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Post by Cherry on Dec 25, 2014 21:27:28 GMT
I was given the book 'Gardening for Seniors' which is full of good tips. In my stocking I had 'Gardeners, Gurus & Grubs' about garden inventors and innovations and 'Adam's Farm'. A friend gave me a smallish trolley to lift pots around, or take in the boot of the car. It looks like the sort people use at shows.
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Post by SueA on Dec 25, 2014 21:46:59 GMT
Good pressies Cherry & useful too especially the trolley although I wouldn't go lifting things onto it yourself yet. I got Alan Titchmarsh's 'How to Garden - Wildlife Gardening', garden centre vouchers & a big surprise present off my O.H., a camera for the garden, it's battery operated & motion activated & you put an SD card in it so that you can put the photos on the computer etc. I'll let you know what it's like when I get around to working out how it works & it stops raining for long enough to fix it up outside somewhere.
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Post by peony on Dec 26, 2014 9:51:06 GMT
My 'gardening' presents this year, Crabtree and Evelyn Gardeners Hand Therapy, and a big bag of food for the birds
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Post by roofgardener on Dec 26, 2014 10:20:39 GMT
Wow.. you all got some great books. And I like the sound of your trolley, Cherry. I might look into one of those for myself, to put my water butt on so that I can move it even when full.
I got a kitchen bin from my sister. Not, I hasten to add, for the kitchen. It is for growing spudlinks in ! This pleased me greatly. I also got a portable DAB radio, which means I can now listen to Gardeners Question Time whillst sitting in the new polytunnel !!
I'm just BURSTING to tell you all a story... this is the present I made for my Sister.
A couple of months ago, I informally agreed with my Sister that her Chrimble present would be that I grow all the bedding plants (and plant them) for her two "half-moon" garden beds. But I wanted some physical manifesteation of this agreement to give her on Chrimble morning. Something she could unwrap But what to do ?
So I created a "bedding plant kit" for her. In a nutshell, it was four "packs of cards" in a lunchbox-sized plstic box. (all of them where from the Really Useful Box company, with neat clip-on lids.... dead cheap from The Range).
So you open the main box to reveal two-tone green foam sheets forming a 'garden', and nestling in them four smaller plastic clip-lid boxes, and a scroll. The scroll was an introduction to the contents of the box, dressed up as a gift certificate with a floral border and everything.
The four small boxes contained home-made laminated "gift tokens". So there was: "Groundworks" ... tokens for 180L of compost to recondition the soil in the two beds (plus some of the adjacent sink gardens). "Tooling" .. tokens for blade sharpening on the lawnmower and hedge trimmer. (there is a local company that does this). "Plants" ... 7 tokens with a picture/name of a specific plant/flower on the front, and some information about it on the back. (plus two "blank" tokens for her to put her own choices in). "Labour" ... 9 tokens, each redeemable for one hours labour by the Grumpy Gardener (myself), each with a picture of this UNBELIEVABLY peevish looking gardener... he looked mediteranean, about 120 years old, complete with gardening apron and an expression that could curdle milk at 100 yards. To complement the 'half moon' motif, the packs each had a picture on the front based on the Apollo moon landings. Astronaut on moon pushing lawnmower.. another one with a hege trimmer, another one with a spade and a stack of compost bags, and one kneeling down watering a clump of Begonias.
The main box had the title "Lunar Terraforming Kit". The picture was of an astronaut climbing down from the Landing Module, and apparantly staring at a plantpot of flowers sitting on the moons surface. It had a speech bubble coming from the Astronaut, based on the famous Apollo 13 transmission...
"Houston..... we have a Plantpot..."
It took me AGES to make on Word and Photoshop, and I was REALLY nervous about how this would be received. After all.. it was the ONLY present I was giving her. (the blade sharpening and compost, seeds etc will eventually cost me around the £200 mark when the tokens are redeemed, and so its all I could afford ).. and it couldn't really DO anything there and then.. it's effectively just a bunch of promisery notes. I was afraid she would be disapointed.
What was the best present I got this Christmas ? It was the expression on her face, and the guffaws of laughter and delight, when she opened the present and rummaged through the boxes. She loved it.
NOW all I've got to do is grow the darned flowers !
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Post by sweetpea on Dec 26, 2014 17:11:47 GMT
You must have watched blue peter then roofgardener Nice one. I am apparently always complaining about the cold so i got thermal vests, socks and two people gave me long johns. Great but the way it is atm it is a sou'wester hat and waterproof b-o-o-t-s and leggings I need
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Post by sweetpea on Dec 26, 2014 17:14:41 GMT
boots wondering why I typed pumpkins? I didn't. I typed b-o-o-t-s earlier and just now to try again and it comes up as 'pumpkins' Very strange. Anyone any ideas.
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Post by lesley on Dec 26, 2014 18:27:55 GMT
Sounds like you all some lovely pressies, the best one I had was from my mum she brought me 2 handles for the new gardening tools Wolf plus the little rake head that just clips in, OH brought me cloths and a lot of odds and sods
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Post by SueA on Dec 26, 2014 18:43:17 GMT
sweetpea - that's really strange about 'boots' coming up as 'pumpkins' - maybe you've got some kind of virus/spyware on your computer or do you know anyone 'computer savvy' who has access to your computer who might have programmed it in as a joke? I was wondering if it has anything to do with your 'new' avatar photo with the big pumpkin on?
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Post by SueA on Dec 26, 2014 18:44:45 GMT
roofgardener - what a brilliant present, so imaginative, I'm not surprised your sister loved it!
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Post by roofgardener on Dec 26, 2014 19:58:16 GMT
One two testing pumpkins pumpkins WTF This is NOT a virus on your computer, sweetpea. It's as though somebody has edited the "swear words" dictionary (I'm assuming this forum HAS a swear words dictionary ? ) I'm going to test this by trying to insert rude words, to see what happens. I will then edit the post to remove them. If you catch me "in-between", please don't be offended. **** **** **** ****. OH ! I didn't expect that. The system censors nasty words with asteriks, rather than subsituting them with a 'gentler' version of the word ? So where are these boots coming from ? (I actually typed b-o-o-t-s in the above)
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Post by daitheplant on Dec 26, 2014 20:09:56 GMT
boots
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Post by roofgardener on Dec 26, 2014 20:27:52 GMT
pumpkins pumpkins ****edit**** It converts uppercase to lower case as well. I used to work for BBC news. We had a new computer system in that archived EVERY newspaper story from every major newspaper in the world. It was a great research tool. You could search all of those newpapers. A bit like the Amercian NEXUS/LEXUS system. But if you typed in "British Gas" as a search term, the core database engine crashed. Nobody - not the developers, nor the subsequently hired software consultants - every found out WHY. Pumpkins indeed ! ***test**** Boot pumpkins Bootlaces Bootcamp Booty ****AHA**** It only picks up on the plural of "boot" ? Hmmm.... ***test**** "pumpkins" 'pumpkins' boot's Hmmm... I wonder ? British Ga <MYSQL:Kernal Panic; unresloved call: TCP/IP stack unloading. database engine terminating>
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Post by Rosie on Dec 26, 2014 21:05:26 GMT
I got some garden gift vouchers off Sara, also a garden organiser, apron and a wee tray ofr all my odds and s*ds!
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Post by daitheplant on Dec 26, 2014 21:11:06 GMT
Not a thing. lol lol lol
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Post by Rosie on Dec 26, 2014 21:11:25 GMT
I've just checked the word and I get pumpkins too, there is nowt in censored words. We may need to contact proboards unless Steve or anyone else has any ideas??
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