Any cheerful news today? (Nothing negative please! 🙂)

Thanks! Totally forgot about rhubarb - we have 4 good plants. Will go and pull some tomorrow!!

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Our rhubarb just doesn’t grow well here.

Try giving it a couple of hand fulls of blood fish and bone, and a couple of inches of compost or well rotted manure, keeping both 8 inches from the crown.
Never harvest / pull more than a 3th at a time.
And in dry weather conditions keep well watered.

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Congratulations :tada::+1:. It should be much easier from now on.

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Is that an anti cat :poop: mechanism I see in the photo ?. We use regularly spaced sharp kebab skewers, pointing up !
I have a roll of that stuff in the shed, so may give it a try as a more humane method :grin:

Great minds ! Ours will be pulled tomorrow and we have the apples waiting.

Yes it is

We always force some of our rhubarb and I make a rhubarb and cinnamon tart.

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Finally managed to stake out all the tomatoes and peppers, just before what looks like some very stormy weather arriving - very satisfying :grinning:

And the first tomatoes now coming through :partying_face:

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Delicious ! You have reminded me that I have some rhubarb waiting to be made into a crumble
 next job.

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The neighbour’s kitty comes to say hello at 6am when our dogs are asleep

Her name is Minette đŸ©·

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We also have an occasional such visitor, One-Eye, (because she is missing one) but she doesn’t come through the house anymore, I think she senses Jules’ desire for blood. It wasn’t always the case so she must have a 6th sense because she first walked right through the house in full view of Tosca, the Setter and Boss, the Rottweiler. Tosca watched her carefully but did nothing till One-eye tried to kiss her at which point she got a warning snap which wasn’t intended to make contact. With Boss they warily approached each other until there was a very light nose touch before they both went their separate ways. :joy:

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First rain of any substance during the night accompanied by horrendous thunder and lightning, it just lit everything up like day. Living on a building site is no fun when it rains like that, the car was bogged down and left a huge rut when I managed to get it out. Forecast is for another week at least of hot weather and no rain but I did notice some farmers had left apricots on their trees so might get some yet.

I miss having cats so much but not practical here now and there are three who use me as their friend anyway. I had five at once a few years ago but sadly they left me one by one, thats the bit I don’t want to go through again plus DIL has developed an allergy to cats as well.

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Took me all afternoon and just finished installing a new starter motor in my car. Normally a straightforward job but oh my this was damn fiddly as mid engine car. On more than one occasion the air was somewhat blue :grin: on top of the tax return, this was the other job I was dreading​:partying_face::partying_face: now complete relaxation :grin::grin:

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that’s great news!! 

for us, tomorrow’s excitement will be bleeding the hydraulics
 hopefully this will resolve the “sticking clutch” 
 :+1: :+1:

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Here’s part of the 1.5kg of strawberries the OH picked this afternoon.


After removing a portion for both of us, with cream, the rest are going with 1.2kg I already have in the freezer to make strawberry champagne, which may be the first wine in my upcoming wine thread. I’ve been ill for nearly 3 weeks now though, and so it may be a little while before this gets going. Never made a sparkling wine before, so it should be interesting :yum::champagne:

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yummy
 nothing quite like strawberries straight from the garden
 in fact most things taste incredible when they’re so fresh
 :+1: :+1:

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With a little mint they are lovely. I made strawberry wine one year but it was very very sweet. Unfortunately here they don’t seem the same unless you pay for the very expensive ones but I did see a local panel advertising pick your own - from a greenhouse, not the same as straw-lined english fields.

The view from last night’s venue, on the coast of Northern Ireland

Thé venue itself used to be a public lavatory :joy_cat:

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