A visit to Southwater Horticultural Society Spring Show.

Easter Saturday arrived and I decided time to get out and about!

I remembered someone had posted about a spring show nearby so decided to go and have a look around.

Here are some pictures from the show.

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A general picture of the display of spring flowers.

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Chutney and marmalade entries.

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Flower arrangements

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Three tulips from society supplied bulbs  a great idea to get more people involved !

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Hot Cross Buns, Ginger bread men, Soda bread and cheese scones made up some of the cookery classes.

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Some very creative entries from the younger generation were a delight to behold.

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Craft work was to a very high standard and I pity the judges having to choose winners.

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A beautiful display of spring flowers.

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The prize winning all yellow daffodil!

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All in all a very enjoyable trip out.

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Another year nearly over.

It has been a strange year with the death of my father in February and having to have Laddie put to sleep at the end of July.

Guess the highlight of the year was a camping trip to Cornwall on August Bank Holiday weekend. The first time I have been to Cornwall for a good few years. During the trip I visited Penzance and found that my grandparents house was up for sale.

In the middle of September Laddie’s girlfriend (Bonnie) at work died in her sleep and I buried Laddie’s ashes with her so they are together again.

The veggie patch was again quite productive although I had a late start. The one new thing I grew was two butternut squash plants I got given. They just sat there most of the summer and suddenly sprung into life in early September and eventually produced one squash each.

Dad’s death made me review my future with me reaching retirement age next year. I found a dream house in St. Dennis in Cornwall but was beaten to buying it. I also went and looked at a house on the Isle of Sheppey. I ended up with making an offer on a piece of green belt land near work which was accepted and is currently in the hands of the solicitors.

Just before Christmas my blog got hacked but I think it is all back as it was now.

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For a change a spam email which actually was worth reading!

Dear Mr Cameron,
Please find below our suggestion for fixing the UK’s economy.
Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.
You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:
There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.
Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
1) They MUST retire.
Ten million job openings – unemployment fixed
2) They MUST buy a new British car.
Ten million cars ordered – Car Industry fixed
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage –
Housing Crisis fixed
4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university –
Crime rate fixed
5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week …..
And there’s your money back in duty/tax etc.
It can’t get any easier than that!
P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances
If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know.
Also…..
Let’s put the pensioners in jail and the criminals in a nursing home.
This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.
They’d receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheel chairs etc. and they’d receive money instead of paying it out.
They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.
Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them.
A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell.
They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.
They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counselling, pool and education.
Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ’s and legal aid would be free, on request.
Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens.
Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls.
There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.
The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised. Lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and pay £600.00 per week and have no hope of ever getting out.
Think about this (more points of contention):
COWS
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Appleby almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the county of Cumbria?
And, they even tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 125,000 illegal immigrants wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

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The coming voting system referendum…

Sat relaxing today after the heat got too much for digging in the garden a mention of the forth coming referendum actually got me thinking about this.

At my age I tend to think that the younger generations should decide this as it is their future. Then I think maybe they need the older persons experience to guide them.

However I came to the conclusion that our current system should be retained. The basic question is do you believe in one person one vote? This works well as our current system of electing a government. The Yes to the Alternative Vote system will split hairs and claim that because you order preferences on the the ballot paper it is all one vote this is only true in my mind if you only make one choice.

However if there is going to be any change to this system it has to be complete proportional representation where the one vote gets a fair share of representation.  There are of course drawbacks with this system as well the main one is lack of local representation.

This proposed Alternative Vote system is a mishmash and to my mind changes very little than perhaps the outcome in a few constituencies.

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The start of a new year!

As we enter 2011 and thinking about the past year I suddenly turned to thinking about the start of the millennium and the decade that has passed. Well I am a year late in doing this but the cold weather has kept me indoors more this holiday break.

Back in the year 2000 we were using either Windows 98 or ME or maybe Windows 2000. We would of connected to the internet over a dial up modem. CD writers were the latest method of recording on a computer.

Yahoo was the main search engine with sites like Google and PayPal in their infancy and of course Facebook not even a dream.

TV would of been recorded on VHS tape and films rented in the same format.

If you listened to music on the move it would of been on a Walkman cassette player.

So much has changed during the last few years but how much more will have changed in the years ahead? This past year we have seen the introduction of 3D television to the living rooms.

2010 has also seen several big changes to our TV programming with the end of The Bill and Last of the Summer Wine being the most well known shows ending their long running series. A Touch of Frost also came to a final end. Others of a more modern note included Lost and 24. Also the year saw the end of Big Brother on Channel 4 although I suspect that it is likely to appear in a very similar format on another channel in the future.

Coronation Street marked its 50th anniversary in December with a week of special episodes and an explosive tram crash storyline.

Two other things of note were the exit of David Tennant who bowed out of Doctor Who and the Time Lord regenerated into Matt Smith, the youngest Doctor yet at 27 years of age. The other biggest news of the year in entertainment was that of Robbie Williams re-joining Take That.

