General Chat

You m ay be ok if you plant rhubarb in a half barrel but remember it is very long rooted and you're not suppose to pick it he first year to let the plant get established. Why not pop it in a corner of your garden? It will need a nice lot of compost or horse exhust.

We had some wonderful rhubarb when we were doing the top garden. I had one that had lovely thich red stalks and I know we had one called Champagne and a Victria and Timberly early. It may have been the Champagne one that was really red all the way up to the leaves.

BIL popped in but did'nt stay he just came to pick up the strimmer. Its been bitterly cold here today not a day when you want to be outside for long and I have filled the birds feeders up twice today and when BIL was here we had the little Goldcrest feeding under the bird feeder picking up all the crumbs from the fat sticks.

Old school cake is just a tray baked sponge cake with icing on top and lots of sprinkles on the icing ,we had it served with custard at school and I think the icing was pink but I did just white icing on mine ,there were two pieces I couldn't get in the tub so we had them for pud .

Ann OH is usually so busy with paperwork and going to meetings etc so it must be strange for him to just have to take it easy and not do as much , it's probably the shock of what happened too, you can't go through all that and get over it in a few weeks

Vera I'd give the rhubarb a go In the big tub ,is there anyone you know who can give you a piece of their plant then you won't have lost anything if it doesn't work but I don't see why it shouldn't.

Ooops! I missed your post Vera.

I think Rhubarb would be ok in a pot or your half barrel with some good compost. The barrel might be best though as it can grow big, but then again, you could keep it smaller as long as there is enough for what you need. It's worth trying. The stuff I have for verrucas says it can take months too, so I hope it is quicker like yours was. OH did seem a bit down today I thought, which isn't surprising with all that's happened. It will help if he can get the tooth extracted next week and then get the blood test results. He had a nap this afternoon which was good for him to catch up on some sleep and has a football match on tv to watch tonight. It's good your daughter has no financial worries on top of losing her partner, as that is difficult enough for anyone. I think we are due rain tomorrow.

Have you looked to see whether 'airplane mode' is switched on AnnG? If you click on the battery or wifi symbols on the bottom bar at the right hand side it will show and you can switch it off if it is on. That can switch your wifi off. I wonder why GR is timing out though.

Mandy I have never heard of Old School Cake. What is in it? The Apple cake sounds nice. You must have been expecting to do a lot of knitting and crochet in your dream to get all those bags of wool! We managed to park in a patient's space today with being there early, so no parking charge today. When we went to the surgery, then eye clinic the other day the parking plus two packs of sandwiches and one bottle of water cost over £17.

Brrr, it’s a cold day. It hasn’t got above 3 degrees all day and feels a lot, lot colder. There’s a bitter north-east wind and it has rained on and off all day. As I was driving to the chiropodist this morning it was heavy, sleety rain. Not a day to be outside.

You have to wonder where these verrucas come from Annx. I had one a while ago and had no idea where it could have come from. The stuff I had to put on it said it could take months to clear but mine only took about 3 weeks. It’s good your OH was seen quickly this morning. I hope he gets the results of his blood tests quickly too so any necessary treatment can be started. Feeling unwell and being in pain does drag you down and he must be fed up with it now. You asked if my daughter is retired now. She took early retirement last July so that she could look after her partner and spend with him what little time was left. She had to take a bit of a drop in her occupational pension and she can’t get her state pension for a few years yet but she has more than enough to live on.

You and Mandy have both had odd dreams AnnG. It’s strange how real some dreams can seem. I often wake up knowing I have just been dreaming but not remembering anything about it which is very frustrating. It sounds as though you are getting a bit frustrated with your wi-fi. I wouldn’t have thought it could be affected by others working from home. I haven’t had it with the computer but have occasionally found it’s gone off on the iPad. I hope you can get it sorted soon.

Can I come to tea please Mandy? I like apple cake – or anything with apples – but I haven’t come across Old School Cake before. Is it nice?

While I remember to ask, do you ladies think I could grow rhubarb in a large pot or a half barrel? I grew it in the ground at our old house and am not sure how it would do in a pot. I had some tinned rhubarb yesterday and it was absolutely tasteless. Even OH said that if he had been blindfolded he wouldn’t have known what he was eating.

I am going to do a bit of filing now and then go and make a hot drink. I haven’t got any heating on upstairs in this room. My body’s not too bad as I’ve got a big fluffy dressing gown on over my clothes but my hands are going numb. I’ve got a big beef casserole in the oven so I’m looking forward to that in a couple of hours and I’ve made enough for 2 days so tomorrow will be easy as I’ll just have to reheat it on the hob.

Stay warm and cosy folks.

Wool on your mind Mandy. I am surprised my dreams have not been dominated by computers.
Cakes sound nice. I had a nice piece of cake yesreday, Cynth’s birthday sponge. It was gluten free for the benefit of her friend who was staying but I would not have known any different it was very nice.

