Mid Summer Bits and Bobs.

[oldherbaceous]

I don’t like these dark morning…..

[retropants]

neither do i! in a couple of weeks, it will be hard to get up at 6 as it will be much darker.

We had a light drizzle yesterday morning, loads of thunder and lightning in the evening, but not a drop. I watched the storm clouds rolling past us

[Clive.]

34mm in the rain gauge this morning at work..

C.

[oldherbaceous]

Well all of the predicted heavy showers for today, have come to nothing….a lot cooler but, there has been a stiff breeze, so dried things out even more!

[peter]

Hosed it down here for a bit, overwhelmed our drains and got between 1/2" and 1" in our attached garage.
Just had to go and check how my new IBC setup had worked on the 14' × 10' shed roof....

From about 50L following a shower some months ago to 450L.

IBC is a metric thing 1,000L plastic tank with a measuring rule embossed on the front.
I've got one with the downpipe going in the top, a cross connecting 1/2" pipe to the second and an overflow from the second back to the downpipe, which goes under the path into my nature/compost/thingies area.

[oldherbaceous]

That sounds a very good set up, Peter.

[snooky]

Wondered why there were Begonia flowers on the deck.The culprit is the resident Grey Squirrel.It reaches up to the plant nips the flower off,takes a bite of the petals,drops it and goes on to the next spoiling a good display.The traps are coming out of storage!!

[retropants]

ah, yes, they do that to my clematis buds too

[Stephen]

We cut down the french beans today, they were well past their best and the last couple of pickingings were fit only for soup. I tthink the end of season was brrought forward by the drought but we had an excellent crop off them. My notes are that the yellow "Montegusto" arrive slightly ahead of the green "Cobra" and purple "Purple Cascade", the last of these kept going a little later.
I don't know if the yellow and purple seem more prolific simply because they are easier to spot?

BTW: what is the white here in the soil, revealed as I broke the suface so any rain would soak in?

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[Westi]

It's not the remnants of one of those disposable bags that compost themselves is it? I had something sent from OZ wrapped in one with instructions to hang it on the line. It did break up & disperse but for a couple of weeks I had little bits of bag around, but most of the bits you could pick up it turned to dust & eventually it all disappeared.

[Shallot Man]

Runner Bean Seed. Talking to an old friend on saving runner bean seed. Told him my late Father never picked beans from the first three beans in the row, His theory being all the best was in the first seed. Tops were pinched off at about six feet. When stored for the winter, never shucked. He reckoned the shucks protected the seed. Come growing season. All beans were shucked, and only the largest were sown.

[peter]

Maybe fungal matter Stephen?

[tigerburnie]

Did you use 6x manure by any chance Stephen ?

[tigerburnie]

Well a productive day was had, after some rain the grass began growing, so SWMBO did that, I'm still not allowed post operation(I could do it, but she seems to be enjoying doing it), I cut the big privet hedge, trimmed the wild hedge and we put all the off cuts through the shredder and mulched the Raspberries to keep the weeds down in there, place looks quite tidy for a change.

[oldherbaceous]

A productive day indeed, Burnie….glad it was a team effort….