Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

As usual the media is about 10 years behind the times, there is nothing remotely new in the pictures shown.

 

Thanks for the link, @Loofah . Nothing very new in the story but I guess it would make life very interesting if a family had a toddler in one of those gardens full of hard surfaces, sharp corners and water features. Never a dull moment!

Anyways, this ad in the story caught my eye. How does this work? Flips the dear oldie backwards through the air until she lands on top of the stair after a controlled series of somersaults?

 

I'm still doing physio for my newer knee which is almost a year old. One naughty tendon still complains when I tackle stairs. Exercises include sessions on a bench in a private room plus exercises on machines and apparatus in a public space with other victims.

There is a particularly irritating and vaccuous young woman in her 20s who works in a care home, is not very fit and can't lift weights as heavy as I do. When I muttered about the knee tendon she said "old people should live in bungalows".

 

Of course gardening has trends and fashions! How else do GC's sell some of the tat in the ornaments section and, like fashion, there are coulour trends too but the best gardening is about "right plant right place" and that can take years of experimenting to learn your soil and micro-climate and which plants and features make a cohesive whole.

 

The corner neighbours whose garden I can just see if through the window on the landing if I lean over the low cupboard (avoiding the Opuntia) have a prime example of suburbian.... erm... hortifuturistic garden.

I have been watching the evolution ever since they moved in 6 years ago.

Fake grass over concrete, raised, angular planters, angular seats, plenty of ornaments from Narnia Lions via mirrors to modern sculptures, all surfaces painted dark grey. The planting is all structural (Phormiums galore) and vaguely exotic, and changing splashes of bright orange appear every now and then. The local GC must love them.

Now, the odd thing is that after years of feeling superior with my wildlife friendly garden and make-do-and-mend solutions over shop bought, I have slowly started to realise the neighbours' garden actually is charming. Importantly, they use it all the time and clearly enjoy their "outdoor room".

I believe that's a Good Garden

Plus they have given up on the massive Ivy we all share and stopped meticulously trimming it back on their side of the old outbuilding roof.

 

Each to their own as they say.

 

To me, gardening only encompasses plants and planting. Ornaments, etc, aren't gardening. They are decorative (or not, depending on your viewpoint ) additions to the garden.

 

Another what may I ask ?

 

"My" magpies must have very sweet-smelling breath. They have systematically pulled up, and apparently consumed, every dill seedling in my garden.

However, on the plus side, the barrier around and over my runner bean plants seems to be keeping the vandals out. Beans growing up a cane wigwam, wigwam surrounded with metre-high small mesh plastic netting, string tied in lattice fashion across the netting leaving no gaps small enough for a magpie to enter. They sit on the edge of the raised bed, discussing tactics, but so far they haven't made any progress.

 

We had loads of small slugs eating seedlings earlier in the year, @shiney . I don't know where they've gone... unless they're enjoying a holiday on the Herts/Essex border...