Kitchen Garden Forum

Many thanks Plum. Will copy & paste this recipe into my Useful Information folder where it will be handy before too long. Just need the self sown dill seedlings to get a move on !

Westi, Am sure that date can,t come quickly enough. I don,t think any of us need to guess too hard exactly where and how a lot of your spare time is going to be spent. Weeds beware !

Good luck with your retirement Westi. It's great to be able to do things at a more relaxed pace and not be rushing to fit everything into your time off.

PLUMPUDDING wrote:Good luck with your retirement Westi. It's great to be able to do things at a more relaxed pace and not be rushing to fit everything into your time off.

When does that happen, been retired for 3 years now and lifes pace has probably got faster for me lol.

All the best for your retirement, Westi. You may think life will slow down but you will soon wonder how you ever found time to go to work!

I have been retired 27 years now and still fill every minute of the day with useful things, well, useful to me, anyway ....

I'm not suggesting there is less to do just that you can do it at a normal speed. I can remember when I retired that it took a few weeks to stop rushing about and if you don't finish everything one day you can do it the next. A real treat.

Westi - Wait until the cold frosty mornings of winter when you wake, hear the neighbours scraping the frost off their car windows and windscreens in the dark , and all you need to do is just snuggle back under the duvet for a gentle snooze!
To me, the value of not having do that prior to facing a 7 am motorway commute was priceless !

There are still times, umpteen years into retirement though, that I feel I've not completely been able to shrug off that guilty work ethic where you feel that every moment of the day has to be filled with productive activity. Fortunately or unfortunately, anno domini gradually catches up with you and eventually forces you to take a somewhat different approach !

Sorry, Primrose, I addressed my message to westi by mistake. Yes, after the overnight soak in brine,just use vinegar, I used bog standard brown, no sugar added, well, that's how my dad likes 'em!

I spent a fair amount of time watering today. Everything is growing rapidly but we,ve not had much serious rain for a while. I poked around in soil afterwards with s trowel and was shocked to find that half an inch below the surface the soil still seemed as dry as a bone.

I guess forking the surface first lightly might have helped. When the soil's surface is fairly compact,the water just doesn,t get absorbed so effectively.

As a question of interest I often wonder abiut lightly loosening the soil over before giving it a good watering. Doesn,t this allow the sun to penetrate to an even deeper level and dry it out all the more quickly? Or does it help the water to penetrate more effectively.

My gardening is a bit on hold due to injuring my hamstring muscle, been over a week now and still limping about, luckily we've had some rain, so only the greenhouse needs care, the lawns need cutting but they'll have to wait.

Gosh Tiger, that looks painful. Sounds like a few days of taking it easy will help. You may need to put your shorts back into the cupboard until that bruise heals or your neighbours will think somebody's rolling pin has been working overtime

You can look forward to a fine array of colours - did similar to my arm once playing badminton and had that followed by all sorts of yellows and black.

Bloodyhell tiger looks like you have been playing in the super league ,westi enjoy your hard earned leasure time ,I was lucky I always wanted to retire early then the firm I worked for went bust I was only 59 but you try getting a job at that age , I've now been retired ten years but age has taken it's toll with both of us you have just got to keep going

Thanks for the kind comments, gets a bit easier each day, guess I won't be doing any more mountains for a bit, good job I'm a no dig gardener.

Is that bruise what you get when you damage your hamstring?

There's 3 categories apparently, this is a cat2 that doesn't need surgery.