Off topic - garden

Ride on mower.....flash git!!

 

I know! I was dead against it myself but the head gardener insisted.

 

My cats buried in my garden.

 

On the pond theme i dug one out at the bottom of our garden over last summer and this spring. The spot is on a direct line between some prehistoric ruins on the top of the hill behind us and the gap in the hills in the other direction which gives a view of the sea at Inch. There's also a standing stone in the next field.
I had all sorts of dreams of uncovering an ancient burial site as i dug down.
I actually found some bits of old willow pattern plates and a couple of pepto bismol bottle caps.
Gutted!

 

a friend when her beloved Alastian died had a lead lined coffin made for him and he was buried in her back garden.
She's now moved on - doubt if the new householders are aware of the coffin buried in their garden.....

 

You were lucky it wasn't an RAF 'present' from the WW2 era!. I was born in Hornchurch and my parents first house which they bought only a couple of years after the war was only a few hundred metres from the Hornchurch Aerodrome fighter station. All sorts of Ordnance was dropped and every time my dad or our neighbours hit metal when digging in the garden, they got a bit nervous. That particularly applied to the nearby allotment owners as they kept digging stuff up, albeit as far as I can remember nothing 'live' was found mostly spent cartridges and stuff from the anti aircraft stations based around the perimeter of the RAF station. I would not be surprised in the slightest though if there is some dodgy stuff still lurking beneath the surface given the proximity to the Thames and the docks.

EDIT... just seen this:

https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/police-evacuate-homes-hornchurch-after-4249359

 

I was once at Carleton Lanes Shopping Centre and a guy had an exhibtion stall with old bombs and shells from WW2. I said to brother in law that "an idiot was on Calendar news earlier in the week talking through how he collected shells and cleaned them up. He only went and blew his arm off". A bloke tapped me on the shoulder and said "that's me". I went bright red and apologised.

 

Excellent reply

 

I'm a member of a group that tries to fill the WW1 stories in for people who had relatives in WW1 but don't know much about them...we had one the other week where a chap had dug up a WW1 medal in his in his garden...the original owner, named on the medal, had a very interesting wartime history but no obvious connections to the area where it was found until I managed to locate some old electoral records that showed he had lived at the address for four years in the early 1930's. I know its not much of a find in itself...but an interesting piece of history.

 

I'm surprised he admitted to it!!

 

I grew up in Pontefract and the house we lived in had a soldier lodging there during the Second World War. The previous tenants had a soldier make contact with them and told my parents about it when they moved in.

 

The one arm gave him away.

 

I have to do all the heavy gardening stuff using a petrol mower, strimming, digging up spuds tree pruning etc etc... I said to her " if the garden was just a bit bigger I could justify getting a 'ride on' mower".

Her response was.." What for? I already have one" Cheeky mare!. My reply to that was ... "Then why don't you ..ahem...use it more often?"

 

Adds a whole new meaning to 'disarming' a bomb

 

I'm more impressed that he has his garden carpeted

 

The left side of our lawn is heavily shaded in winter so its a constant battle. So we do a 4 in 1 weed and feed in early spring and late autumn and use a fork to aerate the mossy area. If its particularly bad we'll use a rake and that often gets some of it up. Its also quite clay based, so we put a good amount of sharp sand down every other year.

This year though, we put up a bird box for the first time and a pair of blue tits nested (sadly none of the chicks survived as they nested too late and natural food just wasnt as prevalent... very sad). What we hadn't realised, blue tits make a good amount of their nest with moss, so we had the joy of constantly seeing the blue tits tugging on the moss with gusto and flying to the box every minute or two.

Get a few nest boxes and see if nature can help you tackle it ;-)

 

He had his garden carpet bombed?

Or am I conflating 2 stories.

 

Just to offer some closure on this story... we posted on our local site to see if anyone wanted them for free and a guy came to collect them today so win win for everyone! (Except for the fact that our 'lawn' is now a pile of mud instead of an area of moss).

 

At least the moss has gone right?

 

Yep, it is now just (slightly lower) soil. We've got some bags of topsoil and seed that can tolerate the shade, we just need to decide when to crack on with it. We were going to sow them yesterday but with 31 degrees forecast tomorrow we thought we might be better waiting a bit.