Sizzling Summer Bits and Bobs.

A place to chat about anything you like, including non-gardening related subjects. Just keep it clean, please!

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retropants
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we've had moderate rain all day (hurrah, at last) but it's a bit drizzly now. My 82 yr old neighbour complained yesterday that she was cold. It was 26 degrees! She LOVES the heat we've had recently.
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Primrose
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I just went out into the front garden after it had stopped raining to find that a courier had thrown the rain gauge we ordered a week ago onto the ground under a bush near the water butts. No note theiugh the door to announce its arrival and no idea when it was delivered. Unfortunately it arrived too late to unpack from its bulky packaging and measure just how little rain actually fell.

Question: why do couriers never bother to ring your doorbell when they have a parcel to deliver? This is not the first time Ive found a package just thrown randomly somewhere in the front garden . I guess they will say "I rang the doorbell but nobody answered". It was hidden completely out of sight. Could have been weeks before I found it and meanwhile I would have been chasing asking why it hadn't been delivered. :( Perhaps couriers are given too many parcels to deliver in their allocated working day but I bet there must be lots of claims for items which go astray.

Anyway now I have a rain gauge installed. Thats bound to make the rain gods go on indefinite strike ! :lol:
Westi
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We had drizzle but no impact on the crops. Still no lettuce germinated, patchy fennel, brassica's standing better but some are deformed & all are small, cucumbers in the net tunnel have just woken up, runners have huge seeds in them when only about 6" long with a strange red seam & keep stalling with their climbing, spuds not big in number but mostly usable sized but my pumpkins & squash are loving it!

I grew the new white one Polar Bear, (along with my regulars, butternut, QLD Blue, the French russet ribbed one) - Polar Bear is huge! I doubt I could even lift them now & vine is still green with just the odd scorched leaf so got some growing left in it yet!

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Westi
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Primrose
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Wow! Will be interested to learn what the taste and texture of these white ones are like. They certainly look very healthy.
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I'm growing pumpkins this year instead of courgette s ,it the first time I've grown them , when we went away just on two weeks ago I had one tiny one on today I counted six but I'm certain there are more as the plants are growing like triffads they are sprawling into the cabbages one has grown up the supports for the asparagus frongs and I know have two airborne pumpkins ,I've also spotted four melons in the pollytunnel and I think there are more hiding
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Motherwoman
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Primrose, delivery drivers seem to be a mixed bag, any we get are pretty good about coming and knocking but at my son's home they have one who puts parcels in the green wheelie bin! Just got to hope it's not bin day!

I don't have a rain gauge but have got an electronic one that I have in the kitchen and it talks to a sensor outside, it does temp, humidity, pressure, sunrise times etc. Yesterday morning I didn't believe it when it said rain was coming but it was right and I was wrong. I bore my other half to bits when I tell him what the pressure is doing...
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Motherwoman wrote:Primrose, delivery drivers seem to be a mixed bag, any we get are pretty good about coming and knocking but at my son's home they have one who puts parcels in the green wheelie bin! Just got to hope it's not bin day!

I don't have a rain gauge but have got an electronic one that I have in the kitchen and it talks to a sensor outside, it does temp, humidity, pressure, sunrise times etc. Yesterday morning I didn't believe it when it said rain was coming but it was right and I was wrong. I bore my other half to bits when I tell him what the pressure is doing...


Would you mind sharing which one? I’ve been looking at some but wasn’t sure which reviews to trust?
Thanks in advance
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Primrose
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Am trying an interesting experiment with half a dozen self sown tomato seedlings I found in my vegetable,patch which made an appearance quite late on in June - obviously as a result of tomato seeds which had made their way onto the compost heap the previous year.
I wanted to see what would happen with the plants if they were left to "grow in the wild" so to speak and have just replanted them in a spare part of the vegetable patch and left them to the own devices. No idea whether they were tumbling or cordon varieties so have not bothered to stake or sideshoot them.

All the plants are doing well and producing small healthy looking tomatoes. I don,t know what stage they will be at by the end of the season but the plants all look low and very bushy which made me wonder if this is how they looked whenAmerican natives or whoever first discovered them growing in the wild. Our current day highly cultivated cordon varieties must seem a long way away from the "wild plant" experimental ones I,m letting grow. However there is a massive amount of leaf in ratio to the number of tomatoes being borne so our current day varieties are massively more productive.
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Shallot Man
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Primrose. Keep us up too date on this please.
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Primrose
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Am sitting here enjoying my new hobby - remembering what rain looks like (!!) and seeing the drops gently slide down the inside of my new rain funnel gauge. Can't quite get it into my head yet that an inch of water accumulating inside the funnel doesn,t unfortunately mean that an inch of rain has fallen, more like half an inch actually.

Trying to work out how much rain actually needs to fall and soak through to the roots of my lawn to discover whether they are actually dead (when you tug anything you can get hold of the roots actually come out as well in a form of dry dust) or whether some of them may still be vaguely viable.
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We have travelled down to Wales for a few days on the way down i had a phone call from the nurse at Aintree hospital they are happy with my wife's latest scans but are a bit concerned that the lesion on her side is taking a long while to heal they will see her in the clinic at the end of September ,a bit vague i was driving at the time and did not get chance to as the thousand questions i wanted to but it looks like she may be cancer free which is champagne time
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Primrose
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If that,s the case Robo that is indeed splendid news and well worth celebrating. Definitely an occasion for the fizz !
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Pa Snip
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I sincerely hope that is the case and your wife has become one of the fortunate ones.

The danger when people start to believe their own publicity is that they often fall off their own ego.

At least travelling under the guise of the Pa Snip Enterprise gives me an excuse for appearing to be on another planet
Monika
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Fingers and toes crossed, robo!
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retropants
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everything crossed, yes. Hope it's the outcome you wish for.
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