Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 11 June 2023

DIANE – Thank you for starting us off. A refrain is running through my head “I talk to the trees / But they don't listen to me / I talk to the stars / But they never hear me”. I changed it to - I talk to the owls / They listen to me – and I need Linda’s skills to finish.

HARELADY – For you (& OTHERS) an animal story from DownUnder.

We had a quiet weekend. Public Holiday on Monday for Kings Birthday.  How strange that sounds after so many years as Queens Birthday and I shall never hear the latter again with Will and George in the line. I don’t know about your home, but our bathroom is too small to store boxes of documents. . .

AQ: Haha. Alas, we have just two bathrooms, not 33 like Donny, so no documents her either, but what about your ballroom? Interesting about the possums. Nature is so fascinating. Our possums would be green with envy over those luxuriant tails.

ANNETTE - Ballroom? I am tempted to misunderstand and reply that we play ball outdoors LOL.

Certainly no room for documents here!!! I only have one bathroom!!!!!! It’s hot again so I haven’t gone golfing.
Lindy - I know what you mean about adding “extras” to prescription sunglasses. I just ordered the bog standard ones with my new prescription and I am very pleased with them. So sorry the washing machine man caused more worries. I hope he can come back soon.
OG - I hope you have enjoyed your outing today - air con and all. I must say that I enjoyed my supermarket shop in their air con this morning and I walked past the freezers quite slowly!!!! Lol.
Annette - hope you are now feel much better after that fall. What a shock.
I cut my first small bunch of sweet peas yesterday. What a gorgeous scent. Worth all the tying in I do. My courgette plant which I grow in a sack has a flower!!!! I must go out and water everything later. I am considering buying a second water butt.

Rusty - I am growing sweet peas for the first time this year, in troughs. They are about four inches high at the moment and I'm trying to encourage them to climb a trellis I have built for them. Without a lot of success so far - they seem keen to do their own thing. They are a bit small and fragile to tie yet, I think. I'm going to be away next week and I guess by the time I come back it will be too late to tie them. That's gardening for you ...!!

I'm off to Wisley with a friend tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a couple of degrees cooler ... I haven't been for several years and am really looking forward to it.

Hope everyone is managing to keep cool-ish. It's 28 degrees here and I'm off for a cool drink!

RUSTY Love sweet peas, lucky you.

Don't know about everyone else but our garden centres have been a disappointment this year.

Pat - one year I had some sweet pea plants left over so I planted them in pots. They didn’t do as well as those in the ground. I think they need to put down deep roots. I also tie the young plants in early even when they are very small and delicate. It is a tricky job but I find it to be worthwhile.

AQ -- I know what you mean about Diane!! You certainly can't say "But they don't listen to me...." in Diane's case, as she seems to get a response from some of her critters!! I noticed on my calendar that it said it was a holiday for The Kings Birthday (which incidentally, is in November) and I wondered if you'd all be celebrating! It's going to take forever for me to get used to not saying "Queens" in tegard to things. By the way, we are to get new postage stamps soon with the King's head on them.

The Man came again to mend the washing machine. He said that maybe he'd loosened some other kind of blockage by bsnging it around, yesterday. He had another go at cleaning out the filters & things - some balls of dog hair appeared! After he'd gone we ran a load through it and at the very end, it rattled a little. I can see that my OH is worried it might mean a new machine!

We only have two small bathrooms-- our "ballroom" is my kitchen where I tap dance a little to the tunes on the radio!

My OH made the mistake of saying "What needs doing?" this morning. I said that in spring we had discussed repainting the kitchen stool. This is a plain tall wooden stool which we inherited from my OHs parents when we married, and I moved into the farmhouse (my inlaws had by then semi retired to live in a bungalow nearby). I had helped to repaint the farm kitchen and used some leftover paint to smarten up the stool. Every few years since then, it's been repainted - sometimes stripped down, sometimes just given a fresh lick of the same colour. As it was at least 20 years old when we married, maybe older, and we've now been married 50 years, it's becoming quite a fixture!! 70 plus years isn't bad for a piece of furniture....  He repainted it today in a pale beige sort of gloss paint. Looked good till I had to point out 2 bits he'd missed! He's going to redo parts of it tomorrow.