Class of 18. No need for new school shoes

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Old thread:www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/3478916-Class-of-18-now-in-2019-blimey

A thread for those of us whose kids left school/sixth form/college a year ago. Friendly chat :)

Thats good Knot! It is nice having DD at home still.
Today she was modelling her "clown" outfit for the design course...scary long yellow paper fingernails decorated with pompoms. Eek. A lot of cutting up of old clothes involved.

Ds1 being quiet, haven't heard much. Ds2 playing a lot of online chess in Lancaster.
Potted a big plant tree up today and now I've given up again...seem to have very little vim nowadays. One task seems to lead to another.
Starfleet and Ursula hope you are keeping well..and kitten too.

I've taken up gardening. I always hated it before. I do not have green fingers so will see if anything I plant manages to survive.

DS is also quite quiet. He submitted his dissertation and is now concentrating on the remaining modules he has left. Hoping that he will be home over Easter even if it's for a short while as it will be his 21st and I know his GPs and Aunts/Uncles would love to see him.

Hope everyone is well and we can look forward to some sort of 'normal'.......

Gardening has two functions for me. It makes the garden look nicer (sometimes...I suspect my garden would prefer to just be a clump of shrubs and a few bluebells/daisies) and somewhere nicer to sit and breathe the fresh air.
Second, it can be an end in itself, like cooking or collecting or gymnastics I used to avidly read gardening books, I loved experimenting, colour combos, growing from scratch.

The mistake is to do creative gardening when you just really want to use the space as a charming room, or a view. There are shortcuts

I would often get bogged down in the creative gardening and miss out on a functional space...ie putting enormous thorny climbers when what I needed wss astroturf and a climbing frame for kids.

All dd wants now is a hot tub, a hammock and a shed to do Art in undisturbed. Ive bought her some nasturtium seeds but she is very reluctant to get her hands dusty.

I am trying to extend the side of the lawn as the gardener managed to hack about 5 inches off the side whilst 'tidying it up' (he does the whole street so not solely 'my' gardener). I've planted seeds but think that I may to have to get some turf down if nothing comes up.

We have a hammock - bought for DS but he is 6'4" and doesn't quite fit into it....

Ha ha! Im tall and find hammocks a bit restricting.
Im constantly reseeding the lawn
Still, I like that my expectations are so low now that if the dog digs a hole in it, I really dont care
Tg they have all.stopped playing badminton on it...all 40ft. Mudbath ensued.

Nettleskeins

Our lawn isn't huge but there was always a mud patch where DS would play football. He was mostly just kicking the ball at the front window.....

We have a fair sized space at the back of the house, it is all paved over so we grow everything in big planters or trugs. I'm going to try vegetables again. Had a decent crop of potatoes, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions and lots of herbs last year. I have a fig tree but it is only young so I don't think that it will yield any fruit this summer.

My friend has an amazing allotment and she has inspired me to grow more stuff this time around. I'm turning into a gardening bore.....

How amazing!
There isnt really space in ours for vegetables, it is not sunny enough for long enough in any one area, except for where we like to sit.
However last year I did make a big effort and grew strawberries runners, parsley and tomatoes from seed and I think I managed about 20 tiny carrots from seed. The potstoes were a disaster and rotted.
Allotments do seem to be the best solution, but round here there are v long waiting lists. Also I am alwsys in Ireland for several weeks visiting my parents when the vegetables are most in need of tending.
So back to geraniums exotics and shrubs here.
I was reading an old Giles Coren article about gardening which made me smile, if anyone is a subscriber. Husband and wife at different stages in their gardening attitudes.

My fig tree is 25 years old (I brought it from my flat in a pot) and is very fruitful, partly because it is constricted at one side by an underground concrete bunker (old andersen shelter) that ive never managed to dig out from one end of the garden, under the flowerbed.

It wasnt an old article actually...March 8 2021!

None of the stuff grown last year was particularly high maintenance hence it survived my killing fingers.....!

Friend doesn't have much of a garden only a patio and she did wait years to get her allotment. It's the same here - long waiting lists and those that have them rarely give them up.

I shall try and find that article. My DM is an amazing gardener and she kept telling me that one day it would click and I would enjoy it. She wasn't wrong. I go out every night to make sure the malevolent neighbourhood cat hasn't dug up the strawberries. She watches me put new soil and compost down and then hangs around to dig it all up - the evil creature.

