BS: What are we doing in the garden?

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 10:35 AM

Thunderstorms are a thing in Ontario, Eliza. I grew up in the Ottawa Valley, where the storm cells move southeast down the river to the spot where the valley narrow and the Rideau and Gatineau rivers enter the Ottawa -- not coincidentally, that's where the city is. When an air mass full of wind and rain hits the hot pocket sitting over the city, we all get the Earth-shattering KABOOM! Typically, it happens at about mid- to late afternoon, just as all the civil servants are going home from work, and ends shortly after supper with a glorious rainbow.

When my brothers and I were little, our mother did not want us to grow up with a fear of thunderstorms, so she would get us up to watch and comment on the donner and blitzen. "The angels are moving God's furniture," she would say. "Wow! That must have been the piano falling over!"

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 11:18 AM

Charmion, a jar of marbles rolling about also featured, as I recall.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 01:10 PM

fighting with the Laurel!!! a losing battle....it takes over the whole place, sneaks underground as well as has berries to re-seed itself...ggggrrrr
Now if someone could just find a way of extracting the leaf oil, then a use for it---- fuel?

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 02:55 PM

Icy and drizzly here today; my migratory plants are back inside, but those outside are stretching and going "Ahhh!" at the benediction of the lovely rain.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: open mike
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 04:17 PM

Covedring tomatoes and other tender plants....at 3 in the morning I happened to notice that it was 1 degree below freeaing...31 F... so got busy and brought bed sheets out doors and with flashlight tucked beneath my arm began to tuck the plants in. They seem to have made it...today we have sun, rain, clouds, hail, popcorn hail, snow and wind.... June 7th and it is snowing!! supposed to be even colder tonite!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 04:28 PM

I bought 4 mushroom kits …………….. yes I know it would be far, far cheaper to buy the actual mushrooms,but not as much fun.

Tomorrow I will "harvest" a small number of Shii Taki mushrooms and later in the week a batch of Yellow Oyster mushrooms.

But I've had my first "crop". I cut some mustard cress yesterday for my Egg & Cress Sandwiches ……………. a thing of beauty I may add!!

Mushroom omelette for me tomorrow I think.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 04:34 PM

Wish this rain would stop now. The garden is soaking wet and it has benefited the plants, but now we need some warmth and sunshine.
Husband is, I think, secretly rather pleased because it's too wet to cut the lawns...

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 06:26 PM

So today we moved the composter. When we plunked it down beside the steps to the deck, there was nowhere else to put it. The other side of the deck steps were almost over-run by a dogwood bush with a Manitoba maple growing up through it, and anywhere else in the garden would be too far from the kitchen door in winter. But now the dogwood and the Manitoba maple are gone and the deck is gone ... Options! so we moved it eight feet, over next to the air-conditioner. In its nicely manure spot, I planted a lavender bush.

The composter was supposed to be a hell of a job, but it turned out to be a doddle. But we had a whole lot of pent-up determination to burn off, so we dismounted the front rain barrel and counter-sank an old cement paver for it to stand on to ensure that it stays plumb and level.

What a job that was. Lacking any appropriate tools, or indeed so much as a bag of aggregate, we dug a shallow hole a little bigger than the paver, levelled it more or less with the 18-inch carpenter’s level I just happen to keep it in the umbrella stand, dragged the paver into place, and boy howdy, what a relief, it worked.

Cold drinks, mutual back-patting, and quiet reading to follow.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 02:28 AM

Preparing for a drought (unbelievably) here in The West of Ireland and the hosepipe ban that inevitably follows
Unfortnately, that doesn't stop the **** grass from growing
20 years ago Pat pun an acorn we found in Kerry in a pot (our nearest tree from here is in the remains of the Petrified forest on the beach in the next town)
The acorn now stands in the garden - a five ft sapling, still growing but looking a little thirsty
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 10:21 AM

How can England be drenched while Ireland is dry?

European weather is officially weird.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 11:28 AM

My sister in Liverpool told me that her dog was going spare at the sound of rain and hailstones on their conservatory roof as I told her we were in the middle of a drought

We're separated by the Irish sea - I can drive two miles south of here over the shoulder of what aspires to be a mountain, Sliabh Callan out of frefing cold weather, and have to stop the car to take my jacket off in case I pass out with the heat
The weather in this part of the world is weird my late mate summed it up perfectly when as a newly moved Dub, he encountered our '60mph fog' - see mist driven by howling winds

I remember an elderly lady curator of a 'black house' in Shetland telling us how her daughter in London wrote to her, "The weather in London is so BORING"
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 01:09 PM

Just been trying to teach our greyhound to catch in the garden, she wasn't the least bit interested!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 01:14 PM

That's the grass cut, yet again

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 04:01 PM

In my bit of north Cornwall we've had a lot of hot weather and very little rain for three months. In the whole of May and June so far we've had just over half an inch. May was the sunniest calendar month ever recorded in the UK. The sun has beamed down on Bude non-stop today, though there have been deluges just inland as the sea breezes from north and south coast converged. My garden is bone-dry and there's no grass to cut. I've been watering my spuds, beans tomatoes and raspberries, but they all know it's me and they're humouring me until they get proper rain.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: leeneia
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 01:14 AM

Do those of you facing drought have mulcn on your plants? It really helps.

