We have to take our bins to the dump every week which is about 3km away and then you have to put your rubbish into separate hoppers - recycling, paper, garden waste, and general rubbish. This means you need to take 4 bins to the tip. It only opens from 8-10 Monday and Friday and 10-1 Saturday and Sunday. There is a Council person there who watches to see you get them in the right bins, or else! There is also a section where you can dump old fence wire, broken down washing machines and bicycles etc and you aren't supposed to go looking through it to find the occasional treasure which might come in handy in the garden, so we have worked out that "the council person" goes home about half way through her shift for a quick cuppa and toilet break, so if you time it right, you can get away with almost anything.
She is also the village gossip, so it's the way we get to hear about who is sleeping with whom, which house has been sold, and other general information. The trouble is that she only has half a viable brain and mostly gets it wrong, so the little gem you come home with to tell OH about, is usually almost, but not quite right, and he already knows the correct story. Great fun living in a small village.
I have a 'hose problem'! Our house has very old taps which are a shape for which in the last 5 years I haven't been able to find online or offline any connector which works for longer than ten minutes before it blasts off from the tap and soaks the bathroom. We can't have an outdoor tap, old building, conservation area...blah blah...can't attach anything outside the building.
Each spring I come up with some DIY solution and the latest has been to use one of those old rubber bits which fit onto a tap for the old type of hair washing sprays. However, when you turn the tap on full, the thing comes flying off. I have to keep it on the tap using a combination of insulating tape (to hold the rubber hairspray thing connected into the hose) and garden wire to wind tightly around the tap. I then have to stand on the loo seat to feed the hose out of the bathroom window which has a ten foot drop set of stone steps immediately underneath. Before I turn the tap on, I have to dash outside, pull the hose up the steps through the iron fence to the level of the garden and hunky dory - I can hose the garden.
Every single time I turn the tap on full, I dash out there, start hosing - and I ALWAYS forget that the connector at the garden end which adjusts the type of spray doesn't work properly. I end up practically unearthing plants with the blast from it, then the end comes off, then it regulates itself for a while and then blasts all over the place again...
...and for some reason, which defies logic, I don't drag myself along to the DIY centre and just buy something a new spray section for the garden end - or just get my tap changed! Every winter, I tell myself that in the spring I will do it - then spring comes and I go through the same silly farce again. Gave myself a nice black eye once fiddling with it - and I STILL 'make it do' through to autumn each year.
Bonkers - but it entertains any onlookers judging from the male sniggering somewhere beyond the fence!
However, my classic entertainment piece was some years ago when I decided to test my OH's new electric wheelchair down the new ramp into the garden. I decided to do it 7am when there would be no-one about - just in case the new chair didn't work and I had to manually try and push the humungously heavy thing back up the ramp into the house. I had made a new flower bed about three yards from the foot of the ramp. The chair being new, I was unprepared for the speed settings. I sat in it to recce the situation as if I was my OH. Took off at full speed down the ramp straight into the flower bed when the chair tipped on its side and took me with it. So there I was, lolling around under 17 stone of metalwork and wheels in my new flower bed. And...as bad luck would have it - neighbours were up looking down from surrounding windows laughing their heads off - as in fact was I. Partly with relief hysteria that I wasn't sorely trapped - and partly because it was just hysterically funny to be there at 7am in such a ridiculous place. What I thought most interesting was, whilst the audience was much amused - there were no chivalrous onlookers rushing to my aid to get the blasted thing out of the flower bed, clean it up - and reassure the OH that 'it travels well'!! When relating the tale to family a few days later - I soon realised that the priority concern seemed to be 'oh Lord! I hope the neighbours didn't see you' - as opposed to 'Did you hurt yourself?'. Funny! Had to re-do the flower bed - but it was worth it!
Yarrow. It's hard for me to imagine trying to garden in those circumstances. I have hoses laying around the place in all direction - very untidy though. Some of them are soaker hoses that I leave in situ all year, and they are supplemented by hoses with spray nozzles for specific plants when I need them. We have taps all around the house and yard. Mind you we have to pump from the bore to fill the water tanks which then gives me water for plants.Another eyesore - those water tanks,. We have 3 for bore water for the plants and 5 for rain water for the house.
Hello Pat. I only really started gardening 4 or 5 years ago and in the middle of town in a conservation area and with communal flat considerations, some things are certainly a headache. BUT - as I've found being a carer for family, you find a way to get around things - not always the smartest and neatest way perhaps, but you become a part-time inventor of myriad gadgets to accomplish things. (But I'm ageing rapidly with the effort I can tell you)!
