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Luckily Nathan I retrieved everything. It’s amazing what can be forgotten and I think that is how some pretty good items end up on the shelf.
Lovejoy you’ve got a lot to answer for.
Ian mcshane’s classic 80s comedy escapade series resonates with me because of it’s Suffolk locations.
I’m off deep into lovejoy country now. Doing a house clearance. I might buy more than I shift. A pristene Formica kitchen table circa 1950s absolute bhramer. I’m having that! There’s a 1960-70 Ercol table.
If only Tinker was here. One aspect of lovejoy I enjoyed besides the location was the “fourth wall.” Used now to pretty poor effect in Anikca Scottish crime drama. He’d take the viewer along country lanes -many along which I’d travelled- and in and out of pubs and antique shops mumbling along to you and most of those I’d been in too, not the antique houses.
One of the key locations is the high street in Long Melford lots of traditional shops and of course Antique shops and called into one of the houses in the street to answer an advertisement placed in the EADT ( East Anglian Daily Times) A PAIR OF TICKETS LADIES SINGLES FINAL WIMBLEDON FACE VALUE. Unable to attend. I don’t remember the face value but I rang the number and asked about the tickets which had been in the paper all morning and hearing they were still available reserved them on “first refusal” can you imagine such an arrangement outside of Suffolk?? Sure enough I arrived and was told the phone had been ringing off the hook but his word was his word and gratefully secured the tickets for an additional fiver.The tennis match was Steffi Graff vs Gabriella Sabatini and the Ercol table was beautiful Elm it went to Auction, but I’ve got the Formica table.
The auctioneer couldn’t take the table in quick enough. In between, a few bets and copious cups of tea and as per normal the lucky lasts three of them yielded two winners Waterloo sunset and Hong Kong’s finest SP’ing at 9/1 and destroying a million favourite’s betting slips. They play the favourite massively in betting mad Hong Kong. Any other winner is a big price. He didn’t only destroy the favourite, he destroyed the field. Clear in the straight by five, six, reduced lead but still won going away. Back to the soil tomorrow and glad to be back here. Here again sometime tomorrow too.
I don’t think lovejoy ever got to the pub here on his screen travels. But tonight high above the banks of the Orwell by the church built from a military outpoint as strategically situated as a castle and master of all he surveys and trees, 🌲 all around. If he had made it here, he’d be giving it the fourth wall to full effect.An update. Good old Homebase, they dropped the price of all their seeds for veg and flowers to a pound in a 50 hour flash sale. I’ve ended up with any amount of veg and dozens of varieties of flowers for companion planting for next year. Leeks carrots spring onions 🧅 broccoli persimmons hydrangea just every plant you could think of. Cost goes back up tomorrow so very handy. I planted two trees today. Olive trees and they’ll grow well in the soil rather than pots. Yesterday I was given access to a huge amount of free leaf mould compost trouble is though I’ve found it really hard to breath and can’t stop sneezing and coughing really not my cheery self and very wheezy and although I sneeze a lot, this is awful I’m doubled up. I can’t work it out and reckon I’ve inhaled some spores or something sick as a pig.
An update. Good old Homebase, they dropped the price of all their seeds for veg and flowers to a pound in a 50 hour flash sale. I’ve ended up with any amount of veg and dozens of varieties of flowers for companion planting for next year. Leeks carrots spring onions 🧅 broccoli persimmons hydrangea just every plant you could think of. Cost goes back up tomorrow so very handy. I planted two trees today. Olive trees and they’ll grow well in the soil rather than pots. Yesterday I was given access to a huge amount of free leaf mould compost trouble is though I’ve found it really hard to breath and can’t stop sneezing and coughing really not my cheery self and very wheezy and although I sneeze a lot, this is awful I’m doubled up. I can’t work it out and reckon I’ve inhaled some spores or something sick as a pig.
I once caught a fungal lung infection from composted horse manure I was chucking about on a windy day which necessitated a short course of anti-fungal tablets. It wasn’t particularly bad but was a persistant cough with a slightly raised temperature.
