With the sun disappearing earlier in the evenings I've been finding myself out right until the suns completely gone down. I've loads of bits to be getting done and don't want to have the garden eat up all my weekends.
I'm considering getting some kind of floodlight on a tripod to be able to continue working after dark. Am I completely bananas or does anyone else be doing their gardening at night?
A family member sent me a link to an event in Kildare library that I went to today all about Seed Saving - really great event where a talk was given on native trees, how to collect, process, and prepare seeds for growing, how to grow from cuttings, etc. Growing Wild are the crowd who hosted it.
Also covered saving seeds from fruit/veg/herbs. They have a seed bank there and everyone was able to bring a few packets home - they also encourage people to bring their own seeds in to them if you've proven viability in growing them in our climate yourself (which I now plan to do with a number of things I have). Turns out many of the libraries in Co Kildare have these little seed banks accessible to the public. The seeds are from Irish providers (what I'm using are likely imports which may be why I don't have success trying to save seeds from them). Got a nice set of print-outs about growing trees from seeds/cuttings, and other resources on local seed saving. It's a good time of year to have a go at this if you have any interest in growing some native trees.
A quick Google and it looks like similar initiatives exist in Carlow, Laois, Cork, Sligo, Mayo, Dublin, and Tipperary.
Anyway, shout out to the library - they've some great events on. This particular one was during the day, so I did sneak out of work to go. But I haven't been into a library in years and couldn't believe how many resources they had available.
I bought way to much bark this summer and now have a few ton leftover. It was pricey so I'd rather save it for next year than just pile it on top of other stuff.
Any tips to store it somewhere? Or will it all just compost down by next summer?
Working with a broker since April on switching to a new provider because my fixed term was up. Got all the paperwork in order, contacted the solicitor to let them know docs were coming from the bank 10 weeks ago. Got in there to sign over a month ago and the solicitor have just been dragging the whole process out to no end.
The docs are finally with the new bank, after a month of hounding (no actual admin to be actually done as far as I can tell) but the bank don't have the drawdown - presumably this means they're waiting for the remaining loan amount to move over to them from my solicitor? At this stage I'm on the variable rate and about to needlessly hand over hundreds more in interest this month.
Anything I can do in this situation. The solicitor is just chronically understaffed and difficult to get anything out of - no response to emails, calls, I've shown up to their door and surprise surprise they work from home and there's only a receptionist there.
The solicitor is charging me 2.5k and frankly they're costing me money now by not getting this done. Definitely won't be going near them again, but just wanted to know if there's anything I can do here.
2020 was very rough and I remember thinking, any day now a new episode will come out as something to hold on to.
Time passed and I figured like everything else it was delayed. But months turned to years.
I honestly can't believe the charlatanry of CGP Grey in recent years and that people on this sub remain charitable to the great "optimiser". Becoming a clickbait channel and producing nothing, it lacks the humanity of art. It's contempt to an audience that contributed to his success and I'm glad I can finally say it on this sub.
Anyway, in reality I don't care that much, I've just been holding this in for 6 years and noticed this sub became active recently.
Shout out to all the Tims and Brady.
Getting a new mortgage protection policy at the minute and have been offered a Convertible Dual Policy.
My understanding/scenario is the mortgage is 400k I pay in €60/month for the insurance for the mortgage term (30 years). If either me or my wife die whoever is left gets 400K to pay off the mortgage/keep the remainder, if the other of us dies a further 400k pays out to our estate. The policy also allows us to continue the policy after the mortgage is paid off and until we turn 85 if both of us croak the same payout applies. Do I understand this correctly and secondly is it worth doing? It's about €15/month more expensive than a decreasing term policy (where just the remaining mortgage principal is paid off if one of us die).
I'm up in Inishowen for a couple weeks on holidays, any good recommendations for gardens to visit or plant nurseries to see while I'm here? Wife is working remotely some of the days and I figured I'd go out to see some plants.
Obviously we've had exceptional weather the last few weeks. Boiling in our houses.
But I've noticed the temperatures reported by my own devices are typically much higher than Google/MET are reporting. It's currently 31C according to my car but online it says it's 24C. Pretty big difference.
I've been noticing this the last few weeks at multiple locations that the online services seem to have lower numbers than what I'm seeing locally.
