Gardening for kno bends.

[steve_earwig]

Just a quick follow up on this one for a bit of a giggle. Instead of telling them her husband's a bit of a tit, my wife's been telling anyone who's noticed the onions growing up amongst the flowers that it's an English idea to keep down the flies - flies being a bit of a problem here because of the amount of people who keep livestock behind their houses. The thing is loads of people have been complaining how the flies have been worse than ever this year but we've had hardly any Not even enough to bother hanging up any fly paper. The fun will start next year when we'll see who else has onions coming up n their flowerbeds

The bad news is due to my back I've not been up to keeping everything watered, so me onions went straight to see. I have had all the seed heads off them though, they're hanging up drying in the shed

[omega]

the best animal for the garden is a............goat
honest iam not kidding
it will eat anything ,you can have milk and cheese ,the kids wil love it,and as long as you hobble it it wont go far.

[Doggy]

it's an English idea to keep down the flies...... The fun will start next year when we'll see who else has onions coming up n their flowerbeds

[FarmerPug]

the best animal for the garden is a............goat
honest iam not kidding
it will eat anything ,you can have milk and cheese ,the kids wil love it,and as long as you hobble it it wont go far.

they really will eat anything, ive seen a goat manage to rip open and eat a box of cigarettes, dont turn your back on a goat they seem to enjoy using their horns and pushing people over.
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[steve_earwig]

A goat eating a packet of fags doesn't surprise me at all. Neither would it eating the fag lighter and then moving on to the jacket that it got them out of.

the best animal for the garden is a............goat
honest iam not kidding
it will eat anything ,you can have milk and cheese ,the kids wil love it,and as long as you hobble it it wont go far.

Would this be hobble as in what happened in Misery with the block of wood and a sledge hammer? A mate of mine got a goat for similar reasons, although he thought it would be good to use it as a lawn mower. Obviously he didn't know about the hobbling bit because he got quite upset when it jumped on his car...

Elsewhere in the garden... (If you're not into anything green you might want to look away now)

Tomatoes - Along with 40 of variety X (they did pretty good a few years back but I couldn't remember the variety so I kept seeds) I grew 10 each of 5 other varieties (Volovsko Hearts, American Earlies, Italian plums and couple of others). The other varieties started ripening early but seemed much more prone to disease and variety X produced more fruit over a longer period so I'm keeping seeds from the best 3 plants.


But I wanted meat

Elsewhere we've had more cukes than we know what to do with and I couldn't keep up with the courgettes so we ended up with a fine crop of nuclear submarines

This year's guest fruit was:

Watermellons.
Did they taste ok? Oh yes.
Was it worth all the effort? Er, not at the price of them in the shops.
Will I grow them again? Fook that.

Other than that, between the dry hot weather and my back the weeds have won this year. However I did manage to turn the small bag of shallots I bought when I was in the UK into a sodding big bag (they don't exist here) and will be planting them in the autumn (if my back's up to it).

Saving the best 'til last, while I was out with the hose pipe earlier something I watered moved;







Give us a kiss darlin'

Not the biggest I've seen since I've been here but the only one I've seen this summer Still, looks like a big, fat female so hopefully she's looking for somewhere here to lay her eggs

[Welly]

Funny about the Onions, looks like they do work then eh?

Great close up of the insect kinda looks like a Ninja

[steve_earwig]

Insect? That's a praying mantis! You know, the one that grabs other insects in it's spiky front legs and eats them from the head down and the female rips the male's head off during sex and then eats the rest of him for afters. The first one I saw was in the US, it was only about an inch long and I was quite disappointed. They're a bit bigger here though Insect

[highlander]

Mantodea (or mantises) is an order of insects that contains approximately 2,200 species in 15 families[1] worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats

Nasty little buggers though. I didn't know about the "eating from the head down" bit but I did know about the "female getting extreme with the BDSM during reproduction" thing.

Black Widow spider females often eat their partners after mating. Didn't he do a good enough job? No pleasing some spiders, eh.

[steve_earwig]

It's also an invertebrate.

It's like rolling up at work in a brand new Aston Martin One-77 and being asked if you've got a new "car"

I wonder if my nephew has the traditional tank of undernourished stick insects at school - here Robbie, shove one of these in with them...

[Welly]

Oops, bit embarrassed now, I have to admit I thought it was a Praying-doo-dad but didn't want to cause alarm so opted for the, now pathetic sounding, 'insect' not wanting to dull-down your find there steve you understand

[steve_earwig]

Nah, it's my fault really, I should have said but I was so chuffed about finding it and managing to get some decent snaps I forgot that nobody can read my mind again My lovely wife thought it was a grasshopper (err...) but then she ran away waiving her arms yesterday because she saw one of the big spotty slugs we get here and though it was a snake - bluddy townie

[FarmerPug]

Mantodea (or mantises) is an order of insects that contains approximately 2,200 species in 15 families[1] worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats

Nasty little buggers though. I didn't know about the "eating from the head down" bit but I did know about the "female getting extreme with the BDSM during reproduction" thing.

Black Widow spider females often eat their partners after mating. Didn't he do a good enough job? No pleasing some spiders, eh.

that reminds me of something i seen the other night:
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