So, if your symptoms don’t clear up pronto I suggest you see a quack. Aspergillosis is a notorious fungal infection but rare in the fit and healthy
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/aspergillosis/
Very much enjoying your posts on this thread Sporting Gardening Sam, keep ’em coming. We had an early (by recent standards) frost a couple of weeks ago which saw off my dahlias, nasturtiums, marigolds and other half-hardy plants but they were a splendid show, as ever, during the summer
I’ve tried to download a photo my allotment for you to admire but the usual
BBCode that works fine for on-line images doesn’t seem to work for images on my PC. Anyone know how to do it?
Lovejoy was er…a joy. Still watch them from time to time when they crop up on some repeats channel
Hello Drone,
Much better today and I will get on to the quack tomorrow as it’s certainly a chest infection but I feel much better for getting out it’s not until you feel better that you realise how unwell you felt. Nothing at all compared to really being Ill. Fresh air did the trick for my lungs and they are full of it again rather than shite.
Kill or cure for me and I went to the allotment this afternoon in search of the cure and aware that I’m getting well behind. A former partner really didn’t like my regular forrays into the arms of “Lottie” as she called it. Lottie was frequently refered to in conversation with friends as the “other woman”. There was real jealousy and I was offered a choice on more than one occasion!! There was only ever going to be one winner there.After not a little preparation this week I was at the allotment laying a no dig bed. Last year’s yielded a bumper crop of runner beans and spuds and I realise you cannot lay a thick enough base nor put down too much organic matter. The higher the pile the better. My base is cardboard soaked followed by leaves. under the cardboard is horse manure over the previous base and the latest blanket of weeds. I’ve been raking under the beech hedges in a very posh avenue for the next layer. well rotted leaves full of worm casted soil, then yet another layer of freshly fallen beech tree leaves husks and all already rotting,followed hopefully by the piece des resistance two year old leaf mulch dug out of my old neighbour’s black bins,bins I’ve turned myself two years past and this stuff is blacker than Dante’s inferno. Whilst waiting for my water tub to fill so I could soak my cardboard, I wandered over to see if my first year Jerusalem artichokes were ready yet. My other old neighbour has had this eternal vegetable growing in his front garden for years and I dug some up in April as seeds, a very rare piece of forward planning. Well these are knobbly and white and ready. All shapes and sizes the biggest one the size of a small broiler and it’s part of dinner tonight. My rugby dinner last night was pork steak and pepper adorned with stir fried pak Choi 🥬 and the Homebase flash sale has given me seeds of same which will be grown in the polytunnel if I ever repair the ends of it. There is nothing like fresh produce from plot to plate and I cannot desribe the pleasure of digging those monster artichokes tonight and carrying them home like some primative hunter gatherer. The plan is to boil the big one and extract the contents to make a cheese and garlic sauce to go with roast chicken. The afterburn from fartichokes is legendary. I’ve promised my local bakery a packet of them as soon as they are “really ready.” Really ready means hard frost which will bring out all the starch. When I ask them for one of the boxes they normally put my cream doughnuts in there will be puzzled looks. When the box comes back filled with artichokes they’ll understand.
I celebrate the bakery and always have I’ve known the brilliant couple who run it and employ several people for years. They nearly went under recently and wouldn’t have been the first victims of predatory power companies who hoiked their electricity bill up from £800 to £8000 overnight and it wasn’t until they were publicly shamed that they relented and found a way to slash the bill overnight again to save a thriving business which was going to the wall. The bakery is not an “artisan bakery” intentionally and it gets its deserved acclaim by quality and word of mouth. Despite supermarkets and Greggs within a stone’s throw, there is always a queue snaking out of the door and along the road. (I’m sure people walking past will always join a queue even if they don’t know what it is for luckily chezza doesn’t live around here he’d force his way to the front).
The big suprise of course was the gathering gloom. The clocks changing brings on such a change, Autumn is instant the same day. Sunset is no longer followed by immense light filled evening, but tonight before darkness took over swiftly, the sun caught a cloud and I swear I saw the fighting temaraire.
