[franca]

Originally Posted by Tuppence2

Wave, Wave, Frank. You and your dahlias - "Dahlia-Man"!! You and Carole have a lot of patience to lift and store that amount. Do you ever give any away, at car-boot sales, etc? Though I suppose the Complex is big enough to take them all.

Did Jaki help to dig them up?

Hi Ya My Penny Rose........Like you said we always have a place to put them here in paradise. As for Jaki, you know he always likes to help......

cu later, take care, pats for all the gang,.........and don't forget.....keep getting those hands dirty.........

Frank..

[franca]

Originally Posted by trekguy

Here's an older aerial photo. Some trees are bigger, some are gone, and a new garage has since been added... but this is where I am.

Nice place TG.......any fish in the lake ..........looks very close does it ever flood ?

[Tuppence2]

Hello Frank (Monday evening). I tidied hanging baskets, pansies and violas this morning after cleaning at the garden centre, dead-heading, etc. A lot of rain in the night - I didn't hear it but was told it was heavy - my grass is becoming more like a mud-slide at each rainfall. Schuee comes in with clogged feet, mud and grass as he likes to scratch the soil.

The new roses arrive at the centre tomorrow - lots of them and , apparently, it takes a day to unload them and set them out. I'll call in to take a look at them - a preview!

Bye

[trekguy]

Originally Posted by franca

Nice place TG.......any fish in the lake ..........looks very close does it ever flood ?

The lake is horseshoe shaped... about 600 acres. There are fish in there, but it's not very deep... 12-13 feet max....so they tend to move to the connecting lakes to the north and south.

The closest points are about 300 feet from the house to the east and west, and the house sits about 12-15 feet higher than lake level... no flooding.

[Tuppence2]

Here are photos I took this morning of some of the trees at Palmer Gardens (Shaw Trust) Garden Centre, where I volunteer. The dark brown-leaved tree is a species of redwood, the flaming scarlet is a Liquid Amber.

Penny

[angelize56]

Just popping in to say hello to you Penny!!!

[Tuppence2]

Hello Angel.

How are you? I'm working hard but hope to retire in April next year. I'm volunteering at Palmer Gardens, a local Garden Centre belonging to the Shaw Trust, a charitable Trust that aims to help people with learning difficulties, or other social problems, to work - not just in garden centres but all types of work. I was sorting the new delivery of roses today and then puning old ones, after tidying polyanthas. Hope you are having a good day. It's nearly 6.30 p.m. here and I'm settling for the evening after a busy day.

Bye

[franca]

Originally Posted by Tuppence2

Here are photos I took this morning of some of the trees at Palmer Gardens (Shaw Trust) Garden Centre, where I volunteer. The dark brown-leaved tree is a species of redwood, the flaming scarlet is a Liquid Amber.

Penny

Wow..Penny Rose.......Love the pic's......... Big wind / Rain storm here yesterday...lost power for 20hrs......Grrrrrrrrrrrrr had losts of cleaning up to do to-day.......

cu later, take care......pats for all the gang..
Frank....

[Tuppence2]

Hello Frank. Oh what a pain - your season for power-cuts is upon you. Luckily, we don't have those very often. Have you thought of a generator of your own? Fay said she was thinking about one last time their power was cut.

Pleased you enjoyed the photos - the light was very effective that morning, the next it wasn't anything like so good for photography, just dull and cloudy.

I have to get round to clearning the fallen Bramleys sometime. I did manage, yesterday, to mulch some of the roses with the farmyard compost from the garden centre. It's very well rotted and dosn't even smell. Very good stuff. I want to put the rest on the vegetable garden for next year's potatos and strawberries, etc.

I've still not been able to cut the grass and it's like a quagmire in places where Schuue scratches at the soil. I don't think it's growing much, though, so at least that something.

The gales that were due yesterday didn't arrive, so we might get them today or over the weekend! Fingers crossed they've passed us by.

Have a good weekend in your gardens, everyone.

[telecom69]

Hi all, I too liked the shots of the trees in the garden centre Autumn colours are so breathing sometimes,its a pity that they are not like that the whole year round, we had a ressurgence of warmer weather recently for quite a few days and my Clematis Montana was sending out new shoots fully 3ft long,and a few Pelargoniums that were in containers and sheltered also opened up new flowers,they are not very good of course but at least its still a bit of colour still showing .....I dont know if anyone knows Wimpy369 who posts lots of photos,but he too suffered that same storm that franca had and he posted a few pics here if you are interested http://forums.techguy.org/photo-albu...ml#post4177920 .....Im glad that in this country we dont have anything as severe as that ,how do you manage for 20 hours without power its only when it goes off that we realise just how dependent on it we are, I see that Penny mentioned she was sorting out some Polyanthus I think,in the garden centre,what will be happening to them? are they in pots to be used for Winter flowering outside ? .....Its very wet,windy and cold here at the moment so there is no gardening activity on the agenda for the moment,looks like lots of television and reading will be happening more soon take care all ....Bob

[franca]

Hi Ya My Penny Rose......all cleaned up now, it took us about 6hrs...hope thats the last storm for this year........