In the back of my mind though - I tell myself that better to have what you have and make what you can of it. Although...I do have a picture in my head of being in a house one day in an area of the country where the summers are warmer and longer and where I can have water butts and a tank or two and as many taps as I can get all over the place - in a much larger garden! But having a garden alone is such a contentment and extremely therapeutic for a full-time carer where most of life of necessity revolves around the home.
Are you in a position Pat where you can create something to make the tanks less of an eyesore - or would that not be practical? Sounds like it would be a great deal of hard work too. Gardening is a wonderful activity in whatever circumstances. Regards Pat.
Hello Yarrow. We are on 100acres of mostly bush land except for about 15-20 acres closest to the river (which is our eastern boundary). We placed the house and sheds on this semi-cleared area which was used for cattle and sheep by previous owners. Unfortunately, it is all up hill from the river and so the tanks stand out visually, and besides I wouldn't grow anything close that would offer hiding places for the venomous snakes that inhabit our region. I keep a good clearing around where I walk.
A couple of years ago, I was standing under the clothes line, hanging out washing, when I happened to look down and there was a brown snake silently (speeding in my opinion) moving from the septic tank to the clothes line. Since I'd been advised by local people to stand perfectly still when confronted by a snake, I told my adrenalin to take a holiday and froze. Thankfully, it carefully manoeuvred around my feet and kept going. I didn't yell for hubby until it was well up the hill. By the time he wandered out and said "what?" it was a bit of an anticlimax. (Says she shakily with remembrance). Oh well! It's our choice to live here and we have managed to find it a wonderful life in retirement.
Yep!! Nanny Beach quite often have to put the rubbish out in PJ's but then so do a lot of my neighbours too. We often find excuses to have street parties as well, if I don't manage to get out there till late, on go the PJ's, dressing gown, thick coat if its winter, thinner one in summer, thick socks and crocs, oh! and not forgetting my rather large mug of coffee.
Lou12 just the lawn edges!! my grass patch -yes patch- is 5ft x 6ft. Whilst having to wait for my son to repair my push me pull you lawn mower (I got from our local freecycle website,) and being too lazy to get the flymo out, I decided to cut the lawn using my spare pair of dressmaking sissors as they were the longest ones I had - something quite satisfying when I stand back two hours later (can't rush these things) check out whose watching me and look at a nice neat lawn -.
Yarrow2 Its nearly one o'clock in the morning and your post has had me in fits, tears streaming down my face, just picturing you flying down the path straight into the flower bed. Well my two dogs are snoring their heads off still so they haven't heard me, them next door are probably doing the same - hang on if I lean out the window I'll be able to hear if they are - no can't hear them, had to go to the back door to listen, on the way heard this noise from the kitchen, on investigation it turns out it was the kettle shivering on the gas cooker so boiled it, made myself a coffee, then found the peas I had picked earlier to go in the freezer, (and forgot) had to taste them whilst waiting for the kettle, no point in putting what's left in there now so I'll finish them off in a bit.
Getting back to the lawn thing with the sissors just remembered I visited our local Refurnish Devon - please look it up on line if you've not heard of them, they are brilliant - picked up a pair of edging shears for a quid, sharp as a razor, like new, tried them out on my neighbours lawn and forgot to bring them home. She thinks I'm mad too when I told her I do my lawn -sorry patch- with sissors.
Anyway its now 1.45am and my peas are calling me, night night everyone.
Oh, soooo funny you guys am loving it. Well, bearing in mind it started the annoying things we do to ourselves! The blasted bin saga gets worse,5 feet tall so even an empty wheelie bin, is a monster, squared up to my OH when he got in, told him the sage of humping the darn things around the garden, AND he said "I told you", basically, in order to get a padlock through the wrought iron gate the thickess of the plastic sheeting attached to it, he made a sort of bracket afair, which TURNS ALL THE WAY ROUND, so you can get the gate open, not just inwards, like when we moved here, but yup, youve guessed it folks, outwards, SO, I had to go all the way round the back, get the aforesaid beast and take it round the gate. I dont actually mind the fact the plants have grown so you can only just squeeze through, keeps the bins out of site.Yarrow2, would you be allowed to have some kind of tank (well disguised) so that you could fill it, I will ask OH if he has any thoughts, as he is always making clever stuff.
