are any fruits on it this year as I have never seen any on it before.

Ann you'd have thought that funeral directors would have enough business at the moment without having to advertise for business. I hav'nt had any emails.

he always makes sure it is securely fastened AnnG and a dead bird dos'nt fall out of the nest!!!!

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D Mel

I decided to come and post again. It was a choice between having a moan on here or murdering OH :-|. I didn’t go in the garden this morning, in fact I’m hardly doing anything outside now. I thought we would end up having words, to put it mildly. His nibs has taken control of the garden and has become obsessive about Japanese anemones. I have some sympathy as they are really rampant in our garden so he is getting them all out, but every morning that it is dry he is out there waging war. Today he informed me that they are growing in among other flowers so he has dug a load of stuff up - two or three lovely clumps of helenium and a tall, wavy grass. Apparently he has replanted some bits of helenium but I don’t think they are going to be happy with their treatment when they are just coming up to flower. It is amazing that it is only my flowers that have to come up and not his hostas or shrubs. All he can suggest to replace the Japanese anemones are more green shrubs. My pretty garden is now a green blob :-(. Part of the problem is that he can’t see that plants we had in our old half acre garden are overwhelming in our current postage stamp plot. He doesn’t so much water plants as drown them, then if they start to droop because they’re waterlogged he assumes they are dry and waters them again. The final straw was when he brought in some pots he had used, dumped them on the draining board in the utility and left them, presumably for the housekeeper to deal with. Well, this housekeeper washed the one pot she had used and walked away from the rest.

OK rant over. I’ve let off steam now.

About Jersey Royals: I was told by a Jersey person that the small potato farmers used a seaweed to fertilise their soil. Now the small potato farmers have been bought out by a big company who are producing large amounts of Jersey Royals for export and they use artificial fertilisers, which is why they have lost that unique flavour. Has anyone else noticed they seem to have lost their kidney shape too?

Well, Tesco have just been and I had better get wiping. One thing not available and one sub, but that was only for a different size of the product I ordered so no complaints.

Yes Vera I have noticed they have lost their kidney shape. I think the last pack I had had about one in it that was the right shape.

I have been out in my shed tidying up a bit so I can get my tom plants on the floor. At the moment they are on the shelf by the windows but they need to come down now as they are nearly touching the roof.

Liked the morning byke ride Frank.

Sent loads of pics.

I had a look at the wild goosegog and it has got tiny gogs on it.

Oh dear Vera. It is so hard when the garden that was formally mostly your domain is taken over for many years I did most of the garden, planning and planting but I have noticed in the past few years OH has gradually taken it over. One reason is that I find I can’t do as much because of various aches and pains and another is he absolutely loves the praise he gets (well deserved mostly) for the garden from the gardening group at U3A. The last straw was when he started talking about ‘what we did with the hanging basket’ the last thing I have managed to hold onto as my domain. Mostly he stops ‘owning’ the garden when I point it out to him but lockdown has not helped in that way. Although has been a salvation in another by giving him something to do. However the garden is about to take a back seat as tomorrow he plays nine holes of golf and on Friday eighteen. Have to admit I am finding it hard as I have got used to us being in lockdown here together. Maybe lockdown is your problem too Vera, good job we can come on here to rant isn’t it?

Hope the wipe down went ok.

Mel are the wild gooseberries any good to eat?

Anng I don't know as I don't think I have ever seen them on there before and probably the voles and mice eat them.

I'll try and get a picture but they are behind a lot of stinging nettles over the side of the orchard where the caterpillas and butterflies go. I also have a bonfire near them.

Did you see my pics I sent.

Where's Mandy??