and today i have mostly been...

[steve_earwig]

...clearing up all the damage

Yesterday evening we had a thunderstorm with possible hail forecast, so not having anywhere else to put them I stuck both yoyos under the walnut tree with blankets over them.


There wasn't any hail but it was pretty stormy last night and this morning I went out to survey the damage. The first thing I saw was the wind had blown a load more ridge tiles off the firehouse

(this is where the yoyo is usually parked)



Damn cheapskate bastards with their cowboy roofers

But then I noticed that it had actually blown tiles off quite a few roofs


I also found a fair bit of damage in the garden, 7 horizontal tomatoes and quite a few sunflowers down:




At least it wasn't as bad as what happened to our neighbour's toms:


So I went about removing felled sunflowers and tieing the toms to new sticks. Ah well, it could've been worse.

So this afternoon the weather decided to take a second run at us. The yoyos went back under the walnut and, being daylight still, me and me bro (who's over this week) were watching it out the loft windows front and back. FAAAARK! The wind was mental, loud thunder all around and torrential rain. I was wondering if the walnut was going to fall over or just beat the yoyos to death with it's lower branches. One of our plums went down, flattening one of my flower beds and ripping a kiwi off the wall. Then the tiles started to blow off the barn I was quite relieved when it ended.





Back up the garden and there were more toms down, plus almost all of the sunflowers


More of my mirabilis bed


My bro raking all the apples that the wind knocked off the tree up after the flood subsided.



And today's word is "arse"

[Doggy]

We don't get weather like that, thank god. [/Michael Fish]

What a mess, but I guess it could've been worse looking at the damage to those buildings and realising a few more/bigger bits could have come off.

Hope that's the end of it and you get cleared up without any more grief.

[GingerMagic]

Today, I have mostly been.....

Kicking myself for getting my first parking ticket in about 20 years, pfft. I dropped the missus off to get her eyes tested ( so she can maybe see all the shyte in the house and tidy it up...) and then off to Poole Park with the kids for a mini picnic and a go on the swings etc. In my haste to sort the kids out and have a wee, I failed to notice the clear* and obvious* signage stating the area I parked in was restricted to 1 hour only - since when..!!

So I'm soon to be £25 out of pocket cos I'm too tight to pay £1.50 to park in a less convenient space...

Muppet.

[steve_earwig]

Quiet in here, innit? How dare you all have lives

So, anyway, yes, the old yoyo is now in the garage up at my gaff and will shortly be joined by my Pug (as the barn no longer has much of a roof that end). It's a nuisance because now I'll have to arrange help to get them back here so I can work on them or whatever but the weather just now really has me worried. Fortunately I've only recently managed to get twife to look into planning permissions etc. for rebuilding or replacing the barn as it's falling to pieces anyway. I was worried that I couldn't touch it because of it's age but it's looking like we can replace it with anything we like, providing it's the same size (5.5m x 9.5m).

Meanwhile, in casa d'el gateaux, I'm still feeding up Teatime and the kittens are in the house.

I'll post a pic of Teatime, I know he's a bit of a nightmare but he really is a gentle cat, in all the prodding, poking and injections he's had he's never scratched or bitten anyone, which is a marked contrast to our other cats who have all made me bleed at one point or another. It makes me sad to think such a nice cat has had such a hard life.

You are worthless and weak, puny human.

The kittens now have names. I was thinking about Banjo and Medium Dave but we weren't sure of the gender of the grey one as it's very timid, so I was holding off until we could get it to the vet's for a gender check, Unfortunatly twife isn't so patient and decided to call the grey & white one Charlie. Bleurgh. Charlie what? I told her that if she called him that and the other turned out to be female she'd be Camilla.

She's female.

Charlie:


Camilla:


Doing a queen impression


She's still very nervous of us, not actually frightened and hiding all the time but really doesn't like being touched.

[OllieNZ]

No life, just work.....
Are you a Terry Pratchett fan by any chance?

[steve_earwig]

Possibly

[OllieNZ]

Possibly

It's a pity we'll never see any more of his tales

[PhillipM]

Hah, I've a little grey/silver cat just like her - she's incredibly timid, quiet, keeps an eye on everything and has never grown much - she's 4 years old now and still looks like a kitten, her brother is twice the size and four times the weight
Must be something with that colour fur!

