nature notes

Was reading about someone who is asking their council to chop a tree down in the street as the leaves make a mess of her plastic lawn. She finds it hard enough washing it each week without the added hassle of sweeping leaves every day.
 
Or there was the woman in the news that was almost electrocuted whilst doing the weekly vacuum of her plastic grass. A big play on the fact that she was saved by her £30 plastic Puma flip flops.

If you have to vacuum it weekly, why not have grass and mow it weekly.
 
They don't, they send anguished letters to the council asking them to cut trees down so the birds don't loiter, and also ask them to send letters to the neighbour's telling them to stop feeding the birds.

Someone OH follows on twitter came home to find the neighbour's had been into her garden and chopped down her lilac and ripped the wisteria off the fencing, because the leaves fell onto their plastic lawn, plus trampled her bedding plants in the process


You can also buy a spray that you put over it that gives you that "new mown freshness smell"
 
Whitchurch, Hants, has been in a horticultural frenzy this year. A very energetic group of ladies has raised money for plants and planters and hanging baskets, planted them up and distributed them all over the town centre, whist urging people to cultivate their front gardens, all in the interests of getting our little town recognised in the national Britain in Bloom competition. Having sorted the baskets and planters, the group then set to work weeding cracks in the pavements and along the edges of walls etc, and cleaning the slabs by hand, so that the town would look unnaturally pristine for the judges’ visit. The Day of Judgement was to be on a Friday, which is the town’s refuse collection day, so we were urged to take our bins in asap after they had been emptied so as not to look untidy, and to temporarily move them somewhere out of sight if they are normally visible from the road. This caused some indignant comments on the local FB page about people having to go to work and not wanting to take the day off to move their bins. However, the judging took place OK, and we await the result. The centre of town, at least, looks unusually tidy, with nary a stray weed in sight. Not like in the Middle Ages!

And then, this week, a Council employee was pictured going round the town centre with a huge tank of weedkiller, spraying all the non-existent weeds in the places which had just been cleaned and cleared by the volunteers! There were some indignant comments, including mine, about environmental damage and unnecessary waste of money, but also several vociferous in approval, asking when their local weeds were going to be sprayed. Eg this one;

“Thank God for that
It's about time .I'm really pleased all this hoo ha about chemicals absolute balony.”

You just can’t please everybody, can you?
 
No you can't, like the child who wrote to her council saying how lovely to see a roundabout near her covered with orchids, please leave it alone. within a week it had been mown
 
It’s the same here- new development, large area seeded for wildflowers in February, mowed in late March by same contractors, and again in June, when they sprayed the edges, despite protests! And then came the drought..
 
Another annoying bit about them mowing, they never send a litter picker round first, so you get everything shredded.

We have just realised we have had no litter along our lane since the school run stopped for the holidays, especially the daily McDonalds bags
 
This forum fills me with joy and dread in equal measure. I sometimes think I live in a parallel universe. Unfortunately I know somebody very close to me who wages war on weeds, and I have given up trying to restrain her, but it is fury making. The only bit of hope I can hold out is that the council used to be profligate with weedkiller on the verges here, mostly because of the fire risk. However, this year they haven't been out and about, not sure if its cutbacks or insight, but lots of variety in terms of foliage/flowers could be seen before the drought hit, although I don't think we have too many rare plants such as orchids.
 
The Comhairle (council) in our islands don't spray either so we do get roadside flowers although most wild flowers are on the machair in the west. We're on the east side where all the lochs are so we get quite a few water plants, lilies, iris, bogbean and so on.
 
dianefairhall said:
The Comhairle (council) in our islands don't spray either so we do get roadside flowers although most wild flowers are on the machair in the west. We're on the east side where all the lochs are so we get quite a few water plants, lilies, iris, bogbean and so on.
Click to expand...
Council is exactly the same word in Irish gaelic!

Sent from my SM-A415F using Tapatalk

 
Manx is the other language in that group whereas Welsh, Cornish and Breton form the other Celtic language group.
 
On a vague Celtic tangent, I was talking about bagpipes yesterday, with a friend from Newcastle who used to live in Edinburgh, and a Kiwi. The Kiwi said he hated the sound until one hogmanay when they were out all night first footing and he heard a lone piper at dawn and suddenly he understood. My Geordie friend said she could take it or leave it, and I had to admit it wasn't really my thing until I came to Portugal where it is popular in competitions and festivals, and now I have learned to like it in moderation, except when a lone piper plays at a funeral or other commemorative event (not here) and I just cry, I find the sound incredibly haunting and moving. I also just thought of another connection between Scotland and Portugal. Haggis and Maranhos, which is an extremely local dish of stuffed goats stomach. Its stuffed with rice, goat, chorizo and mint and boiled, then served in slices. I suppose that might be why bagpipes are popular in both places, its using all of a sheep/goat, for food and entertainment.

Margaid/LadyA - are the pipes popular in Wales/Ireland? And is there a comparable stuffed stomach dish?! I think we can excuse this (just about) as being part of Nature Notes!
 
Bagpipes are popular in Oman, as the crew of Shabab Oman play them at every available opportunity. Where that originates from I am not sure.
 
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