At our house, things are unusual. We are having our home renovated, and the dirt for the new foundation was piled up in a big mound. In time, the mound was spread over the back garden. In the front, construction work killed or covered everything. The result is that we will re-landscape half of property - it's a tabula rasa.

We are trying to make a garden with a mix of native plants and low-maintenance perennials, with consideration given for bad knees.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 02:32 AM

had a drop of rain last night and the slugs have been on the march

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 03:03 AM

"she wasn't the least bit interested!"
You weren't trying to teach her to catch the virus were you - don't blame her for nor being interested
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 06:33 AM

Its national herb and spice day. Pineapple or lemon sage is utstanding.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 10:50 AM

Today we are having a rather large hole dug in the garden, by professionals who will then install a very handsome stone fire-pit. Much thudding is going on at present.

Stratford has bylaws about open fires within town limits, and a close reading indicates that we can get away with it -- especially if we use it for cooking and refrain from anything scary. No Wicker Man re-enactments, for example.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 02:34 PM

We have a hose ban in Dublin…
Suddenly the rain is pounding down; I feel like going out and dancing in it.
Rain in Ireland - well, it will go straight over the Aran Islands and west Connemara, and spill when it hits the hills. Rain patterns are strange.
One of our courgettes is a little bigger than when I put it out in the ground. The other is a monster twice its size - apparently because the second one gets sun from morning till evening, while the other gets sun only for about four or five hours a day.
I've just got a delivery of aged horse manure (the fresh horse manure is on the compost heap with a load of dry leaves, turning them into lovely black compost), and plan to use at least one bag to mulch the potatoes where our lawn used to be.
The salad stuffs are growing, but the mangetout are just growing up - unlike my friend with the south-facing garden with big granite steps: the plants I gave her are already in beautiful lilac-coloured blossom.
Nowt so queer as plants.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 10:58 AM

With four full-grown maples and an equally large birch in our garden, we just don't have enough sun for veg, and barely enough for most flowers. The most successful of my plantings this year is a group of hellebores, which apparently prefer to be in the dark.

Our neighbours across the street have only one big tree on their lot, overhanging their front windows. So the lucky buggers have what looks like a quarter-acre of raised beds in their back yard positively exploding with tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and peas and zucchini and three kinds of beans up on poles -- I can just catch sight of the tips of the bean-pole tripods over their six-foot fence. Okay, I know that envy is a mortal sin, so I guess I'll just have to log a few centuries in Purgatory ...

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jos
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 11:51 AM

But Charmion, maybe you could tap your trees and make maple syrup, then you could swap some for some of your neighbour's veg.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 09:28 PM

Wrong kind of maples, Jos. But good thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 02:34 PM

Or use your maples to site an unusual version of a vertical garden?

A. Maze. Ing the effect of sunlight. Planted two courgettes (zucchini if they migrated to America) and one's double the size of the other - it gets all-day sunshine. I'm now bribing them both with seaweed extract.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 03:24 PM

Everyone's roses are superb this year. Our Iceberg one is huge and thick with white blooms. We had to secure it with thin wire to a tall fence post in several places as it was bending over and we feared the trunk might split.
Have now identified a neighbour's very attractive flowering shrub with bell-shaped flowers. It's Campanula punctata 'Pink Chimes'. I wrote the name down for her, and she stared at it. "Thass sum koind uv forrn language intit?" She was rather surprised that every plant on the planet has a Latin name!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 04:38 PM

We're burning stuff. My wife cleared Scotch Broom, and I cleared dead manzanita, and we burned it all in a huge bonfire yesterday, the only burn day all week. Today is another no-burn day, so I'm glad we got it all done yesterday.
It was a lovely fire.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 07:22 AM

Ooooh, not allowed do that in Ireland (not that it stops farmers), terrible carbon footprint, burning plants.
It's still soaking here, and the potatoes in the front garden are looking great; in the back, a potato grow bag of Pink Fir Apple has revealed several shy shoots.
I should be patrolling for slugs and snails, but was too shagged last night, having made a batch of sourdough as well as mutton stew. The stew with, cautiously, just one of the salted anchovies. What you do, it seems, is soak them in milk for a couple of hours, fillet them and pop them in. Worked beautifully, though I was too tired after a day of writing and researching to enjoy it very much.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 12:22 PM

Senoufou, I'm so old I don't think of Latin as a foreign language!