Pat E: You asked 'How did you get the wheelchair of you?". I think I only managed it because I could hear people laughing. To try and look unconcerned and preserve some dignity in such situations - you momentarily seem to find the strength of Hercules! So I managed to shove it off with both arms at the same time as doing a frog-like franticswiming motion with my legs which got me free. I very casually got up as if nothing had happened and strode into the house with great purpose. However, my legs were very sore and I sat on the side of the bath for some time while it filled, a bit shaky. Bit black and blue for a few days - but it was a lesson learned. We had it adjusted after that so that it could only be operated on the low speed setting.
Hi Nanny Beach. It would be impractical to have tanks as it is such a small garden and is also meant to be shared with neighbours - who currently have no interest and very kindly let me have it to myself which is a real treat. A water butt would suffice really but again it's a case of a 100 year old building (flats) where this small garden was not designed to accommodate any practical gardening paraphernalia. The flats are built almost in a circle shape and each block has a tiny garden which leads out to a very large 'communal green' area which everyone contributes for professional grass cutters to come and tidy up a few times a year. A little amusingly,the old deeds for these flats contain the demand that the block gardens are used only for 'flowers and laundry' so if you picture what that would mean in 1908 terms you can guess what the horticultural tastes were at the time. Today's short-term and mostly younger renters tend not to be interested in the small gardens and prefer to use the large communal grass area to sunbathe, play with their young children or have the occasional one time use bbq sets out of a sunny evening. I keep the small garden clear so it's easy for anyone needing access to go through it to the sunnier larger green area. So far I'm lucky that neighbours let me potter away in the little garden and do what I like with it. So I return the favour by keeping it as clear as possible. However, the dream of course is to move one day - but health services for my OH are our priority consideration in staying where we are. And we are content with how things are. The little garden is a huge bonus from a home carer perspective. It's wonderful. These old flat designs are very common in Scotland - perhaps more so than elsewhere in the UK.
I am so enjoying this site. It is very interesting for me to hear how you all manage your gardens. I'm gradually learning the etiquette of trying not to overstep the mark with what I write. I'm pretty good at taking a hint, though, so I'll get there eventually. I gather that it's important to stick to the original subject in each thread.
This lesson is my current thing that I am annoyed with myself about.
Posts
We have to take our bins to the dump every week which is about 3km away and then you have to put your rubbish into separate hoppers - recycling, paper, garden waste, and general rubbish. This means you need to take 4 bins to the tip. It only opens from 8-10 Monday and Friday and 10-1 Saturday and Sunday. There is a Council person there who watches to see you get them in the right bins, or else! There is also a section where you can dump old fence wire, broken down washing machines and bicycles etc and you aren't supposed to go looking through it to find the occasional treasure which might come in handy in the garden, so we have worked out that "the council person" goes home about half way through her shift for a quick cuppa and toilet break, so if you time it right, you can get away with almost anything.
She is also the village gossip, so it's the way we get to hear about who is sleeping with whom, which house has been sold, and other general information. The trouble is that she only has half a viable brain and mostly gets it wrong, so the little gem you come home with to tell OH about, is usually almost, but not quite right, and he already knows the correct story. Great fun living in a small village.
I have a 'hose problem'! Our house has very old taps which are a shape for which in the last 5 years I haven't been able to find online or offline any connector which works for longer than ten minutes before it blasts off from the tap and soaks the bathroom. We can't have an outdoor tap, old building, conservation area...blah blah...can't attach anything outside the building.
Each spring I come up with some DIY solution and the latest has been to use one of those old rubber bits which fit onto a tap for the old type of hair washing sprays. However, when you turn the tap on full, the thing comes flying off. I have to keep it on the tap using a combination of insulating tape (to hold the rubber hairspray thing connected into the hose) and garden wire to wind tightly around the tap. I then have to stand on the loo seat to feed the hose out of the bathroom window which has a ten foot drop set of stone steps immediately underneath. Before I turn the tap on, I have to dash outside, pull the hose up the steps through the iron fence to the level of the garden and hunky dory - I can hose the garden.
Every single time I turn the tap on full, I dash out there, start hosing - and I ALWAYS forget that the connector at the garden end which adjusts the type of spray doesn't work properly. I end up practically unearthing plants with the blast from it, then the end comes off, then it regulates itself for a while and then blasts all over the place again...
...and for some reason, which defies logic, I don't drag myself along to the DIY centre and just buy something a new spray section for the garden end - or just get my tap changed! Every winter, I tell myself that in the spring I will do it - then spring comes and I go through the same silly farce again. Gave myself a nice black eye once fiddling with it - and I STILL 'make it do' through to autumn each year.
