Dick Twitchen Posted February 28, 2021 Report Posted February 28, 2021 Busy in the garage with doors open and the A259 in Emsworth this afternoon had a tidy Herald 1200, pale green with 4 onboard go East and later West. Then a VERY shiny Red GT6 Mk3 go past West bound and a bit later a Maroon (I think, Ii was lying under the diff at the time) TR6 also West bound. Suns out, Spring has sprung me thinks. Dick
Colin Lindsay Posted February 28, 2021 Report Posted February 28, 2021 42 minutes ago, Dick Twitchen said: Suns out, Spring has sprung me thinks. Dick No Triumphs about here yet but the parks are full of people, all double parking, there are hundreds of cyclists and the death toll of motorcyclists has started to go up again. Spring is here.
PeteH Posted February 28, 2021 Report Posted February 28, 2021 28 minutes ago, Colin Lindsay said: Spring is here. Oh Bless yee of faith. Last day of February? Plenty of time for Ice, snow and lots of "precipitation". even if the official begining of spring has arrived. I`ve seen snow at Whit Sunday!. Pete
Colin Lindsay Posted February 28, 2021 Report Posted February 28, 2021 Spring is officially here, as of 1st March. That's five hours and it's a lovely balmy evening here, so no snow but maybe close to frost in the early hours. Turn a light on and you get moths, let the sun out and you get people in droves, even if only for one day. Last year I emptied the greenhouse then we had a hard frost almost in April that killed everything, so I'll be careful this year.
Badwolf Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 For the first time I started my tomato seeds early. In pots on the study window sill. Now waiting to see if anything comes up.
Colin Lindsay Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 Cut my grass on Saturday.... very dry too. I'm wary of late frosts so will keep all of the pots in the greenhouse for a time longer. Another motorcyclist killed in my local village yesterday. We cannot get them to slow down.
dougbgt6 Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 Oh God, Is it grass cutting time again? Maybe this year I'll get my robot lawn mower going, but by the time it's warm enough to get out there and install it the grass is too long. Doug
Chris A Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 Don't know about grass cutting time but my timetable tells me it's time to service the mower and other ICE gardening tools. 😔
Colin Lindsay Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 36 minutes ago, Chris A said: Don't know about grass cutting time but my timetable tells me it's time to service the mower and other ICE gardening tools. 😔 Mine wouldn't start at all; choke mechanism was seized so had to be freed up and oiled; then it wouldn't start at all on the pull-cord. Checked the plug; it was bone dry so a few more pumps of the priming bubble and it started on last year's fuel. I don't use the self-drive, I need the exercise pushing the thing. 1 hour ago, dougbgt6 said: Maybe this year I'll get my robot lawn mower going, but by the time it's warm enough to get out there and install it the grass is too long. Doug What brand have you got? I looked at some recently but can't decide. I'm worried that some sod will hop over the wall and steal it...
Badwolf Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 We used to have grass. Then the new wolflet arrived. Now a sea of muddy paw marks. Hopefully some of the roots have survived and some for the grass will grow back. Failing that it's a giant bag of heavy duty grass seed and an air rifle to repel the pigeons.
dougbgt6 Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 It's a Flymo 1200 R. It's password protected so no point in stealing it, although the thieving classes won't know that. Which reminds me of a story. My next door neighbour found Scrotes had broken into his BMW and stolen his radio. "Ha! Tough luck for them, they obviously don't know the radio's keyed to the speakers in the door panels " He said. A week later they came back and took the speakers, door panels and all. db 2
NonMember Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 2 hours ago, dougbgt6 said: Maybe this year I'll get my robot lawn mower going Which one have you got? We're considering getting one (we have a robot hoover for the house). Edit: Bah! Forum hadn't shown me Colin's question, never mind your reply, until after I posted. 1
PeteH Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 We have the Robot "Hoover" for indoors. It`s class entertainment, watching the dog, watching the device, and barking at it if it gets too close to "her" bit of mat. I have some short clips of video I think?. Too big to download. Grass we don`t have since we moved back into the village propper. Once a season power wash of the pavers, Job dun, as the Scout said. Pete
NonMember Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 38 minutes ago, PeteH said: Grass we don`t have since we moved back into the village propper. I have quite a lot more grass since moving into the village proper (well, the east end of the village, as opposed to the middle of nowhere). It wasn't intentional but we'd been looking for a house with enough land to build a decent garage and the only viable option we found was this one with rather more garden than we'd bargained for. Mind you, the previous owners had a regular gardener who "was hoping we might keep him on".