Or, perhaps, so Catholic, or over-educated. Pick one.

Our new rose bush was only a bit bigger than a bread box when we bought it a month ago, and it's pumping out stems, leaves and buds for all it's worth. At this rate, it will be about the size of the state landau by the time I kick the bucket.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 12:44 PM

Well I'm really pleased my mushroom kits, which I've never had any success with before, are going great. Shii taki mushrooms I've had one crop, the Yellow Oyster one crop were superb, Eryngii mushrooms are doing fine and the button mushrooms are looking promising. I should get two or three (or more) crops from each kit. I do recommend the Yellow Oyster mushrooms they were first class.

I'm a bit puzzled by your post Thompson though. "Rain in Ireland - well, it will go straight over the Aran Islands and west Connemara, and spill when it hits the hills. Rain patterns are strange."

The mountains in my bit of West Connemara are less than 2 miles inland and it's not been spilling very much of them, we've not had much rain in the past twelve weeks.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 02:34 PM

Charmion, my Catholic cousin used to take me with her to Mass (pre-Vatican2) from the age of about five. She'd lend me a pretty lace mantilla head-covering. I loved it all, and soon learned "..et cum spirito tuo" etc. Her Missal had Latin on one side and English on the opposite page.
I have Latin O Level (did it in two years!)
I've always adored all languages, and I do like to have to hand the Latin names of plants, because it makes for accuracy at the garden centres. I also have a heavy tome which is the Royal Horticultural Society's book of flowering plants and shrubs etc. Very useful, as it has lots of photos. But now of course, the Internet is equally helpful.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 01:34 AM

its been raining heavily down here in dunmanus bay, the slugs are slim img ans smiling

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 04:06 AM

Blooming slugs! I always pop a small plate of cat food on the back lawn for the pair of blackbirds and a starling that haunt our garden. But this morning there were four huge fat slugs sunning themselves on the dish. They'd obviously been hoovering up the contents. Sadly the blackbirds hadn't eaten the slugs.
My neighbour is growing some lovely runner beans (he always grows them each year, and gives us some too) and he told me that this year the slugs are 'suffen saaavage'!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 05:54 AM

You'll love this Senoufou - our neighbours whose son had his birthday yesterday, hung a king size sheet from upstairs windows and watched "Summer Holiday" in their garden!!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 06:43 AM

Funny enough I haven't had quite so many slugs, but we have many snails.

Yes, the Connemara rain patterns are weird; you can be overlooking Loch na Fuaidh in spilling rain and wreathing mist while in Carna it's blazing sun.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 07:17 AM

We went out to the Park yesterday and watched the Balimore Orioles play

the birds not the team.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 08:01 AM

Haha Bonzo, people are improvising beautifully during lockdown aren't they?
Funnily enough, we have two birthday celebrations going on near us today - one over the road and one next door! Barbecues, music (not too loud) and lots of fun by the sound of it. Both families have come to the door with burgers and hotdogs for Ib and me. Very kind. They invited us to attend, but I'm 'shielding' so we couldn't go.
The Birthday Boy over the road is 75, and the next-door lassie is 22.
I gave the bloke four cans of Old Speckled Hen, and the young lady a bottle of Prosecco.
Those slugs, by the way, were bright orange and HUGE! But I don't put slug pellets out, because the dead, poisoned slugs would be eaten by birds, who then die too.
Loads of dragonflies, damselflies and hoverflies out and about (and frantically bashing against the windows of our conservatory) I'm rescuing them every hour!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Raggytash
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 09:24 AM

You need to try the jar of beer for the slugs Senoufou, I'm told they die happy.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 10:44 AM

Organic slug pellets may be the answer,
Today I am hedge trimming.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 12:02 PM

I'd certainly try the beer-trap or organic pellets if we grew vegetables nowadays, but we're a bit too lazy. Actually, I secretly quite like the big fat things. Husband had never seen one before until I called him outside to look. I just wish they'd leave some of the treats for the poor birds.
My sister (who was poleaxed by Covid19 many weeks ago and feared she'd never recover her old strength) told me today she has chopped down a 15ft tall elder tree and sawed it into sections. Her gardener (called 'Abe'!) will be coming tomorrow to haul it all away on his trailer.
I was so joyful that she has obviously got back on top of her health.
Isn't that good news? And proof that gardening is a very therapeutic activity!

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Raggytash
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 12:33 PM

I trust your sister knows not to burn the Elder in the house Senoufou.