Bonkers - but it entertains any onlookers judging from the male sniggering somewhere beyond the fence!
However, my classic entertainment piece was some years ago when I decided to test my OH's new electric wheelchair down the new ramp into the garden. I decided to do it 7am when there would be no-one about - just in case the new chair didn't work and I had to manually try and push the humungously heavy thing back up the ramp into the house. I had made a new flower bed about three yards from the foot of the ramp. The chair being new, I was unprepared for the speed settings. I sat in it to recce the situation as if I was my OH. Took off at full speed down the ramp straight into the flower bed when the chair tipped on its side and took me with it. So there I was, lolling around under 17 stone of metalwork and wheels in my new flower bed. And...as bad luck would have it - neighbours were up looking down from surrounding windows laughing their heads off - as in fact was I. Partly with relief hysteria that I wasn't sorely trapped - and partly because it was just hysterically funny to be there at 7am in such a ridiculous place. What I thought most interesting was, whilst the audience was much amused - there were no chivalrous onlookers rushing to my aid to get the blasted thing out of the flower bed, clean it up - and reassure the OH that 'it travels well'!! When relating the tale to family a few days later - I soon realised that the priority concern seemed to be 'oh Lord! I hope the neighbours didn't see you' - as opposed to 'Did you hurt yourself?'. Funny! Had to re-do the flower bed - but it was worth it!
Yarrow. It's hard for me to imagine trying to garden in those circumstances. I have hoses laying around the place in all direction - very untidy though. Some of them are soaker hoses that I leave in situ all year, and they are supplemented by hoses with spray nozzles for specific plants when I need them. We have taps all around the house and yard. Mind you we have to pump from the bore to fill the water tanks which then gives me water for plants.Another eyesore - those water tanks,. We have 3 for bore water for the plants and 5 for rain water for the house.
Hello Pat. I only really started gardening 4 or 5 years ago and in the middle of town in a conservation area and with communal flat considerations, some things are certainly a headache. BUT - as I've found being a carer for family, you find a way to get around things - not always the smartest and neatest way perhaps, but you become a part-time inventor of myriad gadgets to accomplish things. (But I'm ageing rapidly with the effort I can tell you)!
In the back of my mind though - I tell myself that better to have what you have and make what you can of it. Although...I do have a picture in my head of being in a house one day in an area of the country where the summers are warmer and longer and where I can have water butts and a tank or two and as many taps as I can get all over the place - in a much larger garden! But having a garden alone is such a contentment and extremely therapeutic for a full-time carer where most of life of necessity revolves around the home.
Are you in a position Pat where you can create something to make the tanks less of an eyesore - or would that not be practical? Sounds like it would be a great deal of hard work too. Gardening is a wonderful activity in whatever circumstances. Regards Pat.
Hello Yarrow. We are on 100acres of mostly bush land except for about 15-20 acres closest to the river (which is our eastern boundary). We placed the house and sheds on this semi-cleared area which was used for cattle and sheep by previous owners. Unfortunately, it is all up hill from the river and so the tanks stand out visually, and besides I wouldn't grow anything close that would offer hiding places for the venomous snakes that inhabit our region. I keep a good clearing around where I walk.
A couple of years ago, I was standing under the clothes line, hanging out washing, when I happened to look down and there was a brown snake silently (speeding in my opinion) moving from the septic tank to the clothes line. Since I'd been advised by local people to stand perfectly still when confronted by a snake, I told my adrenalin to take a holiday and froze. Thankfully, it carefully manoeuvred around my feet and kept going. I didn't yell for hubby until it was well up the hill. By the time he wandered out and said "what?" it was a bit of an anticlimax. (Says she shakily with remembrance). Oh well! It's our choice to live here and we have managed to find it a wonderful life in retirement.
how did you get the wheel chair off you?
Yep!! Nanny Beach quite often have to put the rubbish out in PJ's but then so do a lot of my neighbours too. We often find excuses to have street parties as well, if I don't manage to get out there till late, on go the PJ's, dressing gown, thick coat if its winter, thinner one in summer, thick socks and crocs, oh! and not forgetting my rather large mug of coffee.
Lou12 just the lawn edges!! my grass patch -yes patch- is 5ft x 6ft. Whilst having to wait for my son to repair my push me pull you lawn mower (I got from our local freecycle website,) and being too lazy to get the flymo out, I decided to cut the lawn using my spare pair of dressmaking sissors as they were the longest ones I had - something quite satisfying when I stand back two hours later (can't rush these things) check out whose watching me and look at a nice neat lawn -.
