Not Fit To Turn A Dog Out.

ObanAll readings are taken from a sheltered location in our garden and cover a 24 hour period starting at 6pm.
Low Temp: 6.5C

High Temp: 11.3C
Rainfall: 12.0mm
Strongest Gust of wind: 4.1 metres per second.

Weather Today: Very wet this morning, brightened up in the afternoon before coming on to rain again in the evening.

Hello everyone. This morning was one of those mornings when you knew as soon as you woke what the weather was like even without having to look out of the window. There had been a lot of rain in the night and it was still to wet to turn a dog out when I awoke so I had an extra few minutes in bed and then took Tommy to work with me later on in the morning. Tippy doesn’t usually come with us in a morning since she has been ill and she doesn’t seem at all upset at being left behind. If she fully recovers and shows an interest in coming with us when the weather picks up a bit I will start to take her again.

Because of the weather I didn’t do much outdoors this morning, I needed some things from the garden centre, mainly potting compost and I also picked up a tub of bone meal although I won’t be putting that on for a few more weeks but I like to have some in stock so its there when I want it. This afternoon I did some shrub pruning in one of the shrub borders, I got all the cutting down done before the rain came on again so now all I have to do is dispose of the rubbish and dig over the border when the weather picks up a bit. Just to finish off the day I potted and boxed up some of my Dahlia tubers that I want to take cuttings from. I wouldn’t start them in to growth just yet if it wasn’t for the need to get some cuttings to increase the stock.

Vicki did a post to her blog with her new laptop yesterday so I’m sure she would be pleased for some of you to pop on over to her flower shop and take a look at her handy work. The link to her blog is http://vicks-floral.blogspot.com/ I will have to put a link in my sidebar sometime, I used to have one and didn’t realise it had disappeared somewhere along the way.
I will be going now, I hope you’re all well and I will see you again soon.
Bob.

Vine Weevil.

Another picture from Oban.

All readings are taken from a sheltered location.

Low Temp: 7C
High Temp: 14C

Rain In Past 24 Hours: 0.6mm

Strongest Gust of wind in 24 hours: 4.8 metres per second.
Weather Today: Breezy with some light rain, quite mild this afternoon.

Hi everyone, how are you all today?

Tonight I’m going to show you an ugly little blighter that I found by accident lurking in one of my plants. Some of you may already have seen him for yourself on your own plants, others may have had plants with roots that look like those in the picture and wondered what the heck happened here.

Can you see the Vine Weevil, the white grub at the end of the dibber? There were several more in the compost this plant came out of. As you will see they've just about eaten all the roots of this plant and it will be lucky to survive, for more info click the link http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0600/vineweevil.asp

Well I’ll tell you what it was, its the darn Vine Weevil that happened here. If your plant has got to this stage as in the picture and is of little value to you then you would probably be better off just destroying it. If you’re like me though and hate to throw plants away then you must get rid of the compost the plant came out of and don’t just replanting in fresh compost because first you have to make sure there are no more Vine Weevil hiding in what’s left of the roots, you can be more or less sure that there are. With this plant it wasn’t hard to remove the rest of the compost. Usually I remove as much as I can and then wash the rest off with water making sure to remove every last bit of compost as they can hide in the smallest bit. Once this is done and you’re sure its clear of any more pests you can re-pot the plant in a new pot with fresh compost. With this particular plant I removed some of the bottom leaves and re-potted it deeper than it should have been as I think there is a chance it might put out new roots from the stems, only time will tell. As a plant its not really worth a lot but its got flower buds on so I felt it worth giving it a chance.

Bob.

Thanks Lois.

Hello everyone, As some of you will have noticed I have another award, this time from Lois . I really appreciate the thought. Apparently I now have to think of seven weird things about myself that I feel able to own up too. I’ve given the matter quite a bit of thought and came up with some answers which I then scrapped because I couldn’t figure out what weird was? That might sound weird but you see what’s weird to one person might seem perfectly normal to others. Like for instance, to a couch potato spending vacation time walking around the country in the name of pleasure would seem very weird yet to other like minded souls its perfectly normal. So my dilemma was do I list the things that I think others might think of me as being weird for or do I list the things that I consider myself weird for doing? In the end I decided that I never do anything weird so have listed some things I do that others might consider to be weird. First thing on the list is the fact that I never intentionally watch or listen to any sort of news broadcast, I have my reasons but won’t trouble you with them. I know some people consider me weird for refusing to miss live coverage of a Grand Prix. Another weird thing along the same lines is to sit up all night watching the Bathurst 1000 from Australia. As I’ve already said, some people would consider me weird for spending two weeks of my vacation time walking hundreds of miles in the name of pleasure. I’ve never done drugs, been to a night club had an affair or smoked a cigarette, that’s got to be weird - hasn’t it? I could go on but I’d better stop before someone decides I need to be certified or you get bored, or worse still scared and never visit me again, cos that would be a shame.

On The Mend.

Hello everyone, I would like to thank all those who missed me. Initially I didn’t bother to post on here as I thought you would all have plenty to do over Christmas without coming here to read what I had to say, especially as I didn’t have much to say for myself anyway. Also between Christmas and New Year I acquired a cold which was not especially bad until New Years Eve when it developed in to something much worse. We’d agreed to go to a party back home to let in the New Year and had it not been for Vicki being able to drive I wouldn’t have been coming home that night as every part of me ached, even my eye balls and I was rigid with cold so I spent the rest of last week either in bed or in the armchair in front of the fire in a fuzzy haze both freezing and sweating all at the same time. I find sitting around for days on end pretty boring even if I don't feel like doing anything, thankfully Jenny bought me the new Lewis Hamilton book for Christmas which is very good if like me you're in to F1, so I read that and watched TV most of the time. I went outside for the first time on Monday morning when I tried to do some work. I am getting stronger everyday but still have a bad chest and tire easily so I’m on light duties at work, if I feel myself getting drained I come home and rest a while. The people I work for have not pressured me to return to work or anything and I could probably have had more time off had I wanted. The trouble is when you sit around and do nothing you start to wonder if you really are ill or whether you just got lazy. Anyway hopefully I will slowly improve now. I think Vicki will be sort of pleased when that happens then she can have the TV back to herself on a night.

I bought Vicki her very own laptop computer for Christmas which she is very pleased with. She plans to do some posts to her blog in the near future when she’s learnt how to get the hang of it. She hasn’t really done that much with a computer so is busy learning at the moment. Also with me being ill I’ve neither felt like showing her or had the patience as I have to confess to not being very tolerant when ill, especially when it’s the flu. Really I hate it, I’d rather someone came up to me and give me a good kick on the leg than cough in my face and give me the flu.

My previous post will probably have sounded a bit cryptic so I will just explain that it relates to the Christmas present I got for Fallon. Who by the way was very poorly with the flu all over Christmas so that was a shame for her. Anyway she's had her own computer for a while now but was not online with it so as a Christmas present I got us all online by way of a wireless router and so I did the previous post you see on my blog and then got the page up on her computer so that when she walked in to her room there was the page and the surprise of being connected to the net. She was very pleased even though she was feeling quite poorly.

We had a very frightening moment on Sunday evening when Tippy started staggering around the house and falling over on the floor followed by being sick several times. First chance we got on Monday morning we took her to the vet expecting to hear the worse - you know how it is. Thankfully it turned out to be nothing worse than a sort of ear infection which is affecting her balance. The vet says she will get over it in time and it is something that older dogs can be prone too. I doubt she will ever get better though as she is now being pampered more than a royal Corgi and seems to be enjoying it way too much to ever want to get better!!

Best Wishes,
Bob.