I just typed a long reply and was halfway through saving it before posting when GR timed out. It has been doing that recently for me, not sure why. That is the trouble with a new PC I don’t know if things are set up as I had them before and don’t know what affects what.
One thing I had to do just now, I had a paper jam on my printer and had to remove the back to free the paper. Not had to do that before.

Ann, I had checked that my wifi was connected ok so went into settings on my PC and found that Wifi was not showing as connected. I don’t know how that can have happened as it was ok last night before I shut down. Anyway I slicked it to on. But it still didn’t come on, so I turned it all off at the plug, turned the power off, left it five minutes then turned it all back on and it was ok. But then it did play up saying across the tim ‘there is a problem, trying to connect’. This made me wonder if people working from home can affect my Wifi power. I have at least two houses close to me where they work from home. I wonder if they are on a Zoom meeting or are dowloading stuff if it affects the Wifi.

Afternoon all,
No frost this morning but it feels really cold in the wind ,no sign of any sun ,it is very cloudy and looks more like rain .

I made the cakes for the family this morning ,Apple cake and Old School Cake so that will fo them for the weekend.

Ann I hope you managed to park OK for OH's blood test today ,I suppose it will be a few days before he gets the results .

Any more brown eggs Mel .

Anng these dreams seem so real at the time don't they ,I was dreaming that someone asked if I would like some wool as they had a shop that was closing down and when they dropped it off there was bags and bags of if and jumpers all bagged up in clear plastic bags .

Afternoon All,

A chilly start this morning and now the wind's got up a bit as well.

It was just blood tests this morning Mel. The physio won't touch him at the moment. There were a few parking spaces at the surgery with us being so early. We set off early, as yesterday we saw there was a queue on the road to the surgery and thought there may be roadworks. There weren't any and it worked out well as OH was in and out in a few minutes, so he may have been seen before anyone else as he was there. The parking spaces are very narrow, but we went in my car, as I find it harder to judge the width of OH's car until I've driven it more. OH finds my heavy doors harder to open though and it is less easy for him to get in and out with his bad back and neck with the low roof. I ought to consider changing my car, but was hoping not to yet as it is very low mileage and I wouldn't know what to get anyway.

I've shredded some papers I've decided I don't need to keep and will do some more tomorrow and have cleaned the ensuite and hoovered the lounge and porch and dusted them as well. We can't always read each other's notes, so need to type up some of the important stuff to access certain things for each other if needs be. It makes you think with all this fingerprint and face ID, how could someone else access your PC or phone if they needed to and you weren't with them.

That was an odd dream AnnG, but it's good you cleared some more CDs and got some more books to read. It sounds like you may have to ring Dom to sort out your PC. It sounds as if the PC isn't connected to wifi now for some reason.

I walked down to Irenes with a load of CDs and also went to post a letter. It is book weekend so stopped off there and got a few books. I was glad to get back indoors though as there is an east wind, temp is5 degrees but it feels a whole lot colder my hands were frozen.

Good morning all slept quite well last night. Really strange waking up though. I 'woke up' and there was a lot of noise like a noisy room, looked at the bedside clock it was 9am. I thought gosh, unusually late to wake up. closed my eyes for a snooze, woke up and it was 6am and what went before was a dream.

Just had a fight with the WFi I am hoping Dom has not disturbed it with all the getting the printer on WiFi etc on Tuesday, although it has been ok since and it was ok on the Ipad this morning. anyway, went into settings and it was turned off (strange), turned it on, still no wifi, turned everything off and on again and Wifi is on!!!! But at the moment still can't get google. So no mail or facebook. Happy days!! :-S

Morning girls,

There was a heavy frost last night but when I got up this morning it had all gone. I was up at 7.55am for the loo and I had slept right through from 1.30am. It must have been that huge dinner I cooked for Stu and I last night.

I wonder if BIL will come today?

Hope you all slept well last night too and are bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning.

Hope the blood tests and physio go off ok today and that you can get a good parking spot.

Evening All,

A sharp frost here this morning and I noticed a favourite red pot I have had for years is broken now, so that will have to be dumped. Thanks for the pics of your snowdrops and crocus Mel. You have quite a carpet of them here and there. Do they get mowed once they have flowered or do you leave them for a while? How nice to spot a brown egg today from one of the old girls! Hope you enjoy your meal tonight with Stu. It's good you have some company.

Sorry you had a bad night AnnG. That feeling weird mat have been a bit of underlying anxiety due to the pc and windows change. I'm glad you felt ok later. I had the opportunity and think I did a purge of my files before I changed to W11, but you will soon get there.

Well done getting the doll finished Mandy and I see you have been changing to crochet now and doing a 'floppy' rabbit.

I hope your BP readings will be good Gwyn now things are calmer at home! OH has to have daily ones done at the moment too and his are are always higher at the surgery.

Vera, he always sends me more than one card too, same with Christmas and my Birthday! I've never had a love letter from him, although he did used to write to me when he stayed away at hotels on courses with his job. Yes, your daughter doesn't want to take too much on just yet. Is she retired now?

