There's a house on the next street over who leaves all his outside lights on all night. He uses some sort of 1000W LED bulbs in them and lights up our bedroom lovely. Â Maybe it's a new trend, outdoor growlights? Keep your lawn nice and green and p**s off all your neighbours in one go.
There's a house behind us with a badly adjusted outside light. They are over 200 feet away but it lights up our bedroom when it comes on. I'm waiting for an aircraft to try and land - once they are flying again.
The lights around our summerhouse are only switched on during the Christmas period or in summer in the evening when we have guests and weâre sitting outside.Â
I used to belong to another garden forum where every other picture seemed to feature garden lights, resin Buddhas, multi-coloured lizard or dragonfly wall ornaments etc. For each posting there was an immediate chorus of responses âwowâ, âamaaaazingâ, âso beautifulâ etc. leaving me to think I was clearly out of step. I then had the temerity to venture the opinion that in my garden I prefer to let the plants take centre stage and commenting on the merits of diversity of opinion. I also got an immediate response and it was entirely hostile, the gist of it being that if I was so clever why didnât I post photos of my garden. Sod that. I left.
Sadly both reactions are pretty typical. Some people seem to think it's mandatory to enthuse over anything that's posted, and also to let rip at anybody who dares to voice a different opinion. It was the latter who ended up getting the GW Mag Facebook group to close down.
I have just seen a Facebook advertisement for a bright blue rose. A packet of seeds, sent from China, costs about ÂŁ10 and the ad says that youâll get 95% germination if you water them two or three times a day. You can then grow the rose in your office.
Again and again people are responding with comments like âstunningâ, âbeautifulâ etc and the message flashing at the top of the screen says people are buying them every few minutes. These same people have the vote. Thatâs what worries me.
I tend to work on the if you can't say anything nice........ That being said, sometimes I like photos but can't think of anything useful to say. Some of the prize-winning photos you see have had the colours tinkered with. I think that's cheating.
I'm still fuming about the Countryfile calendar winning photo. Turns out she hadn't spent hours watching a fallen apple and waiting for a cute creature to come along. It was all set up in the comfort of her conservatory.Â
Agreed about the Countryfile photo. The judges' choice, however, which is this month's pic, is stunning. Â
Returning to naff garden features... we were left a blue resin Buddha with broken toes on its left foot. We wondered about taking it to the former owners' new home, only a mile away, at dead of night and leaving it tucked away somewhere... it's currently known as the Buddha of the Brambles, so you can imagine where we've put it so we can't see it.   Somehow, putting it in the bin would seem disrespectful...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
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There's a house behind us with a badly adjusted outside light. They are over 200 feet away but it lights up our bedroom when it comes on. I'm waiting for an aircraft to try and land - once they are flying again.
Sadly both reactions are pretty typical. Some people seem to think it's mandatory to enthuse over anything that's posted, and also to let rip at anybody who dares to voice a different opinion. It was the latter who ended up getting the GW Mag Facebook group to close down.
And do, extremely rapidly.
That being said, sometimes I like photos but can't think of anything useful to say.
Some of the prize-winning photos you see have had the colours tinkered with. I think that's cheating.
Turns out she hadn't spent hours watching a fallen apple and waiting for a cute creature to come along. It was all set up in the comfort of her conservatory.Â
Returning to naff garden features... we were left a blue resin Buddha with broken toes on its left foot. We wondered about taking it to the former owners' new home, only a mile away, at dead of night and leaving it tucked away somewhere... it's currently known as the Buddha of the Brambles, so you can imagine where we've put it so we can't see it.Â