A Parkside Tools Advert Perhaps?

 If you are a tight wad like me you might purchase your gardening tools from one of the German discount stores middle aisles "Special Buys" section.  I am always buying secateurs made by Parkside.  They are cheap, painted green and easy to lose.  Read the book, got the T shirt.  I haven't got the Lidl trainers or T shirt though!

I saw this advert on good old YouTube.  I don't think it is a Parkside advert but you never know.

Anyway or any road.  Here's the perfect Christmas present for the gardener in your life:

Autumn Evenings.

"Home sweet home."
 

I paid ten Euros for the blue coffee table at a carboot sale.  A bargain.

Stove lit and stocked up with wooden off cuts.  Please note the Pig Finisher bag is full of wood off cuts and not my supper.

It's going to be a long winter.  

Oh to live where there are street lights in a village.  Instead we have six or seven months of pitch black darkness from now until the clocks go back in Spring.

Why do towns and villages get the services like public transport, free mains water and sewerage (in Ireland it is!), mobile libraries, bottle and can banks, post boxes, shops and pubs and...?  Should I go on?

Why do the clocks go back?  We are not WW1 ammunition workers.  Why don't they just leave the clocks alone?

At least my mobile phone automatically changes the time for me.  I still haven't changed our front room clock.

Allium Porrums Growing In A Repurposed Oil Tank.

 My Leeks are growing in my plastic raised beds that I repurposed from old central heating tanks.

We cut each one in half to make two raised beds and I drilled drainage holes for them.

Then I half filled them with branches, weeds, fairly fresh fym, well rotted compost and fym and old cardboard.  My own version of Hugelkultur gardening and all for free.

I mulched the leeks with the leaves from the Hydrangeas cuttings I made on my last post.

Leeks originate from Central  Asia and they are members of the Allium family.  They are said to be great for reducing our blood pressure and they have anti cancer properties.

You can see the Leeks are loving it and have no problems about growing in an old plastic heating oil tank full of organic materials.

Like I often write on here you do not need to have a garden or allotment to grow your ow organic vegetables.  All you need is something to grow them in.  I have 24 raised beds full of fym and leeks and winter onions, lettuces, carrots, swedes and kale.  

Friday was a wash out and I think the seasons around now are getting historically wetter and raised beds are the way to go.  It's preferable to be gardening at waist height rather down at your toes.

A Carrier Bag Full Of Hydrangeas.

 Not quite the elegaic prose title: A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire but not a bad title for a blog post is it?

Hydrangea cuttings waiting for new plant pot homes.  

On Sunday morning I went down the garden with a carrier bag and my "trusty" secateurs "Parkside" from Lidl and took 35 cuttings.  

Bronte the Golden Retriever was walking in amongst the shrubs and perennials and Storm Ashley was trying to blow my hat off

I lost a pair of secateurs a couple of weeks ago in the polytunnel or veg plot.  

Why do horticultural equipment manufacturers paint everything bright orange or pink or put "made to be lost" stickers on the green ones?

I will probably find them some time in the compost pile or in a raised bed or in the polytunnel?

Any one else plant cuttings mad?  I have took and made over 50 new shrubs this Autumn already.  They all look like they have rooted and I am an happy bunny with my plastic bottle cloche propagating nursery experiment or PBCPNE for short.

"I'm From The Gas Board!"

I found this very funny video on You Tube and it made me laugh.

Come on Keir have a laugh at this and reverse the pensioners heating cuts and reward them and every one else in the forthcoming budget.  Tax the rich not the poor.

 Did you know that Rising Damp was supposed to be set in Yorkshire?  I didn't until recently.

It's another  horrible and wet evening going into the Irish Bank Holiday weekend.  I am glad I made my plastic raised beds for my veggies this year.

The last two years Autumn and Winter and Spring have been the wettest on record.  This year looks to be the same.

I have lit the stove and burning some wood off cuts to keep us warm.

I wouldn't like a gas bill!

Some Prog On A Wednesday.

 Regular readers will know I love Progressive Rock music or even it's other name: Cerebral Rock.

Songs and music with themes and guitar solos that can be over seven minutes or longer.

One English band who I have seen twice at Cropredy Brasenose Fringe Festival  and A New Day Festival in 2022 are Kaprekars Concept.  

I have also seen their saxophonist and flautist David Jackson play in the David Cross Band at The Night Of The Prog Festival in Loreley in Germany in 2017. He was a member of Van Der Graaf Generator and they were formed at Manchester University.  Not many people know that.  

Any way or any road.  Dorie Jackson (David's Daughter) who is Kaprekar's Constant lead singer just released another song and I saw it on You Tube the other day.  I really like it and I hope the band tour or play some Prog Festivals in Blighty next year.  Enjoy:

"It Is Easier To Train A Chimp!"

 We went in Aldi the other day.  I like perusing the Special Buys in the middle aisle.  

You find your self picking up 4 tins of El Cheapo baked beans for 27 Cents and pick up a flat screen 32 inch television for 500 Euros. I have said it a million times I exaggerate.

Any way or any road. We had completed our shopping and I had my usual hissy fit rant speech of there being no English beers to purchase  

A nice looking and helpful Irish lady shop assistant offered to help us negotiate with the "Self Service" machines.

We were very reluctant but we sheepishly walked to the slaughter, I mean checkout.

One by one we gingerly took each item out of the trolley and scanned it and of course it didn't work.

The lady pressed a button and she smiled and we tried again.  Of course it would not allow our  shopping to scan nor to put the items in the bag.

The lady asked us if we had any identification? I said: " No" and J said: " Yes!"

The shop assistant said: "I am only joking."

We managed to stop the machine six times.  Other people paying with cards sailed by with their shopping using the machines beside us.

We managed to get the machine camera/scanner to be unable to process our shopping six times.

Eventually we paid.

The lady said: " I think I best follow you home to see you're ok?"

So much for technology and machines that don't  like cash or daft folk in their sixties.

I think a  human cashier could of served six people in the time the unmanned machine took to serve us.  Progress I guess or not?

Stop the world I want to get off.

Anyone else had similar problems with these self service machines in your local supermarket?