"Wood burning poem

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Chestnut only good they say
If for long it’s laid away
Make a fire of elder tree
Death within your house will be
But ash new or ash old
Is fit for a Queen with a crown of gold

Birch and Fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke
Fills your eyes and makes you choke
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense-like perfume
Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winters cold
But ash wet or ash dry
A king shall warm his slippers by.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 12:35 PM

re burning stuff
"Ooooh, not allowed do that in Ireland (not that it stops farmers), terrible carbon footprint, burning plants."
Don't know wheer you are T - here in the West, the reason given is bird nesting seasons - the burning ban lasts from my to September
We're in the midst of a drought hosepipe bans and all
The weather has changed enormously over the last few years on the West Coast
I'm just finishing an article on local songs - one of just annotated described the norm at the beginning of the last century thus (with my note)
Jim


The Bad Year, John Lyons, Newmarket-on-Fergus Recorded 1978
Carroll Mackenzie Collection
It would have been surprising not to find songs commenting on the weather, considering the agricultural nature of West Clare
This song was included in a published collection of Clare songs in 1976, ‘Ballads of the County Clare, edited by Seán Ó Cillin, (now, sadly, unavailable)The songs is credited as anonymous and the tune given in the collection is ‘Mountains of Mourne, though this is not the singer uses here

As I stand on the land and I look at the sky,
And I watched the rain pour, I could lie down and die.
The meadow’s a pool and the turf’s gone to suds,
Sure I hadn’t the heart to go digging the spuds.

The hens got the gapes they gave up laying eggs,
When the pig tried to grunt he got weak in the legs.
The back yard is a pool and the garden’s a bog,
O the poor farmer’s life isn’t fit for a dog.

Well I got wrinkled and old and my hair it turned grey,
While the torrents of rain made manure of my hay.
The cows they went dry ‘twould bring blood from a stone,
To watch the poor creatures go all skin and bone.

The child got the measles, me wife got upset,
Meself got the flu from me clothes getting wet.
Coughs and colds I contacted a crop of chill blains,
While me joints they swelled up with most terrible pains.

Ah but that’s over now for this year is a gift,
I’m a rich man at last by good farming and thrift.
It can rain, it can snow, it can blow a monsoon,
For I’m all for the caper above in Lisdoon.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Charmion
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 08:18 PM

We have plenty of split ash firewood right now, but not for any happy reason. The emerald ash borer has spread across southern Ontario over the last fifteen years, killing off whole forests of ash.

I remember, back almost twenty years ago, driving east from Windsor on the 401, just about Tilbury we would see signs warning motorists not to carry unfinished wood, especially cut logs, beyond that point.

It did not work.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 08:50 PM

I wouldn't worry about the huge six-inchers of the slug world. They'll eat carrion and dogshit and, on the whole, not bother your cabbages and lettuces. It's the little keeled slugs wot are the true menace. The blue ferric phosphate pellets, organically approved, are highly effective.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Senoufou
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 03:33 AM

Ash burns very well on log fires. We have 'ash die-back' here, and it's affecting all the ash trees, including the rowans. So sad, as they're very attractive in every season.
Many people in our village have wood burners (the smoke is terrible!) because they have no central heating and huddle round the one fire in their sitting room. We use oil, stored in a large tank in the garden, and a boiler to fire our radiators.
The thing about logs is that they must be seasoned for many months to dry out, then they light easily and don't give off too much smoke.
About those slugs, I reckon the blackbirds do eat the smaller, dark-coloured ones. The big orange chappies wouldn't fit in the beaks of their babies. As we've no vegetables growing, the only nuisance is that the fat slobs eat all the cat food which was meant for the birds.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 04:17 AM

Ash die-back is a fungus, I don't think it has much to do with burning - we live in one of the cleanest places in Europe sere on the West Coast of Ireland and we have been warned that our ash-trees are under threat
Burning oil is very much a part of one of the major problems this planet is facing
The full use of natural power production is, as yet in its infancy and, while power remains a source of profit rather than of energy it will remain the under-developed child and planet killer is has become
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 07:43 AM

Only trouble with the irony slug pellets; I'm not sure if they're safe for frogs. Can't get an answer anywhere on this.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Thompson
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 07:44 AM

Incidentally, I heard a male frog calling hopefully at my pond in May, but don't seem to have any tadpoles, alas.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 09:13 AM

Ash and rowan are unrelated. Their pinnate leaves may look superficially similar but that's as far as it goes. If something is getting at your rowan trees, for sure it isn't ash dieback.

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 09:59 AM

The chance of any frogs disappeared with the drought around here
We once stayed in Ewan and Peggy's house in the Scottish Borders and say dozens of them piled onto poor females three at a time
Dirty buggers :-)
Love 'em really
I's still racked with guilt over the one inadvertently I killed with the strimmer
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: What are we doing in the garden?
From: Raggytash
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 10:29 AM

Many homes, certainly out in the west of Ireland, have little choice but burn oil for heating.

There is little or no gas connection, peat although very "romantic" is not very efficient, electricity is very expensive and coal although it can be bought is difficult to get delivered (at least where we are) and expensive.

We are all electric.