I have to have a hobby now that I'm quite redundant with regards to DS. He'll be off doing his own thing after university and I'll be sat at home weeping because he's gone

I have tried potatoes in containers, yes they were nice but I can buy them and the ones I buy haven't been eaten by slugs. I usually grow cherry tomatoes, I can buy those too and again, the commercial ones come without slug damage. This year I am growing tomatillos to make salsa verde. I can't buy them and I am hoping because the fruit is enclosed in a husk it might be less attractive to slugs. They are supposedly easy to grow outdoors as well as under glass.

Knot I didn't get many slugs on my last crops which was a small miracle. I'm not sure what kept them away.

Apparently birds are the first line of slug defence! And hedgehogs.
I have a dastardly cat X 2, so unfortunately the ecosystem is not entirely functional, although I think ddog deters the cats. Snails and slugs do seem less of a pestilential quantity.
I've stopped putting slug pellets down except a few in the greenhouse at a high level on staging, where birds cannot eat them.

We seem to get an awful lot of magpies where we are. They are very brazen. One walked into my neighbours kitchen and perched on her worktop.

O I hate magpies...that horrid chattering. I don't mind if my cats frighten THEM. But we do have some lovely cooing woodpigeons that are a pair and return year after year.
DD is very much still present in this house, her "hobbies" seem to take up most of the house. I had just made my study quite cosy and pleasant to sit in and was contemplating making curtains when she came in, sat on the (dog) sofa, and said "this would be a good place for my sewing machine". The last remaining room to escape the tide of teenage detritus and she wants that one too..

Knee as good as it is going to be I think.

I am not a gardener. My first house had a small stepped garden with two beautiful tea roses growing along the wall. I had lots of containers filling the space and now realise that containers are the limit of my gardening skills. So I still buy lots of bedding plants every year and fill containers, whilst the rest of the garden is given over to green.

I do have a pond which still has no frog spawn in its third year now .......

I never really understood about "bedding" till a few years ago. I didn't understand you buy little plants and they grow ginormously lush in a few weeks, tumbling lobelia and begonias and pelargoniums. Because they are plants from tropical zones, of course!!!!
So there I am for years wondering where all these window box plants come from as you cannot buy really buy them at the "expanded" frothing stage July is too late.

That is a picture of my non bedding pots from last year...bamboo, rosemary, phormium and hydrangea

I see there were pinks, and a rose scented geranium too.

That's gorgeous Nettleskeins.

We're having some building work later this year, and our back garden will be reduced as a result, but it means I will finally get to do planting in it, now that we know where our extension will be. Our garden is rich in slugs and toads. The bloody slugs are brazen as anything and I pulled dozens off a pot of grasses last night. Sadly DD3 ran over two toads when taking the bins out in the dark. We have been telling her to do it in daylight since she started, but I think this will be the thing that finally gets her to - she was quite distraught at the corpses!

DD1 is limbering up for her exams. Hers will start early - just after Easter and she's just heard from her flat mate that though he thought he would move out next year, he really wants to stay on, so she is delighted. Her female flat mate prefers to work by herself with her room door closed, and DD really needs to see someone at least once a day. The boy (man I suppose now?) is very much more sociable and so I am over the moon for her - much better for her mental health. DD adores his girl friend too and they have become good friends which is a bonus.

That looks very relaxing Nettle. I like bamboo but don't like clearing up around it. I have a thug in a pot and a clumper in a border, it's made a huge clump now and I tried to split it last year. I had a crowbar, spade, saw, axe and secateurs but that thing was going nowhere.

What type is the clumper Knot?
I have phyllostachys black and golden. I thin both with secateurs. I once split it when moving it to bigger pot, I did literally have to saw it...and then managed to hive off a small bit. Luckily it grew into a nice new clump in another pot.
I think you can put a plastic or steel barrier in the ground where it is now, to stop it going any further even if it isn't a running type, but it will always go Down too, which is why it is difficult to budge it.
Two pitchforks bent in opposite directions might do it though?

An extension sounds exciting....Hardwick.

Ha, two forks back to back. Not. A. Chance. I can't remember what it is, it's probably been in ten years now. It's only marginally too big for the space, it's starting to push through a fence and encroach on the planters on the other side. My cunning plan was to split it and move part to provide a bit of instant screening for a thin patch in a hedge. I did manage to split some off but not the great chunk I was hoping for. I'll have another go at it this summer, I suppose the heavy clay soil doesn't help matters either.