We are back at the surgery tomorrow for OH's blood tests the physio wants. We were at the pharmacy today to collect tablets he was running out of and I asked if they would check if a sore spot on my foot is a corn or verrucca as it is behind a little toe and I can't contort myself to see it properly. They confirmed it is a Verrucca and I have some stuff to treat it with. The only place I can have picked it up is at the surgery when I had to undress a few months ago and was barefoot on their floor. :-S

I have done a bit on the PC but tried to not overdo it. The long job is going to be checking all the word files and deleting the ones that are corrupted. I am just very tired now but otherwise feel ok.
Yes I thought that about BP when I had to do it. They are very trusting. I suppose it would be us who suffered if we gave made up readings if something was wrong.
I don’t think my Hellebores are as good as usual. Some of the flowers are muddy fall the rain we had.

Vera, The same thought occured to me. I could just write down the figures which I think they'd want to see, but that would be foolish of course, because high blood pressure can be very serious, so I will be truthful.
This is a follow up to my annual review, when my 'in the surgery' blood pressure was just a little high. They want readings for a few days to see that everything is generally OK.I will take them into the surgery next week and they will contact me if they want to discuss the results.
The same thing happened last year, so in fact the nurse doing the checks said I was to take recent readings with me, the next time I have a review ;-)

It sounds as though you have a job on your hands sorting out your docs AnnG. Wait until you have had a good night’s sleep and feel a bit better before you tackle it. Give yourself a rest today.

Mel, the snowdrops are lovely and the crocus look so cheerful. I was pleased a couple of weeks ago to see our two little patches of snowdrops are in bloom. We bought them at Anglesey Abbey last February so this is their first year of blooming here. We have 3 patches of winter aconites in bloom and, being bright yellow, they always look sunny. My few hellebores are in bloom as well but don’t look quite as good as usual. Enjoy your dinner with Stu tonight. It’s good your “old lady” has laid you a nice brown egg.

Gwyn, I hope your blood pressure is at an acceptable level now your family birthdays etc are over. Do you have to take the bp readings to your surgery? Every so often my surgery send me an online form by email, I do a few readings and email it back. They then contact me if they are not happy with my bp levels. It does make me laugh a bit because I could fill in anything on the form and they wouldn’t know if they are genuine readings or not.

Mandy, you should set up a little hand made toy shop. I am sure you would make plenty of sales but you would need to be on hand all the time in case your light-fingered lady popped in. I usually cook my meat quite thoroughly but if I am out I don’t mind roast beef or lamb being just a little bit pink as long as it isn’t bloody. I couldn’t cope with that.

I hope your OH is improving daily Annx. I had to laugh at him worrying about Valentine’s cards as this is where our 2 men do differ. Mine wouldn’t know what a Valentine’s card is if it jumped up and bit him on the nose. I’ve only ever had 1 from him. That was when we were engaged and I am still convinced that his mother sent it. Strangely enough, he always buys me a beautiful Christmas card.

I spoke to my daughter yesterday and she is doing well though she said she has days when she gets up and can’t seem to do anything. I know some of you ladies who have lost your partners will understand that. However, she has had a walk with a small village walking group she has joined and enjoyed that. She also went along to a meeting where they were asking for volunteers to help in a small local garden. She was happy to spend a couple of hours a week doing some weeding, planting etc. However, once they found out the sort of person she is and the job she did they asked her to become a trustee and set them up with a 5 or 10 year development plan and an educational programme for local primary schools. I’ve told her not to take on anything at the moment that is going to put pressure on her. All she has agreed so far is that she will go along to the AGM at the end of the month and see what it’s all about.

It was very frosty and foggy first thing but did brighten up later and we had some sun. We went to our Thursday coffee meet – 7 of us today. It’s starting to cool down again now and is getting quite gloomy so I must go and put some letters in the post box before it gets really dark.

Looking through the documents saved it is not as good as it first appeared. Many of the docs are corrupted so they will need to be checked and deleted if they are no good. Looking at them though it is not a big problem as much of the saved stuff is out of date anyway so I need to do new docs. Going to take a while though.

I'm like you Gwyn my meat has to be well cooked ,a lot of places have pink beef and I just can't tackle that .

Lovely to see your garden Mel with its carpet of snowdrops ,I always think its a shame the little heads of the Snowdrop hang down and you can't see how pretty they are .

Well so much for having a dust, hoover and making a cake, got a bit side tracked with the knitted doll ,but she's all finished now and I'm now crocheting a floppy rabbit ,only the body /head ,feet and hands are stuffed the legs and arms left to make it floppy, all done with oddments so nice and colourful.

Thanks for the photos Mel.
Lovely! So many snowdrops and lovely crocus. I love the inside of the snowdrops, so pretty

Its gone this time. Enjoy. The pics with the snowdrops on my hand are my double ones and there not so many of those in the orchard.

It was a very large doe and I think it may have been carrying a lot of kits. Its now over the back field waiting to be collected by a passing bird.

Just tried to send some pics but I keep getting a message up saying we are experiencing problem. I had all your email addresses up and all the pictures on it it came up again and I lost the lot so I have to try again.

I also have my hellebores all out in flower.