Thanks for the link to the pic's tele, hadn't seen them......

Like you said....you don't realize how you miss not having power for so long till it happens, some people in the interior still have no power yet, lots of property damage caused by falling trees, some of the video they showed on the news was terrible , they showed big trees come crashing down and taking out whole properties right in front of the owners eye, it was devastating seeing them losing there home like that, and we complained because we lost power for a few hours,

Have a nice week-end ttyl..........and don't forget.....keep getting those hands dirty....

[Tuppence2]

Hello everyone

Yes, the polyanthas are in pots and were in a big polytunnel on benches, ready to go out for sale as the stock already out sells. There are pansies, violas and cyclamen as well. We were takeing off dead or rotted leaves and dead-heading as necessary.

I spent a couple of hours there today setting out the new stock of roses into alphabetical order within classes, ready for the weekend. I've put five aside for myself to buy as and when I have the money.

"Dublin Bay" - Climber
"Guinee" - Climber
"Pretty Jessica" - Shrub
"Arthur Bell" - Shrub (brought home and planted)
"Graham Thomas" - Floribunda

There are so many more I'd like.

I removed dead leaves from my other climbers today and cut down the Rosa Rugosa which may be the source of the blackspot they're suffering.

Hope the weather is settled now, Frank. We had a very cold night, apparently with a frost, but rain begain around 3 a.m. and it rained and rained and rained for most of the day.

Woofs for Jaki

[Tuppence2]

Hello

I saw a nice little "Thunderhead" pine at the garden centre this morning while picking Gingko leaves off the plants for sale (they get everywhere) and have set it aside to bring home when I've the cash for it, and for the roses that are waiting for me.

Hope everyone's well.

Bye

[Tuppence2]

Hello, everyone.

I planted a rose last week, "Arthur Bell", which will have big dark-yellow flowers. One of the others waiting to be brought home is another "gentleman", "Graham Thomas".

It's just after 6 a.m. on Thursday and I've come in from looking at the star-filled sky. I saw a meteorite! The first time in many years. The Pliedies (also known as the Seven Sisters, which is in the shape of a 'W' on its side - so I think of it as my constellation, being the first letter of my surname) is bright and ahead of me, Orion is sinking to my left - I can see his belt and above - and the plough (Big Dipper) is above and slightly behind me to the right. At different times of the year the Pliedies turns over and becomes an 'M' . It's lovely to see the stars. Very often it's cloudy and they're obscured.

Another day for the garden. I now don't work on a Thursday as my back is complaining too much. I was given a sack full of raspberry canes yesterday, which will need planting and cutting down - someone had too many and gave them away. I didn't realize there are early fruiting varieties and those that fruit in the autumn, thing these are the late ones.

I saw some huge bulbs in the garden centre yesterday and thought they were potatos! They were a lily of some sort - massive things.

I've had the radio on all night broadcasting the Test Match from Brisbane, and heard snippets of it each time I woke. Because of the big time difference, the matches begin at midnight and finish at 7 a.m.

What does anyone have flowering at present?

Penny

[telecom69]

Hi Penny and Good Morning to you,see you are an early bird, I just looked at the sky too but nowhere near as clear as yours must be cloudy up there,anyway intrigued as to what a Thunderhead Pine looks like I did a spot of Googling for it and finally came across a few pics from someone called metuppence,it had to be you I thought so decided to investigate further but then a strange thing happened,I got an error message saying that the site had to shut down and needed to close,Im pretty sure the photos were in Webshots,anyway I tried again but the same error came up again and the site did close down again and Microsoft asked for an error report on it they seemed to think that it was done by sdhelper which is part of one of my antispyware sites,Ive read in the past that Webshots can be associated with spyware....so strange goings on ....all is not lost however I will go into Webshots by other means a bit later in the day ...Its a very striking conifer that Thunderhead by the way .....not much I can do in the garden these days except keep tidying up after Buster has been doing his things like digging etc., have moved almost everything I have in containers into the empty greenhouse now,not that they need to be in there but why not give them a bit of extra protection if you can.....I have seen no benefit from doing this except for in the Hardy Fuschias which do come on a lot quicker than if left outside,.....weather not for gardening anyway at the moment very breezy cold winds the last few days ....

Not sure what Im going to do about my bottom lawn at the moment,as Buster seems to regard it as his playground and it really is an eyesore at the moment it was never a showpiece lawn but its always been there and has always looked good in past Summers,it will revive of course come next spring,so will wait to see before any descisions made .....filled my recycling wheelie bin up again yesterday with spent plants,and still got about one more load when its emptied ....

That about it for now so happy gardening to all who read this and more soon,and dont forget we are trying to keep this thread going till the end of the year,or even till the start of next season if possible so keep posting folks

Till next time take care