Colin Lindsay Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 4 minutes ago, NonMember said: I have quite a lot more grass since moving into the village proper So had we... the last owner had the place totally immaculate and cut the grass by hand, and even striped it... Within two months we had ripped the hedge out, moved the boundary by eight feet or so, put a horse into it and enlarged the patio. That certainly improved the look of things. The grassy area to the side of the house, to the right off camera, is now my garage. I reckon we reduced grass cutting by 60% at least, and it's still a fulltime job... it looks much better now, four years on.
dougbgt6 Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 Is that horse poo top right? Marvellous stuff for the roses. Doug
PeteH Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 No. thats only a little pile. This one 53.886031252090625, -0.31644526527745975 is very, very, good stuff. Just had a Trailer load for the Raised beds. Pete
Colin Lindsay Posted March 8, 2021 Report Posted March 8, 2021 1 hour ago, dougbgt6 said: Is that horse poo top right? Second fence from the camera, the pile in the left corner is the grass cuttings, the pile in the right corner is all the dead leaves. Both now long gone, along with the big pile of cut down trees in the middle. If you want horse poo I've got tons of it... about a dozen trailer loads left in that pile... but the grass recovered well after the building work was complete.
Casper Posted March 9, 2021 Report Posted March 9, 2021 Shame the The Hedgerows Regulations 1997 only apply to England and Wales! C.
PeteH Posted March 9, 2021 Report Posted March 9, 2021 6 hours ago, Casper said: Shame the The Hedgerows Regulations 1997 only apply to England and Wales! C. As far as I am aware, you can replace like with like, or could do, or a different species subject to "planning" aproval?. I was allowed to remove "Ancient Hedgrow" (1998), to improve visibility, entering a (then) major trunk road (now bye-passed). BUT I had to use "original" Blackthorn hedging. Pete
Casper Posted March 9, 2021 Report Posted March 9, 2021 Yes, consent required and planning constraints. Blackthorn is not normally on my list of recommendations (for various reasons) but it is great for wildlife and there could well be reasons for it to be specified. Case by case basis. As it happens I was out planting a hedge today. C.
Colin Lindsay Posted March 9, 2021 Report Posted March 9, 2021 We don't have any kind of Hedgerow Regulations over here, or not as stringent as the mainland, as we have many more small fields, not the huge ones I see in England, and most of our roads are bounded with hedges. It's something I always found strange in areas like Lincolnshire - you can walk straight off the road into a flat field with no marked boundary and in all that space there's maybe one single tree. That hedge I removed was actually Castlewellan Gold conifer that had grown up round a barbed-wire fence, and a lot of it dead, too. You can just see the small blackthorn shoots that we replanted coming up round the replacement fence - I think I bought about 100 of them and divided them out round three sides. With all of the acres of trees roundabout us, all the blue-tits, pheasants, rooks, starlings, woodpigeons and squirrels must have standing room only by now - there are millions of them.
PeteH Posted March 9, 2021 Report Posted March 9, 2021 3 minutes ago, Colin Lindsay said: I always found strange in areas like Lincolnshire - you can walk straight off the road into a flat field with no marked boundary and in all that space there's maybe one single tree. That was largely due to "policy" in the 50`s onward, where it was felt more productive to have huge fields that could be worked by bigger machines (and less "Men") in the name of "efficiency". In recent times, much hedgerow is actually being replanted, I understand a drought some years led to soil errosion and frightened quite a few, with visions of the US "Dust Bowls". Certainly in East Yorkshire, we are seeing much inproved sustainable planting. Many People plant Leylandii. IMV a god awful hedging needing permanent "maintenance". My neighbour had hers ripped out and now has a classic Box hedging which is maturing nicely
NonMember Posted March 10, 2021 Report Posted March 10, 2021 11 hours ago, PeteH said: Many People plant Leylandii. IMV a god awful hedging needing permanent "maintenance". I think the word you're looking for is "obliteration", not "maintenance". Awful things.
Badwolf Posted March 10, 2021 Report Posted March 10, 2021 Just in the process of replacing a mixed conifer hedge, bought as dwarf types but they don't know it, with a mix of hornbeam and photinia. Looking nice, just needs to thicken up then the conifers get logged.
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