My house system is also reporting same temps as the car and the building I work in is also saying 30-31 today.
Any casual meteorologists want to weigh in?
Also side gripe - the highest temp recorded in Ireland is 33.3C back in 1887. Surely we've at some stage exceeded this number? Always bothered me to trust this number on equipment from 150 years ago.
A cooler Sunday afternoon to do a bit of work in the garden- and as I often find I get distracted by weeding. My builder unfortunately didn't seed my lawn with grass seed, but some cheap "wildflower meadow" mix and my naivety in the first few years to let it go wild has come back to bite me - eventually the cornflowers, poppies, clovers, and marigolds were all outcompeted by nettles, docks, dandelions, and creeping buttercup. On the law itself it's not a huge deal, I just keep it short and it's like any other lawn. But letting it wild for a few years has lead to endless selfseeding in my beds.
Thankfully no knotweed, but I've waged war with dock leaves, nettles, and bindweed the past few years. I think I'll get it sorted eventually - once I have enough perennials to outcompete them!
This morning I started finding rogue bramble seedlings popping up around the borders.
Figured a discussion thread so you can vent what you're dealing with in the garden, and for any solutions people have.
Of course, it goes without saying that most weeds we want gone for aesthetic reasons, and many weeds can be beautiful, beneficial, etc. etc. But there's always a balance.
My wife and I moved to joint banking years ago, but she didn't close her BOI.
While renewing mortgage we discovered she's been getting charged for BOI and the account was in arrears for over €600. Very frustrating, but sure it's our mistake I guess. We paid it down.
She'd rather not lose the account entirely, but she also does not use it at all (some relatives might transfer to it by accident every few years if they owe her).
Any way to get BOI to drop the fees or should we just close it?
Got an email from my bin crowd saying their prices are going up to €40/month. I've been with them 4 years and they've been slowly increasing the price annually without my noticing we started at about €25/month.
Looked at their website and their "offers" should have me at about 25/m. The price I pay is for 4x the waste I produce. So I contacted them to ask to change my plan to the other one. They told me it's an introductory offer for new customers and only temporary. Nowhere on their site do they say how long the low price is for but it feels like a loyalty penalty - like you see with broadband.
I can get a similar offer from the only other bin provider near me. My question is, do I change bins every year to keep the price down. Feels like a pain to do but if that's the expectation I guess I will.
Signing up to a new mortgage with PTSB, already have all my other accounts with PTSB. Broker advised me I can get 2% cashback on my mortgage if it's paid via a PTSB Explore account. Anyone know if the bank lets you switch an existing current account to whatever branding they're sticking on their current current accounts? I don't want to lose my account numbers I've had for decades, and don't really want to pay double fees on two accounts (and have to do extra admin each month of making sure there's a balance in the second account).
The benefit of the cashback is around €40/month, the fees are €8/month. Looks like I'll get 3.5 years of this offer. So €1344 cashback is kind of hard to turn down.
I've had my EV for 2 years, it's a 2023. I've had no issues and I love it and doubt I'll ever go back to ICE. Currently doing some casual research on a new EV to replace my wife's car over the next year or so. Prior to buying an EV I drove 10+ year old ICEs, age wasn't a major factor because even the most expensive repairs/maintenance on an petrol were basically the same regardless of whether the car was 5 or 20 years old (provided the car had been well looked after).
I had been toying with importing an Merc EQB from up north - but learning how bad the Merc battery warranty is I am second guessing. But it's made me wonder in general about whether we'll actually have a confident used EV market for 10-20y/o cars in the future. Nissan appeared to be leading the pack 5 years ago, loads of plans to support battery swaps etc. and yet the 2019 Leaf is practically a lemon now (my mother had one, sold it to a friend and then a cell failed and it had to be written off, appears to be common).
Will we get to a stage where battery issues are actually serviceable, repairable, replaceable in a way that's economical? We lean on manufacturer warranties, but at the end of the day Nissan have weaseled out of their warranties for lots of their customers. Kia/Hyundai have their ICCU issues and are apparently still selling affected cars.
I have no doubt EV batteries will in general last way longer than people expected a few years ago, but for the few that do have failures - will they be shit out of luck. It leaves me in the position where buying a cheaper EV is the better choice - because you won't end up as much in the hole if it's a write off.
Just wanted to have a discussion, not a naysayer by any means.