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Autumn Arrives Again

The end of September arrives along with my birthday and I always think now the winter is coming soon.

The veggie plot has done me well this year and for the first time I have had a plentiful supply of tomatoes. Courgettes and runner beans were not so good though but just fortifies my belief that some crops do better each year than others.

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This birthday card I received is really good.

I can just see my dog Laddie doing the same.

Also along with my birthday cards the first seed catalogue for the next year arrived! A very interesting addition to the cards.

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June arrives and the plants start to grow in earnest at last.

Three weeks have passed since my last update from the veggie patch. The weather has been mixed from really hot for days then back to cooler again. However not much rain at all so watering has been a nearly daily event.

I spent most of Saturday (5th June) washing up all the pots and putting away the soil warming cables etc.

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The big builders tub has proved a great purchase and has been used to hold compost, move waste and now for washing plant pots and seed trays.

gooseberries

The gooseberries are coming on well and should be ready to make a nice crumble soon. I suppose I should of picked some rhubarb and had a nice crumble before the gooseberries are ready.

UPDATE Sunday I did pick some gooseberries and made a crumble!

 

 

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The runner beans are starting to twine their way around the canes now. However the broad beans are well behind this year with only a couple of pods forming so far.

 

 

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The peas are starting to pod up nicely though. Should only be a couple of weeks now before they are ready to be picked and the delicious taste of fresh peas a welcome start to the summer.

 

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The courgettes are moving nicely and the first flowers appearing now.

However they are a good couple of weeks behind this year due to the very cold start to the season.

 

 

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The first tomatoes are formed already on the Maskotka tomatoes. I was surprised as I was expecting the Whippersnapper tomatoes to be the first ones of the year.

 

 

 

 

On Sunday I did a final round of seed sowing. I pulled the last of last years carrots from the tub, washed it up and re-sowed with another lot of carrots. Also sowed a pot of beetroot another with spring onions and some peas in a gutter.

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WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !!



"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930′s1940′s, 50′s, 60′s and even early 70′s

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.


We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy  Toffees, Gob stoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate biscuits, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!


We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.


No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
No video/ DVD films,  
No mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms………..WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time….

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
 
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and FOOTBALL had try outs and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with belts and gym shoes.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’ and ‘Blade’ and ‘Ridge’ and ‘Vanilla’


We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO

DEAL WITH IT ALL !
And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.


And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

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Quick Mid May update ( mainly pictures )

I bought an Apollo Tomato house from Screwfix to see if I can get a blight free crop this year for a change. It seemed quite a good structure at first but I soon was thinking what happens when it rains with the flat roof construction.

It only took a couple of days to find that out. We had a heavy shower and afterwards it was as suspected sagging under the weight of collected rain water. I solved the problem by putting a piece of 2 x 2 in the centre with the top covered with a piece of cloth which now makes the rain run off.

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The three courgette plants are growing nicely. The green sticks have been used to cover them with fleece since planting on into their final pots.

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The whippersnapper tomatoes are coming on nicely and threatening to start flowering soon.

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The above picture shows how the trial tomato Koralik (front left) is doing compared to Maskotka (front right) . The ones at the back are the bejbino tomatoes which I trialled last year and liked very much.

celery_planted_out Other things I did this weekend was to plant out the celery and lettuce plants and pot on the cauliflowers. I also planted out the peppers into grow bags.

A couple of the runner beans have germinated although a third looks like it is heading to Australia with the roots on the surface.

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Whippersnapper Tomato Progress

Last year a kind member from the  Allotments4All website sent me a few Whippersnapper Tomato seeds. Whippersnapper, now a heritage variety, was commercially available until about 15 years ago, produces an abundance of attractive, small, oval, pinkish-red fruit. A very early variety, it is ideal for tubs and hanging baskets.

I sowed 6 seeds into individual cells on the 13th of March and placed them in a heated window sill propagator. (full details in the post here )

The first Whippersnapper plant appeared on the 18th of March and by the 20th 3 had appeared. whippersnapper tomatoes germinating 

Over the next week a couple more appeared giving a total of five plants from the six seeds sown.

Whilst the other tomato varieties I sowed at the same time were potted on into 3 1/2” pots on the 27th of March I decided that the Whippersnappers could wait another week in their cells before being big enough to pot on.

On the 13th of April the other tomato varieties were potted on again into their final pots and placed in my giant cloche which has frost protection.  The whippersnappers however were quite happy in their 3 1/2” pots in the cold frame with the soil warming cable.

Today after checking the likely chance of a heavy frost in the near future as being very low I decided to pot them on into their final growing positions. Three going into a trough I got from Wilkinsons especially for them the other one into a individual pot. (The 5th one I gave to a friend to try on her allotment a week ago.)

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Nice root development

Into the pot

On a final note I can just see the first set of flowers or truss developing but my camera was not good enough to show that detail close up.

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