Cheery Pics

Giant Hogweed is evil stuff, with jagged edged leaves, hollow stems & in a month or so large heads of little white flowers. The leaves & sap make your skin "allergic" to sunlight for months and months.

It often grows along river banks, as the seeds are carried by the water. It's a notifiable weed; it's illegal to allow it to set seed on your land. It ALMOST makes Donald Trump look sweet and reasonable...
 
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It's apparently flowering early this year and the volunteer groups etc have not been able to go out and kill it.
 
Tweetypie said:
Now I have googled the Gunnera, I can safely say to my ignorant husband it is NOT rhubarb!! :-) We see quite a lot near the streams when out walking! The dreaded giant hogweed is out in force, too. My favourite huge plant is the echium. I also saw one of those last year, but had no idea what it was until I saw someone post a pic on Facebook. It was absolutely monstrous. Good for bees, apparently.

Mrs Biscuit - a nightjar. The last time I saw one of those I was about 11 or 12 years old, that summer there was a drought (1976)?. Not sure how it came inland to get tar on its wings, but it was grounded. Took me ages to get it off and set it on its' way. Unusual birds.

PS The moss is probably due to cutting the lawn short and those nasty bugs that eat the grass roots. Doesn't drain well, either.
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An echium turned up in my chicken pen last year, and this year, shot to it's full height (not sure how high it is, but at least 12 feet, I would guess) and flowered. Nobody around here has them growing, so I think seed was pooped out by a passing bird, as there are some echium growing wild in the village, about 5km away. Everyone is saying "kill it! they self seed!" but I just think, well, it's not like I don't have the space. And a local beekeeper has asked me to save some seed for him, as he's been wanting some on his place.
 
Bees love echium - there is a mini version called blue bedder which you can plant in the border, about 6 inches high from memory. It is a lovely plant, from a lovely family. Echiums need good sun and good drainage, and I wouldn't class them as a weed at all.
 
MrsBiscuit said:
Bees love echium - there is a mini version called blue bedder which you can plant in the border, about 6 inches high from memory. It is a lovely plant, from a lovely family. Echiums need good sun and good drainage, and I wouldn't class them as a weed at all.
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The garden centres obviously don't at the price they charge for them!
 
LadyA how lucky you had the echium appear in your grounds! As Margaid stated, the garden centres know how to charge for them! I don't understand why people dislike them. They're magnificent.

Well, I know I planted a few more bits and bobs in the front garden border, but I am struggling to identify a weed from a flower,so will have to wait and see. I usually use the plantnet app, on my mobile phone to identify species. One of the unidentifiable plants comes up as "pigweed". I am sooo disappointed, I thought these plants looked as though I had strategically planted them in order. I pulled one up and there was no bulb, which was suspect, as I know I only planted bulbs this year. Never mind.
 
Fantastic :-)08 :-)08 :-)08 :-)08
Reminded me of the time I unwittingly offered to help OH who was "manning" a stall for the RSPB at a country fair.
We got there to set up and opposite was a small tent set up with the banner "Psychic Sue, Clairvoyant," Let me predict your future etc and so forth
She was suitably dressed in lots of floaty scarves, including one tied around her head.
She watched us putting up our tent and the banner which read "RSPB For Birds, For Wildlife, Forever" and came over and said "what do you do"?
To which Les on the stall said "not very good is she", which put OH into a fit of the giggles, which wasn't helped by someone setting up the stall next to her which was an Indian mystic who proclaimed to see the future. Which sent her scurrying off to complain to someone.
Further quip from Les, " she should have seen that coming"
The whole day just carried on in that vein. Not helped by a very strange man next to us working for the badger trust who had a puppet badger on his hand, and kept coming over to ask OH if she would like to stroke his badger, all the children love stroking it. Very odd.
An announcer over the tannoy who was woefully equipped to do the job. For instance "Don't miss at 11am Ozzie Mick shearing some sheep, not sure if he will be shearing them again in the afternoon" :-)19 :-)19 .
The piece de resistance was the couple who came up to OH and said
"we have a robin nesting in our BBQ, what shall we do"
OH dead straight face "don't light it"
 
BYM you seriously are hilarius. You should be on stage, or write a book on all your funny experiences. I love reading your real life stories. :-)08
 
Happy to bring joy to people.
The day was further enhanced, by the bell ringers who pitched up near to us, and the announcer saying " we have the bell ringers who will be going around entertaining you and giving demonstrations at their tent and Les saying "not bloody likely if I get to the bells first", and they had a woman read a "children's" story over the tannoy who sounded just like Fenella Fielding and made the story pornographic in the extreme, along the lines of.
Billy was a very happy rabbit especially when he got out his large (long pause) carrot, "my what a big one can I play with it said Benji the badger. The 3 of us just looked at each other in disbelief, it was funny but I dread to think what parents with children made of it.
 
BYM, what really impresses me is your recall of all these events. I can't remember anything like that. We have all said it, but you could make a collection of all these anecdotes, they are a joy to read.
 
A message and photo from HenGen; I think we need a caption!

“Morning Marigold
Please could you put this in ‘Cheery Pics’.

It’s a bunch of 8 week olds.”
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Thanks Marigold. A few exited stage right and refused to be in the photo.
Five Buff Leghorns from which I need one male. Five Barred Rocks from which I also need one male.
A bunch of blue hybrids from which I hope to get 4 or 5 females.

That cock that you posted for me a few weeks back is turning increasingly aggressive. He needn’t think his rare colour will save him. He needs to modify his behaviour!
 
Hen-Gen said:
That cock that you posted for me a few weeks back is turning increasingly aggressive. He needn’t think his rare colour will save him. He needs to modify his behaviour!
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I think it's the hormones because my Welsummer did the same. More than once I threatened that he'd be Coq au Vin!
 
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