Stormy Weather

[Serial_Apologist]

I promise you all: "low maintenance managwement" really was the term being applied to new cost-cutting, ecofriendly landscape contracts when I was studying horticulture in the 1990s, not my term! I had to stifle a giggle when the lecturer introduced it: not a flicker of a smile passed the lips of any of the other students - a very serious-minded group.

[marthe]

S-A, I'd never heard this term though I've spent many years in the green (hort) industry. It must go by another name over here. Here, most folks of means hire landscaping crews (Mow, Blow, Go) to install and maintain their gardens. There is a standard "groomed" look that homeowners desire for their gardens/landscapes. This includes well maintained lawns (watered, fed, mowed, raked), trimmed shrubbery, herbaceous borders with a mix of annuals and perennials carefully selected to show "color" from spring to fall. Beds are all mulched and scrupulously weeded. The very grand estates here still have estate gardeners, including a head gardener and what used to be called, garden boys (though they are often women nowadays.) In the late 19th cent., it was fashionable to have a Scottish or English head gardener.

[amateur51]

a lovely springlike evening in the middle kingdom .... heavens above it is clocks forward this Sunday morning ... so light as it is right now, next week it will be light at 7 .... a civilised life returns eh .....

Tis brillig, innit

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

and again today amateur51!

the sunshine accompanied by a modest pension increase ... what must i have done wrong? .... this can not last .... is there after all, reason to live?

the brillig of the sky and sunlight today is more than enough to stir this cadaver past the anticipation of hip agonies ... .... oh the perils of a jazbo life eh

[EdgeleyRob]

Another lovely sunny day spent inside an office

[salymap]

Is it the equinox today oh weather-wise one ?

[eighthobstruction]

Is this the day our day light hours are to be Taxed???

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

without wishing to steal S_A's thunder i do believe it is the equinox today ... we are upright and untilted until tomorrow when the darkness shortens and the light increases i find the beginning of spring a far more celebratory marker than any birthday in that i am always glad to have made it to another one ....

[salymap]

Yes I am lucky to have a spring birthday so both the 'markers' come near each other. I am definitely a daylight person, as Doris Day once aptly said.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes I am lucky to have a spring birthday so both the 'markers' come near each other. I am definitely a daylight person, as Doris Day once aptly said.

What's not good news is that the expected (by me) heat on Friday is now off. I hadn't predicted the high that's leaving us high and dry would move north, shifting the wind around so that instead of coming up from the direction of Sapin, it will be approaching from across a still-cold North Sea. Still no end in sight of this dry weather. When it does come - as inevitably it must, my guess is it will be one helluva breakdown. I can see the Atlantic lows, just queuing up with their associated rain-bearing fronts, ready to pounce!

[Nick Armstrong]

What's not good news is that the expected (by me) heat on Friday is now off. I hadn't predicted the high that's leaving us high and dry would move north, shifting the wind around so that instead of coming up from the direction of Sapin, it will be approaching from across a still-cold North Sea. Still no end in sight of this dry weather. When it does come - as inevitably it must, my guess is it will be one helluva breakdown. I can see the Atlantic lows, just queuing up with their associated rain-bearing fronts, ready to pounce!

So am I going to get wet on my bike on Friday, o wise one?

Or will it be a cosy Saturday afternoon in front of a b&w movie with the rain lashing down outside?

(On the subject of equinoxes etc, has the recent BBC series "Orbit" been mentioned on this thread? Excellent, I think )

[Serial_Apologist]

So am I going to get wet on my bike on Friday, o wise one?

Or will it be a cosy Saturday afternoon in front of a b&w movie with the rain lashing down outside?

(On the subject of equinoxes etc, has the recent BBC series "Orbit" been mentioned on this thread? Excellent, I think )

As dry as Wales on a 1960s dirty weekend, Caliban.

[Anna]

As dry as Wales on a 1960s dirty weekend, Caliban.

Ahem. To those who do not know. S_A is not saying the Welsh do not know how to have a dirty weekend but is alluding to the fact that from 1881 you could not obtain an alcoholic drink in Wales on the Sabbath. The first referendum to repeal this law was in 1961, the last 'dry' part of Wales to go 'wet' was in 1993 I think.

Incidentally S_A, Oh Oracle and Grand Soothsayer and Purveyor of Isobars - any idea if it'll be wet on Tuesday on East Sussex coast? I shall be attending an outdoor event on that day.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ahem. To those who do not know. S_A is not saying the Welsh do not know how to have a dirty weekend but is alluding to the fact that from 1881 you could not obtain an alcoholic drink in Wales on the Sabbath. The first referendum to repeal this law was in 1961, the last 'dry' part of Wales to go 'wet' was in 1993 I think.

Incidentally S_A, Oh Oracle and Grand Soothsayer and Purveyor of Isobars - any idea if it'll be wet on Tuesday on East Sussex coast? I shall be attending an outdoor event on that day.

Dear Anna, we've missed you! Where Have Hugh Bean?

Next Tuesday's a bit far off I'm afraid. Some butterfly could meanwhile beat its wings in Patagonia, and that.

The jazz singer Norma Winstone once had an album titled "Manhattan in the Rain" reviewed in The Times; the article, mentioning that Ms Winstone was in the habit of often singing about the weather, was headed "Propping up the Isobars".

[BBMmk2]

Brill post there SA. Thank you!!

Anna, great to see you again!I have mnissed your contributions!

Lovely day down here.

But and a big but, with the South East being hit by drought, where is Odin when you need him?