peds

You can't tell me what to do, you're not even my real dad.

Hang on, hang on... I'm having difficulty keeping up. Now you want us smelly hippies to want to cancel... a socialist utopia of our own creation? Damn, being a socialist is confusing. I must have skipped this section of the indoctrination course.

Let me get this straight... you're asking me, a card carrying yoghurt-knitting hippy, to cancel... India? Give me a second, I just need to grab this latest batch of Brazil nut and goji berry granola bars out of the oven and I'll get right on it.

You could squeeze another few square meters of lawn in instead of that tree. Knock them both down to really finish the look. Feck it, try and nail a bit of lawn onto that wall too.

I was catering backstage at Glastonbury a few years ago. First night the festival opened on the Wednesday (we'd already been there a week), the boss took us out for drinks at the big red cider bus, and bought the first round. "Any discount for cash?" she asked, holding two fifties out towards the youth on the bar, a crowd of a line five heads deep behind her. He shook his head as he sighed "Sorry, no." Mate... it's like, a sixty quid round, and you're at a music festival.

To each their own, I suppose. I got 10 gallons of cider and the same of vinegar this year. My lawn probably isn't quite so well nourished, though.

You know you can... pick them up, don't you? Leave them tight in a barrel until dark brown and covered by liquid, mash them through a burlap sack, leave it in a demijon for a few months, bottle, ignore. Problem solved.

We also need immediate carbon sequestration on an unprecedented, one might even say impossible scale, or the remaining tenth aren't far behind. Never mind, eh.

I used to run short distance ultras in the Alps, in the 50-80km range, that kind of thing, a few races but usually just out on my own. Not once was I ever tempted by the Marathon des Sables, and frankly, I'm a little concerned for anyone who is. Best of luck with it, have fun. Regardless, ultrarunning is a great way to keep fit, anyone who can keep running from sunrise to sunset tends to be able to put the effort in at work as well.

Coronet cut. Looks more natural. He took too long on the first one though and didn't have time to do the others that way.

Howdy, I've just planted a hedge of 230 whips, various species, 30 of which being hawthorn (also fuchsia, cornelian cherry, autumn olive, hazel, various others, planted in clusters of 3-5). I've decided not to cut them now, but a little later in the year. When I do, I'll be dibbing a hole into the ground for each and every twig and dropping them straight in next to the parent plant, with lowest leaves removed. Meanwhile, a few weeks previous to this, I'll be firing a load of white willow through the wood chipper and steeping it in a pair of 200l water barrels for a fortnight. The water will take on a load of auxin, the hormone that (among other things) encourages rooting, which willow produces in spades (which is why they'll happily grow from cuttings, tencacious buggers, and why some people suggest leaving a stick of willow in your water when taking cuttings of other plants). I'll give the hedge a douse with that twice over a couple of days. I don't expect the success rate to be 100%, but I'm confident it'll be somewhere high enough above zero to be worth doing.

LOL! Chortle chortle. Ho ho ho. Titter, titter.

Either, both. The rules are the same. I'd have thought that was implied, depending on whether you have a dog or bitch.

If I were local to you I'd do it for free, but I'd call in a favour if I ever needed some drone footage.

Only responsible thing to do these days, unless you can reasonably claim (between you and the dog) to be able to produce a healthy litter of pups with decent homes arranged to go to before they are even born. Male owners' attachment to their dogs' testicles can sometimes be borderline fetishistic. Unless you are willing to wrap his wee hotdog up in a little condom every time he runs around a corner, the right thing to do is to cut them off. My dog was the only survivor of a litter culled as a result of overpopulation and careless owners not getting their dogs the snip. His mother's keeper threw the rest into the river.