Don’t worry about the download drone words paint thousands of pictures.
There’s a horse running tonight I think at keeneland called moonlight and I think it’ll win. It’s certainly shining strongly over Lottie here after all the rain.“I’ve tried to download a photo my allotment for you to admire but the usual BBCode that works fine for on-line images doesn’t seem to work for images on my PC. Anyone know how to do it?”
Drone try
Blackbeard to conquer the World
I was just trying your link Nathan but so far, from my own pics, it just leaves a
link to the photo. I’ll keep messing about with it.I love reading through your trees/allotment tales Sam, Drone and Nathan too. It must
be great to see your hard work growing around you. Splended stuff guys.Ay Caramba !! Drone I got it to work by copying the “thumbnails for forums”.
I just clicked a random pic which was one I took at Cheltenham on Gold Cup
day 3 years ago. I better have a look to see how to increase the size.Nice one big G, hopefully as the month reaches its end I can pull together the embers of the flat and come up with a few nice selections.I’m sure you didn’t miss it but BIG GOSSEY ran at Dundalk Friday group three so it was a step up. Seventh. No entries now and the early warning system didn’t work.
I’ve just had my first good nights sleep in several days and am not coughing and sneezing and the old chest is clearing up rapidly. I’ve always been a hay fever sufferer all year round. But the atishoos were the loudest and longest I’ve had in a long old time. All from a visit to a house to turn out a compost bin full of brilliant leaf mould and house waste tea bags egg shells pure discarded compost bags the very best material for rounding off my no dig beds I’m rapidly making. My descent since Friday was rapid and breathing was crap, wheezing and at times breathless. I reckoned man-flu because although I felt lousy it was just the coughing and coughing which was a bug bear. I tested to see if Covid but I was not knocked out and only felt “ unwell “ Saturday” I was negative and it’s cleared rapidly Since yesterday when I got down to allotment management everything melted away. I’d missed all but the “dodgey”opener at Galway. So the contents of the bin had got into my windpipes and really tweaked my allergies and a 48 hour battering is what I’ve had. dragging builders bags around the plot had a clearout effect and one of them was a good 120 kilos as I’d forgotten I’d filled it up with leaves and rotting beech husks more than a few times from other bags. The “cure” looks to have come from the Artichoke sauce I made with garlic and french whole grain mustard I’m realising I forgot to grate cheese into it but it was a potent enough potion and has cleared out the clogging’s.
And it’s famous afterburner has reached the endzone and I’m sure I could “trump”out the first line of Jerusalem via the wind section.
I think I’m going to try to sow broad beans first.
When I go on after a race about what I didn’t work out before it sounds bad. I remember an old fellow in the bookies a little chinaman in a baseball cap who would always point out a big priced winner by saying 33/1 I knew that would win “fiftee to wun” did you see that? “ I New it wood win. “ I’ve no desire to be carrying the same baton as the old fella and hope my work with the draw and physics will yield results. No targets now just resolve to get back to what I’ve been good at in the past but a need to massively cut down on races and choose my battles.
As for the horse poo 💩 initiative?
Sold 31 bags x £5 + 25% gift aid.
Walked around my immediate locality and gained access to some nice flower gardens and am supplying them in buckets of cold water to the hospice shop to be made up into bouquets 💐. The good poo has dried up as the stables horses can’t meet the demand !!! Where there’s muck…. I reckon the bouquets will surpass the poo come spring when I’ll cut the spring flowers from the bulbs I’m planting this week. They must be up to double figures by now and hopefully it will raise awareness of the ridiculous mess around the flower trade in not just Britain but across the globe and how it is as messy an industry as the worst excesses of the rag trade or narcotics for that matter. But the sheer pleasure of receiving flowers from a loved one from the heart knowing they’ve come from the bread basket of land on one’s own doorstep and pollinated by bees and supporting an eco system that feeds and nourishes people in it’s immediate vicinity.
