Spending time with my dad in his greenhouse, he loved to grow cacti and helping pick the pears from our tree. He used to let me drop the chitting potatoes into the holes, I must have been very young. I think I got my love of growing and gardening from my dad, I'm the only one of five children who have.
I used to work for a chap who had a tortoise that belonged to his children when they were small. The children had long since left home and he and his wife had made provision for the tortoise in their wills, because they fully expected it to outlive them both.
@philippasmith2, that's some tortoise! 30kg - half a fair-sized human!
@JennyJ - the 30kg was at age 10 . He came from Khartoum Zoo so raised in captivity but not an unusual weight for that age. Taking him and the rest of them ( plus 2 parrots ) over to our other house in France for prolonged stays meant 2 cars and altho we always had the correct vet/endangered species paperwork, the French Customs officials always seemed fascinated. One instance which will always stick in my mind was when our cars were directed to one side and then being escorted to an office by an armed official. I felt quite nervous until I realised that one of the Customs officials wanted to fetch his young son to look at the tortoises. Relief all round and son was thrilled to bits. That was back in the 80's/90's tho - wouldn't like to be doing it these days. I can quite understand making provision in a will - given the age some reptiles can achieve, that's a good idea
That has reminded me of digging up potatoes with my Dad @Gwenr - it was like digging up treasure! It was always my Dad rather than my Mum who was into gardening - he had an allotment until we moved to the main house where I spent most of my childhood - it was a corner plot and had an enormous (to me!) garden. It backed onto a cherry orchard (in fact half the orchard was sold to build the houses) and we had 3 big cherry trees in our garden. We had so many we were giving them away for the first few years. Then the rest of the orchard was sold and more houses built and ours were the only cherry trees left. The starlings got them every year before they were ripe. There was one which we knew as white heart cherry. The cherries were a creamy colour when ripe, heart shaped and delicious. Sadly it became diseased and had to be felled. But I've never come across white heart cherries since.
We used to live in Germany and had a friend who had a couple of tortoises. Apparently around the time of hibernation, a man would go round the neighbourhood picking up everyone’s tortoises to put in his dedicated refrigerator — they would pay him a small fee — and he would return the tortoises in spring.
Aged 3 or 4, sitting inside one of my dad’s wigwams of climbing beans, runners I think, and eating them raw, with dad pretending not to notice. We lost dad a year ago this November, so it was nice to be reminded of him when he was young and strong.
Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.
My dads rockery. It was a mound of mud with stones and broken pots. Mum would plant little flowers in it to make it look nice. Years later I found out that the ‘rockery’ was actually where a pile of rubbish was under it and it was to disguise it 🤣
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I can quite understand making provision in a will - given the age some reptiles can achieve, that's a good idea