Peasgood

This is good stuff for waterproofing, restoring and preserving. You won't get a shine though.

Th ones in the pic didn't snap, they just blew over completely and lifted the root plate. I do have one that is either just as big or bigger that has snapped out into the field where I keep my geese and have had many over the years. They mostly snap out as a result of not being single leaders and the union where they fork becoming a weak point. Once they snap out the weak point is still there and the other fork is very likely to snap out at some point. Very often when there is a strong wind from the opposite direction. If you cut the top off you will create multiple leaders all of which are prone to snapping. Plant another leyland if you like them that much, there's a good chance it won't snap in your lifetime/ownership.

From an owner of thousands of these things point of view ,once they start snapping they keep doing it and more frequently. Yes you can cut the top off and it will rapidly regrow but this time with multiple new leaders and each with the potential to snap out, this time from higher up so potentially more damaging. Remove it and start again, with a new leylandii if you are desperate but there are better choices. A pic of my carnage this morning. Seen it many times before.

The wind snapped the pointy bit off my wind gauge last night. So I might know how windy it is still but won't have the faintest idea where it is coming from.

Yeah well, it turns out that Christmas is fake too.

You have to be quick to collect eggs if you don't want the buggers eating them. It is quite a challenge to stop once they start. My geese are just as bad.

Chicken broth?

Give me a shout if you get yourself in such a pickle as my Allen key set includes Imperial, don't know why anyone would have half a set missing. Maybe they will invent an adjustable (shifter) Allen key one day to solve the issue.

Broke it again today. 🙄

How do you know?

You will be wasting your time, they won't reuse the nest and neither the queen or any others will overwinter in it. The non queens (workers) die off at this time of year and the new queens that overwinter to start new nests have already left. I am already finding overwintering queens in their dormant state in the logpile and elsewhere.

I bought an FX DRS .22 in walnut a week or two back. Put a Donny silencer on it and it is very quiet. PCP and filled with a dive bottle. Does 2p size groups at 30metres. I’ve put about 500 pellets through it already and absolutely love it. Only shot at targets so far but will be used on live quarry.

The first apples that are ready in my orchard are Discovery, usually mid August. The wasps are still very active and in bad years they take a significant amount of the apples. One year I was picking them on my own and eventually my bottle went and I left them. Later I saw my Romanian workers and asked if they wanted a bit of overtime. They did it and nobody got stung. By time the maincrop apples are ready a month later you rarely see a wasp.

As a kid a wasp sting was no more than getting stuck with a pin, no I didn't like it but no big deal. These days it hurts like feck for 30 minutes and then gone bar an occasional itchiness where I was stung. My day job is squashing apples, when I am squashing the early varieties it is like standing in a swarm of wasps, there can be literally hundreds of them. Very rarely get stung and even then it is because you got hold of one by accident but my bottle does go on a regular basis and I just say feck that! I have been known to get the industrial vacuum out to reduce numbers in the shed.