That in a roundabout sporting Sam stylee is the true definition of sustainability and greeness, not some empty politician’s rhetoric or that of a dishonest global producer who wants to be a Billionaire many times over at ANY cost. (insert the supermarket of your choice). Next time you get a bunch of flowers find out where it’s come from and what it’s journey entailed. Identify its global carbon footprint and let me know what it is. I can tell you, people in my town can do that right now and can walk to all the locations their flowers have come from!!
And the Pak Choi I mentioned earlier, it was given to me by the lovely people at the food bank. Wether it be a cake, a cuppa or a custard cream, the ladies there never let me leave without something. The aim is to take them back some Pak Choi grown in the polytunnel st the allotment next spring.Lazarus by David Bowie is my song of the day not because I’ve quickly recovered but just because I love that song. how he cut that one out in his condition is amazing and the song is a typical Bowie work of art. The instrumental towards the end works well with the jazzy crescendo. Not everyone’s cuppa but good.
“I’m free just like that bluebird.”BigG/drone
From my link click on or highlight the hot link to forums
Copy
Paste on here
You then need to delete the letters on both sides of link leaving the brackets img as the start and end.
Blackbeard to conquer the World
Success, thanks Nathan & BigG
Here’s my garden in full bloom during mid-August
Clockwise from bottom left are Echinacea (Cone Flower), Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan), Bergamot (Bee Balm), Cosmos Daisies, Borage, Dahlias, a glimpse of roses, and Marigolds
Behind are Raspberries, Runner Beans, Potatoes, Brassicas under netting and greenhouse full of Tomatoes and Peppers
Knavesmire in the background looking across approximately the 3-furlong pole. Photo was taken on a morning of the Ebor Meeting and you can just make out the ‘cherry picker’ camera sited behind the tree in the mid-distance, and stalls in the far distance
Always an absolute joy to be up there pottering, sitting, staring, ruminating, dozing, busy doing nothing
As we tenants almost universally acknowledge: we always return home in a better frame of mind than when we arrived
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for her self
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little worldAll for £60 a year for the under-60s and £30 for we over-60s: VALUE or what
More cracking essays from you Son-of-the-Soil Sam. Not keen on fartichokes myself: Jerusalem tubers are okay but the plants are too invasive; and I don’t care for the flavour of Globe though the plants that look like enormous thistles are quite attractive
I’m busy with the autumn clear-up and muck spreading. I’ve grown autumn-sown broad beans and onions, which while they do result in an earlier crop the following year do look very tatty over the winter. I agree with the farmers’ old adage that there’s nothing more satisfying than a freshly ploughed field; so I dig ‘n’ muck during backend, cut back the perennials, and admire the blank canvas until Spring – April, Come She Will – save for the beds holding the winter crops of Sprouts, Kale, Parsnips and Leeks. Hard frosts, which are something of a rarity nowadays, are needed for those to be at their best
Ah, the love, the enduring love
I’ve got a similar deal the price range seems quite uniform. It is great to have a canvas, mine is a blank one amid promise of that to come. What a wonderful sight yours is Drone. Gerry Rafferty’s garden of England springs to mind ( the simple life). A joy to behold.
I hope to be closer to there next year but for me the reshaping and redesigning of someone else’s footprint continues and although I’ve been here a few seasons I’m just six months into occupancy proper.
I met “Pete “ today well into his 80s and making a fleeting visit. He told me I was welcome to tye down the strands of his over hanging loganberries to root them. They are most delicious and bear huge fruit. His brother had the higher half but had not been in a long while due to Ill health. He probably wouldn’t be back as he was the elder!! Pete was questioning wether he’d go on or not. I said selfishly I hoped he would but offered any help I could. He pointed to an overgrown area at the base of his plot and said he’d sunk a pond in there a few years ago. He wasn’t specific about when but by the end of it, I offered to clear the overgrowth and reinstate the pond.
I really would like to do that and if we can get it going by my digging a clearing to it, the return of amphibians to the corner very close to my shed would be a fantastic feature which could only enhance my plot and those bordering.