[steve_earwig]

Oddly enough, she's been coming indoors a couple of days but I've been leaving here alone for the most part, just reaching out a hand slowly and maybe a little scratch on her head now and then but this afternoon she was with her brother on a chair, I was tickling him so I gave her a little tickle too and she didn't run off straight away. Later I did it again and she started purring. Breakthrough They spent about an hour sitting on me this evening

I have one tabby female (Billy) that's never liked being touched or picked up, tickles accepted only on her terms in a place she picks. Then it's a completely different story, rolling on her back purring her head off. She loves a brush too.

It's a pity we'll never see any more of his tales

It is indeed (mind you, the last couple were a bit naff, but then he wasn't writing them alone.)

[Welly]

Sorry to see the OMGGARDENCHAOS mate, you must be pissed off about it. It's something that's likely to happen at some point but extremely unwelcome when it does. Hopefully you'll salvage and repair most of it, the Garden looks massive I bet you can spend hours on end pottering about tending to things.

Can I ask why you grow Sunflowers? we used to grow one or two but they often suffered wind damage.

Good call on moving the motors, can you not use the photos of the debris and wave them at the Fire House people? they have a duty of care and all that. The bloody thing needs re-roofing.

[steve_earwig]

It was re-roofed 2 years ago The fire service here is kind of a charity, they're all volunteers who work for nothing. I think they get some handouts from the goverment but they also pass the hat and sometimes rent out the big hall upstairs for parties etc. All the work seems to be done by the firemen or their own firms but kind of on the cheap, so none of it's done well. Presenting them with a bill for damage is likely to be pointless.

Well, sh*t happens I guess. It does seem to be getting a lot more windy here though, after all the trees got blown down a couple of years back lots of trees that were still standing were cut down in case it happens again, I guess I should get rid of the walnut but it's an amazing tree.

There are 3 plums in the garden, none of them particularly healthy but that one was holding up the washing line so it was the only one I was hoping to keep. The other 2 survived of course.

Sunflowers are self-set from some our neighbours had further up a few years back. They've reverted so they have lots of smaller flowers which look good on the table, the seeds attract birds which also take insects from other plants and they provide a modicum of shade. I guess having them near the toms was a mistake but they didn't knock many over, the wind did worse.

It looks like all the tomato plants survived with only a few toms knocked off here and there. The flowers in the border are there to attract moths really, nobody can see them behind the house and the moths don't care if they're vertical or horizontal. Rebuilding the barn was in the pipeline, it'll just move things forward a bit.

So I guess really we got off lightly, the house is ok, the cars are fine, some of my lawnmowers got a bit wet but I don't suppose they'll mind.

[Captain Jack]

Nice toms! Reminds me of the ones my grandparents used to grow in Russia. Obviously, they look too "mutated" to be on sale in the UK... And they taste like actual tomatoes! Not some watered down mush.

That's a really sad picture of Teatime. What's up with the left eye? Can it be fixed?

[Welly]

You're right Cap'n Tomatoes are supposed to be delicious and are so when not meddled with and grown in clean* environments under artificial light.

And don't get me started on UK Supermarket Carrots

carry on......

[Captain Jack]

Or any other fruit and veg in UK. I think I'll start growing some veggies once I move...

[steve_earwig]

Nice toms! Reminds me of the ones my grandparents used to grow in Russia. Obviously, they look too "mutated" to be on sale in the UK... And they taste like actual tomatoes! Not some watered down mush.

Thanks! I'm rather pleased with them They're probably some of the same varieties your grandparents grew - those in the pic are volovsko srce - "ox hearts". Yep, they're red all the way through, not just on the surface (which I suspect is when they've been picked green and ripened* by chemicals) and as sweet as.

That's a really sad picture of Teatime. What's up with the left eye? Can it be fixed?

Sad? I was thinking how good he looked in it, I've only been feeding him for about 3 weeks but I can already see he's putting on weight. Obviously not as much as he needs to but definitely no longer a bag of bones. Left eye has been badly damaged (cat fight? Stupid neighbour with air rifle?) and beyond any chance of saving it's sight. The vet is hoping it will stabilise and she can avoid removing it, which is apparently extremely painful for weeks after (it's not like you can stick him on morphine...). He doesn't actually seem to be in any discomfort from it, I can even touch it without him reacting. I do have to remember to look at his right eye for his expressions as the left isn't giving anything away.