Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 20 May 2018

Evening all. And thank you Diane - the day got complicated, Have resized some photos to post, but now I'm falling asleep~  

Heather: Am off to AZ on Wednesday (driving).  Do hope the doldrums have gone.

OG:  So glad you had a good "trial" holiday - and with lovely weather too.

Lindybird: Good luck with the new neighbors.  Shame about the coffee maker (I read eclectic, not electric, at first - I was imagining one of those all-singing-and-dancing gadgets that makes every kind of coffee).

Diane:  Watch out for the storms.

Watched the wedding coverage in between doing laundry, deep watering trees, etc, etc. Some really nice moments there...    Couldn't believe the weather!    

Good Morning, All.  Sunny here again! - Can't believe I'm writing that every day!

Thank you to Diane for starting us off again, with the handsome chap, who seems to remind me of somebody........ (if I remember who, I'll let you know!)

Annette, I now have visions of the coffee machine dancing around as if in the film 'Beauty & The Beast!""

Lovely photos today of the Royal Wedding, such a happy day and a real tonic for the public, after weeks of nothing but boring Brexit talk. Good Luck to them both, they seem so genuine and so in love.

Good Morning all.

Thank you Diane for starting the week. Love the picture.

OG,   I probably would have agreed with whatever you were going to say.

Annette,   How do you deep water trees please? Sorry if I am being dim.

Lindy,   Good luck with the new neighbours from me as well. We also will be having new neighbours. They are planning major works, including removing walls!  

They already live locally, so we have asked them to come  around for 'Happy hour' on Thursday to get to know them. Building works and noise do not seem as bad if we are kept informed, and are on good terms with the people involved.

We have been in this situation before, and it was not pleasant.

Good idea, Rosy, to get to know them. We always try to be good neighbours, without encroaching on privacy, of course. There have been more major building works going on only five doors away from us over the last few months, and it's meant a lot of vehicles blocking the road, plus lots of noise. Yesterday the people next door to that, told us that they are going to extend their house, too!  (Puts hand to head....)

Hello all - and thank you to DIANE.

What a good idea, ROSY - to get to know your new neighbours early on. I don't mind building noise etc if it starts after 8am and finishes at 5pm with weekends off:-). In fact I prefer that noise to the loud music that sometimes is inflicted on us all by my neighbour, as I mentioned previously.

Spent a nice afternoon and evening with middle daughter. Callum collected me and I got a taxi back home. We had home made lamb burgers and pasta salad. She made devilled eggs, which I haven't made for years and we had corn on the cob.

I looked at all the many online pics of The Wedding this morning. I wish them every happiness - I've always thought of him as being a bit of a lost soul and hope that he will feel cherished and also needed.

I don't know either, ANNETTE, how to deep water a tree but have seen containers buried in the soil next to shrubs and plants, in France.

Hope that J enjoys the service at your church, OG.

PS ANNETTE - the doldrums. Well, as the late Queen Mum is supposed to have said......'Grief doesn't get any better. You just get better at it'. Some days it is like walking through treacle! Other days it feels as if one is actually getting used to the new 'normal':-))

Morning all:

OG: Perhaps you're thinking what others are thinking. I'm adopting a "wait and see" attitude, thinking that the "Royal" lifestyle may be more restrictive over the long term than some people might expect.   :-)

Rosy:  You deep water a tree with a soaker hose, which looks like a regular garden hose but it's porous; it doesn't spray water but just oozes it slowly. You position it around the trunk of a new tree and around the drip line of a mature tree and let it ooze slowly for a couple of hours on a fairly regular basis (every couple of weeks).  The goal is to let the water go deep into the soil where you want the roots to grow - and stay.  If you just wet the surface, the roots go there and you get a tree with weak roots and poor nutrients.  It's especially important here where the surface soil dries out so quickly and we don't get rain for months on end.  Hence the emphasis on using hardy native and drought tolerant plants.  

Lindybird: Hope the house extension doesn't extend too close to the property line or overlook your garden, etc.

Heather: My sister's neighbors in Lincolnshire are quiet - but they are now getting very, very frequent visits from their extremely loud daughter, son-in-law and their kids. No problem with kids' noise, but the parents seem unable to communicate without shouting, so the whole village knows when it's dinner/lunch/bath time, etc...  Re trees: Some people/cities tie down large heavy-duty plastic bags by the tree which leak slowly into the soil over the critical first couple of months.  

The whale count has ended for this year, with a lower total number of cows/calves, but only in this area  The speculation is that the northbound mothers and calves have headed back to Alaska via the quickest route (which means they aren't hugging the coast) due to the mothers not having had enough to eat during the previous year, resulting in the need to get back north ASAP to feed.  All the whale-counting points on the central coast are reporting low counts, but the Piedras Blancas station just south of San Francisco has reported normal numbers, indicating a short cut was taken.  The basic cause is thought to be a smaller ice pack, which in turn means that there's less algae. The algae grows on the underside of the ice and feeds the krill that the whales eat. So there's less food all round.  There is also evidence (from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) that the whales heading north this year are skinnier than in previous years...   Not sure what the long term effects will be....

Am now going to post some trip pix!  Finally.

OK. Here are a few with minimal captions....

View across fields from sister's house with brilliant rape seed crop.

Can't get over how bright this was!

This is what's left of Temple Bruer,not too far from Sleaford, specifically it's the remaining tower of a Knights Templar preceptory from the 12th Century. It's down a dirt road on someone's farm with no protection at all. Luckily we found someone walking her dog who told us how to get there.  Sorry about the wheelie bin!

A shot of the inside (which includes medieval graffiti, which I couldn't find). I went up the stairs...

Goodbye England.  :-((

Hallo Greenland. :-O!    Sorry about the engine!