It’s the chats we can have with each other which make trips there extra useful and although I love the solitude often, the company is welcome too. Three other bits of social intercourse in a brief visit for garden tools led to the promise of many raspberry canes and a useful bit of advice received on leaf mulching from a guy who’d teach Charles Dowdson himself s thing or two about composting and growing on layered time. And finally catching up with an old colleague and s joint lament about the surprise loss of a loved workmate the other week.
Today I realised I was wearing shorts for the third day day on the trot. Significant because it was only the third occasion this year and shorts were a uniform choice a couple or more years ago. Hadn’t been regularly in shorts since pre pandemic. ( the latest thing to blame on the virus) It coincides with me opting to take as much of my current wardrobe to an artist recycling clothes tomorrow. Julia peculia is doing something akin to me with the manure and flowers with her clothing project she is trying to make an impact provoke thought by acting and thinking out of the groove.
Even charity shop clothes fail to have an end use if not sold and some of those pretending to clear up the excess can have this “clear up” traced to landfill site in the third world. Julia reconstitutes and remodels everything she takes on into clothing or other there is very little waste and she was suprised at what I knew about the top end of the rag trade and lengths importers and leading brand names go to to protect intellectual property rights, which in itself facilitates a black market in fake goods. It’s little wonder so much stuff is buried on beaches out of bounds to tourists.I take my hat of to you Sam and Drone, I wish I could put in that kind
of work (or pleasure) to achieve the brilliant results you get. That is
a beautiful photo Drone, your hard work has more than paid off. I’m
definitely not of that ilk, I wish I was but it cheers me no end to hear
how you guys are getting on.I’m glad you are feeling a bit better now Sam, that sounds like a terrible
allergy or infection you got from the mould spores, quite frightning what it
can do. No wonder there are so many kids ill when you see the state of some
council or rented houses with black mould on the ceiling and the walls. The
government should step in and make these councils and owner renters sort it
out or get heavily fined and forced to deal with it.I’ve noted your info on downloading from the photo site Nathan, I’ll be using that
next time. Thanks mate I wrote a novel and managed to leave out all that happened yesterday.
First person I met on my way down to my job of the day was a young lady starting her first job as a gardener on the corner of my street. I was surprised to see her in this capacity and she said she’d enrolled at the horticultural college Otley and completed a diploma. I wished her well and told her to pop her card through my door and I’d pass on some work if any came to light.
I pass a house (flat) on way down to the sea each day and stopped on a few occasions to chat with the residents there. Flat two in a three story flat a skyscraper by local standards. There are only two or three tower blocks in the entire town. So few when itv filmed a crime drama here they had to cgi in some tower blocks.
Number two have taken ownership of the garden a patio where someone removed a slab or two to create a tiny bed many years ago. A huge fuschia bush dominated this bed and the Squadron Leader (ret)and his wife have planted neryn lilies and a small herb garden in containers. I offered last week to trim down to size the fuschia for them and open up the postage stamp of a bed they had. All the fuschias growth was on extremely woody stems which were whizened and when cut back there’d but nothing left of this dominant shrub I wouldn’t call it a tree but Sam the tree killer knew what was needed here!!!
Strangled by deep rooted nettles and a huge bank of invasive garlic bulbs growing everywhere what had seemed a simple one hour prune became a three hour battle to remove the entire plant my original deal to have half of the neryns in payment expanded from one builders bag filled to three and my visit to the allotment was actually to pick up builders bags and tools the dependable short handled wood looper the main weapon. The squadron leaders wife was a brilliant cook and promises of Thai dinners abounded along with tales of an exiting life flying from station to station around the globe before settling at Cranbrook and assuming control there before becoming head honcho of the uniformed forces security at Wimbledon for several years. I wondered if I’d bumped into him at Steffi vs Gabbi years back as he was convinced he’d met me before and he “didn’t forget a face”.
The deal was redone to include a generous donation to the hospice totalling a bakers dozen of poo 💩 bags in equivalent, again gift aided.
