Sacha wrote:

On 24/2/07 21:35, in article , "Carol
Hague" wrote:

My own honey bees attacked me when someone else was manipulating the hive
and I wasn't wearing the proper gear. I received so many stings that from
being a bit resistant to them I've gone to 'don't get stung - ever'.

Ouch! Poor you!

But
while I do avoid weeding certain flower borders when the bees are really
busy, on the whole I find the old thing of 'leave them alone and they'll
leave you alone' does work with them.

I suppose if a bee wants to sting you it has to be sure it's worth it,
since it's going to die if it does - wasps can afford to be the
aggressive little toerags they are because they don't have the same
constrant.

snip

My memory comes from the same stock, obviously! It does help to know where
people are when it comes to swapping gardening experiences. Friends of ours
have just moved to Matlock where his mother came from originally. Now you
mention that wossname that made small bits of earth for the garden, I
remember my grandfather had one of those. What were they FOR, I now ask
myself? To grade soil? To add compost and soil together? And do you
*ever* see anyone use one now? No, IME. I'm assuming that back in those
days before proprietary compost, they were used to make ordinary garden soil
very fine for the growing of seeds and seedlings.

I've actually used one myself not that long ago - in my last garden we
built some raised beds for growing veg in and couldn't afford huge
amounts of compost from the garden centre so we used the riddle (hurray,
I remembered!) to sieve garden soil and compost together to fill them.

We didn't really *need* to I suppose but it made planting much easier.


snip
I like ponds, but this one takes up a disproportionate amount of the
garden. It's staying though, cos I'm a total softy and couldn't bear to
evict the fish and their umpty dozen water snail pals.

Could you/would you alter the size of the pond, though?

I don't think so - not in the foreseeable future at least. It's such a
huge unwieldy thing that it would be a major project to undertake any
alterations. Maybe when I get the rest of the garden sorted....

snip

I imagine the trees are there to protect from stray cricket nballs as
much as for pretty. Not had any landing in the pond yet though.

I think those trees are a good idea!

Oh definitely. Makes it harder for Bill the Burglar to get close to the
house too. Besides which, I'm in favour of trees on general principles
:-) They're rather nice silver birches too, most of them. I really must
get some netting for the pond though to keep their leaves out of it in
the autumn.

Last time I watched a cricket match
the ball landed, very hard, on the bonnet of someone's rather expensive car.
Not a popular shot....

Ouch....

People often want to get rid of ivy but we have lots of its around this
house and garden and birds and insects really do benefit from it.

We've got a nice variegated one on the front of the house too (not much
in the way of a front garden, just a small narrow bed there).

I thought I was very lucky to get the allotment right away though - I
understand many places have quite long waiting lists.....

And, from reading allotment holders here, they are disappearing fast, too,
in some areas?

This particular one seems to be going strong still, touch wood, but you
do hear tales of woe from elsewhere. I'm looking forward to seeing the
Gardener's World programme about allotments on Friday.
--
Carol (near Derby)
"Never trust a man wearing leather shorts and a plastic dressing gown"
- Spray, "The Dangerous Sports Club"