Yarrow2 Its nearly one o'clock in the morning and your post has had me in fits, tears streaming down my face, just picturing you flying down the path straight into the flower bed. Well my two dogs are snoring their heads off still so they haven't heard me, them next door are probably doing the same - hang on if I lean out the window I'll be able to hear if they are - no can't hear them, had to go to the back door to listen, on the way heard this noise from the kitchen, on investigation it turns out it was the kettle shivering on the gas cooker so boiled it, made myself a coffee, then found the peas I had picked earlier to go in the freezer, (and forgot) had to taste them whilst waiting for the kettle, no point in putting what's left in there now so I'll finish them off in a bit.
Getting back to the lawn thing with the sissors just remembered I visited our local Refurnish Devon - please look it up on line if you've not heard of them, they are brilliant - picked up a pair of edging shears for a quid, sharp as a razor, like new, tried them out on my neighbours lawn and forgot to bring them home. She thinks I'm mad too when I told her I do my lawn -sorry patch- with sissors.
Anyway its now 1.45am and my peas are calling me, night night everyone.
Oh, soooo funny you guys am loving it. Well, bearing in mind it started the annoying things we do to ourselves! The blasted bin saga gets worse,5 feet tall so even an empty wheelie bin, is a monster, squared up to my OH when he got in, told him the sage of humping the darn things around the garden, AND he said "I told you", basically, in order to get a padlock through the wrought iron gate the thickess of the plastic sheeting attached to it, he made a sort of bracket afair, which TURNS ALL THE WAY ROUND, so you can get the gate open, not just inwards, like when we moved here, but yup, youve guessed it folks, outwards, SO, I had to go all the way round the back, get the aforesaid beast and take it round the gate. I dont actually mind the fact the plants have grown so you can only just squeeze through, keeps the bins out of site.Yarrow2, would you be allowed to have some kind of tank (well disguised) so that you could fill it, I will ask OH if he has any thoughts, as he is always making clever stuff.
Pat E: You asked 'How did you get the wheelchair of you?". I think I only managed it because I could hear people laughing. To try and look unconcerned and preserve some dignity in such situations - you momentarily seem to find the strength of Hercules! So I managed to shove it off with both arms at the same time as doing a frog-like franticswiming motion with my legs which got me free. I very casually got up as if nothing had happened and strode into the house with great purpose. However, my legs were very sore and I sat on the side of the bath for some time while it filled, a bit shaky. Bit black and blue for a few days - but it was a lesson learned. We had it adjusted after that so that it could only be operated on the low speed setting.
Hi Nanny Beach. It would be impractical to have tanks as it is such a small garden and is also meant to be shared with neighbours - who currently have no interest and very kindly let me have it to myself which is a real treat. A water butt would suffice really but again it's a case of a 100 year old building (flats) where this small garden was not designed to accommodate any practical gardening paraphernalia. The flats are built almost in a circle shape and each block has a tiny garden which leads out to a very large 'communal green' area which everyone contributes for professional grass cutters to come and tidy up a few times a year. A little amusingly,the old deeds for these flats contain the demand that the block gardens are used only for 'flowers and laundry' so if you picture what that would mean in 1908 terms you can guess what the horticultural tastes were at the time. Today's short-term and mostly younger renters tend not to be interested in the small gardens and prefer to use the large communal grass area to sunbathe, play with their young children or have the occasional one time use bbq sets out of a sunny evening. I keep the small garden clear so it's easy for anyone needing access to go through it to the sunnier larger green area. So far I'm lucky that neighbours let me potter away in the little garden and do what I like with it. So I return the favour by keeping it as clear as possible. However, the dream of course is to move one day - but health services for my OH are our priority consideration in staying where we are. And we are content with how things are. The little garden is a huge bonus from a home carer perspective. It's wonderful. These old flat designs are very common in Scotland - perhaps more so than elsewhere in the UK.
Yarrow i live in Scotland and i'm guessing your in an old tennamant block.
I am so enjoying this site. It is very interesting for me to hear how you all manage your gardens. I'm gradually learning the etiquette of trying not to overstep the mark with what I write. I'm pretty good at taking a hint, though, so I'll get there eventually. I gather that it's important to stick to the original subject in each thread.
This lesson is my current thing that I am annoyed with myself about.