I’ve never removed so many garlic bulbs but they are under all the patio slabs and filled half a builders bag. Copious mugs of tea were consumed as little jobs became an epic tussle as they often do and a lady came from across the road and asked if I’d take a look at her garden as she had a “ small Weeding job needing doing” I politely refused saying I did only a few gardens & I was “otherwise engaged with projects” but I could get her the number of the lady I’d met earlier, when I went home at lunchtime as she was putting her details through my letter box. Well the details never came through the door and she obviously didn’t need the work! So on return I reluctantly agreed to take a look (what harm can taking a look do?) my first task of the day had actually been to go to a friends Dads house to collect some drain pipes and guttering for Lottie. My mates Dad Henry a man I’d met and befriended at work in 82 had passed on recently leaving a widow behind. I arrived at Henry’s with an empty van. Running late. clive the son showed me round the garden. Vines of grape and clematis and fern were everywhere and every shrub known to man. “You’ll have to come back and take some cuttings and there’s loads of things like water butts and trays” he said. That is why I try to not take onjobs when asked, I’ve a world of allotment stuff to do. Henry’s wife said “hello you’ll have a drink”. Rule one of gardening always stop and yarn. rule two: never turn down a brew!!!
We were joined in the kitchen by mike the family gardener a Londoner with a wicked sense of wit. “ sam nice to meet you, I’ve heard all about you. Have you finished with my builders bags yet? “ your builders bags? “Yes my bloody builders bags you’ve hoiked them from Barbara’s garden I’m her gardener.” Barbara was Clive’s mother in law and her garden was around the corner from where I was working yesterday and is my main source of beautiful leaves and yes I’d purloined an additional two builders bags and they currently sit on the allotment filed with wood logs awaiting chipping by machine. Bags are a better commodity than money and I accumulate them and pass them in accordingly. “ Just make sure you put two bags in next time you go there you thieving bloody rascal!” Barbara’s late Husband mike had been my boss all those years ago and if I’m a son of the soil, he was a son of the sea, a fisherman, golfer and a bloody good bloke. A man I loved dearly who I’d sailed up the deben with in his boat on a team day out in 85.in remarkable circumstances we’d set again in a patrol launch around Jos van dyke in the British Virgin Islands about five years later. Thirty years or so later his daughter and clive steered the same family boat with me and my family onboard from the local ferry hamlet back up the deben. Arthur Ransome who built his boats a few miles away on the delta of rivers we have here on the approach to Ipswich on the Orwell at pin mill had nothing on this.I’m lucky to be relatively “young” a sixties child working on the cusp with a generation of old schoolers people who’d come through the war who’d embarked on peacetime careers and who were in the autumn of life. Mike was a younger one the generation that followed the war, well a wartime teenager. All of that old school had the same ethic, work hard play hard, rinse and repeat. I got the play hard bit, but as a maverick I occasionally worked hard but struggled with the idea of authority and paperwork so when the concept of “team working “ came in I thrived again. We were never far away from a good “play”.
A coffee and five good biscuits later I was in my way and set sail for the allotment en route to meet the old fella on the adjoining plot. I went back to see the lady across from the flat and in the darkness agreed to the job which is going to require much more muscle not a little landscaping ( just a little weeding she said) that’ll be it for the year as I will only work to two people, so she is lucky or put it better I am lucky. Two clients, thats all I want now.Today having told all friends that walked by and a few more besides yesterday there will be bouquets available at the shop today as I’m visiting a big garden up the road this morning gathering in the main Dahlias and lots of them. They should be in the shop and on display by the afternoon.
My good lady completes a mentionworthy swimming feat this morning she’s swum every day this month in a “dip a day”challenge. I’ve been in the sea a couple times in support but I’ve told here before I’d have webbed feet if I was intended to be a bloody swimmer. But I might join her briefly again then it’s off to the tip with the squadron leader.
Today a tricast or just another good priced winner like yesterday. I got a taste for going racing again after the Cambridgeshire and seeing Vandeek helped land Ballymount boy on Saturday. He got caught in a bad pocket so was two lengths the better for his win. I won’t get any tricasts today but I will land four winners.
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