Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 11 August 2019

PS. Hope your daughter is not affected by the huge fires in Gran Canaria, Lynette. It sounds dreadful, most of the centre of the island is mountainous with forests all around, and at the moment it's tinder dry.

PS. Hope your daughter is not affected by the huge fires in Gran Canaria, Lynette. It sounds dreadful, most of the centre of the island is mountainous with forests all around, and at the moment it's tinder dry.

PS. Hope your daughter is not affected by the huge fires in Gran Canaria, Lynette. It sounds dreadful, most of the centre of the island is mountainous with forests all around, and at the moment it's tinder dry.

Sunday continued very wet – some rather heavy rain – finished a slow day playing a board game. Unexpectedly dry this morning, no rain till 5pm they say. Shall try to be back from M&S afternoon shopping by then. J is going to early showing at cinema, so just two of us for tea – having main lunch middle of the day. Intending our much-postponed day out together tomorrow.

LINDA – pleased to see Rosie is doing well; I hope Amber (and parents) will have good weather for their holiday. We are used to occasional duplicate posts – but triplicate ?!!!

LYNETTE – sorry about your Son’s cricket injury – sounds very bad and I hope he will heal soon. I hope the fires will not affect your Daughter’s holiday in Gran Canaria!

ANNETTE – we empathise with the lack of rain to freshen things up in the garden – especially when we have just too much rain here!

Torrential rain and thunder this morning, and another power cut for an hour and a half. We have emergency lighting that kicks in during a power cut - and the service engineer was doing his three-monthly tour when the power went off! What further proof does he need that the system works?!?!? Lots more rain forecast for the rest of the week - a typical August, but such a shame for those on holiday. I have lots of things planned, including a trip to Pooh-Sticks Bridge on Thursday, so hoping for just a little reprieve. Most of the gardeners seem to be rubbing their hands with glee- yes, we need some rain, but please can it come at night rather than during summer days when there are so many things planned? Very grateful if remained dry for the wedding on Saturday, and my bowls match yesterday afternoon.

Agree about choosing when it can rain, PAT! I motivated myself to spray moss killer on the back part of the drive - spits and spots of rain so will leave for another day. I knew that we might get showers but am getting fed up with waiting for a few consecutive dry days! Your description of the wedding was lovely. I felt the atmosphere...
ROSY - hope that you got your tea and cake!

A busyish week here - have got my Elgin grand daughters for a sleepover on Thursday and a family meal here on Friday.

The garden man has been to give me a price for shrub pruning and shaping. £££ but I expected no less. There must be about twenty of them needing attention, a lot of them haven't been done since 2015.

LINDY - good that Rosie continues to make good progress x Please add me to the queue of folk requiring your OH and his enthusiastic ' get up and go'.

ANNETTE - sympathies regarding the cobwebs etc and no rain to wash them away. I'm sending you some of our 'summer'.

Heather and OG: Do send showers this way please.  We have some heart-leaf geraniums outside the front bedroom window with huge leaves that collect all kinds of debris, but they're impossible to wash clean because every time I go to spray a leaf it turns away - doesn't matter which angle I take - and the dirt remains, except it's now damp dirt.

Heather: Hope you'll go ahead with the garden cleanup.  It's amazing how quickly things can get completely out of control even over the course of just one season.  Sounds like money well spent and all you have to do is write the check and breath a sigh of relief. :-)

Lindybird:  I so envy you guys your lovely garden centers.  I just looked at Bents - 6 restaurants on the property plus all those wonderful knick-knack departments!  Why hasn't anyone in the U.S. copied this idea?!?!

PatO:   I love it - Poohsticks Bridge!  Only in England....  :-))   Did the lightning cause the power outage?

Lynette: Just looked at video of the Gran Canaria fires.  Such a familiar sight.  :-(   I see they're evacuating lots of people.  Whereabouts was your daughter headed there?

Annette - Not sure whether the weather caused the power cut or not. We had another one early this afternoon, so that was three hours in total with no power. Never mind - I didn't waste the time. Cleaned out two kitchen cupboards which needed doing - but that was totally unplanned! Also worked out to use my new landline telephone. And sorted out part of a heap of paperwork. Probably a more productive three hours than they would have been with electricity!

Have had an enjoyable day, including a whirl of activity since we got home from Bents. I bought a new garden trug there for weeds, a pretty yellow coreopsis (daisy), a pretty scarf for myself, and a bronze ornament as a present! It is a lovely study of a family of five, sitting on a fence, and includes three children, one girl and two boys, so I intend to give it to our Youngest for Christmas. It just seemed so appropriate and I hope they love it as much as I did when I saw it.

We looked at the Pets store inside there, and bought Bonnie a new antler to chew:  they are antlers which the young deer have discarded, and they're then steam cleaned and make a wonderful chewing and tooth cleaning toy.  Then we went for our coffees and my tea, with one each of the must luscious Almond & Apricot Slices!!  - can still taste mine, best I've ever eaten.

Sorry you got me in triplicate this morning, I couldn't get the Site to respond so just kept pressing 'Reply to Thread' and then went away, hoping it had worked......

More replies later, must go & cook something....