janerowena

Hello Jro - and any other old friends

I'm sorry your danicing suffered, along with everything else. I'm just starting to get bad pains in my feet, I didn't know you could get new ones! That's good - they can queue up for after the hips and knees. Wandering around universities on open days was a nightmare, none of them have handrails. I wish DBH were a gardener, but it's all I can do to get him to mow the lawns.

Hello Jro - and any other old friends

Oh Lord, it sounds as if our lives have been running almost in parallel. I saw what you said about harsh winters just now - the same here, most disheartening and sometimes I think that if only I had realised that my garden was on the edge of the UK's only desert, I really would not have bought it. Even Amazing has warmer winters than I do.

Horrible neighbour dug the trench ostensibly to insert a gravel board, but hje never did. He did it to kill off our shrubs by cutting back their roots. He hates plants, won't allow anything to overhang his garden so all of my few remaining shrubs and trees that survived having their roots exposed to the ice all winter (it took him six months after ditch-digging to erect fence) are now neatly sliced back by his chainsaw to about six inches back on my side. He peruades elderly neighbours to let him fell their 'potentially dangerous and getting too old' trees, and then keeps all the wood for firewood. He is awful.

To add to the lateness of my weather and slightly depressed woes, I then went to a funeral last Spring and fell down a rabbit hole in the ancient graveyard and broke my foot. It took weeks and weeks to heal properly, by which time everything was dreadful. I have never caught up, and with the long winters, it is later and later on in the day before I can warm up enough sufficiently to contemplate getting outside, as I am not allowed to take painkillers because they punched a hole through my stomach and nearly wrecked my kidneys. All of which makes me feel about 20 years older than I feel I should! Son is very considerate, carries heavy bags and makes me feel like his elderly grandma.

So I am only doing about two hours a day on dry days currently, (which has meant about two hours a week lately) and have abandoned the veg patch altogether this year.

Son is dithering, he is waiting to see what his results are first.

Weeds in gravel garden

oops...

Weeds in gravel garden

It's a tool system that is not cheap, but I love it. It has interchangeable heads to fit different length handles. The head I use is this one

https://www.garden4less.co.uk/wolf-garden-soil-miller-dam.asp

which is also excellent for breaking down soil in veg plots, like a hand rotavator. I think I paid £40 for two handles and two heads in the 90s, they are all still going strong.

Weeds in gravel garden

Hello! The garden (and my achey bones) is suffering from the vile weather we have had, and an equally vile neighbour who disrupted one side of my garden and dumped groundelder-ridden soil all along one side when he dug a trench for his new fence, also stealing a few inches while he was at it... It put me off going outside at all really, I have only just started up again. He is currentlty rebuilding the house and cutting down all the trees in the neighbourhood, so it's never all that pleasant outside actually because of all the noise of either drilling or chainsawing. Son now 18 and doing A levels, 2 grandchildren, husband fine, arthritis worse - how are you?

Large black insects on my Solomon's Seal

I have too many to pick them off. Yes, the leaves are a lovely colour, but mine are growing under hydrangeas and dahlias and deciduous rhododendrons so it's not such a loss.

Weeds in gravel garden

I can vouch for the Wolf head, it slices straight through a path in minutes. Then just go back along the path and collect the debris.

Large black insects on my Solomon's Seal

They are solomon's seal sawfly. The grubs will eat every scrap of greenery on the plant and just leave bare stems. However, it grows like a weed in my garden and comes up again every year just as strongly, so I just let it be, as the damage occurs after flowering, by which time everything else in that border is growing up and covering the poor stalks.

Tasty things

Just pick as far back as you can snap off, so that it isn't woody, then boil for only one minute or saute in oil or butter - garlic added at will! We had the last lot with the flower buds from kale and purple sprouting broccoli, stuff that most people would discard.

I don't like the furry back taste of nettles either, which is why I dry mine and tend to use it out of season, although fresh, as a tea, it is very nice once strained.

BBC Gardening Arrivals - Meeting Point

So you have - sorry Frank, I can't correct it for you on here! Click on your own name, that will take you to your profile page, alter it and save.