u/northerlightstar

I bought a beautiful orange utensil pot with the silicone utensils along with the black and red silicone edged ladles and slotted spoons etc trusting this brand would last years.
However, we have them on a very sunny windowsill. I only purchased in Feb this year, but since the last two heatwaves we’ve had in the UK this year the silicone has gone sticky. One that was more shaded by the others is fine. It’s definitely not cooking residues as they’ve cleaned up squeaky clean and smooth each time I use them. Some haven’t even been used yet, but are still sticky.

Does anyone have any methods to bring them back to being smooth and non-sticky again or are they done for?

I don’t want to use them in the sticky state as I’m concerned about chemical leeching. Though I’m not sure how founded that is.

Any tips??

Mum can’t use her mobile phone anymore, but obviously still wants to be able to contact people.

Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for a specialised ‘dementia’ mobile phone?

It needs to be a very simple touch screen one as Mum won’t be able to remember arrow keys etc.. It needs words and symbols as she has never recognised symbols even as a kid!

Thank you.

I had a tester of this, absolutely LOVED it for the first little while and thought I’d found ‘my’ perfume. Then, it changed into something I couldn’t get off me fast enough!

Is there anything that smells like the first part and stays like that?

( I do realise top notes don’t tend to last too long, just wondering if there’s something similar)

Hi, can you suggest fast growing / spreading ground cover plants please?

Evergreen would be great if possible. But interested in deciduous too.

Low maintenance.

I’m not looking for anything that’s going to also take over the lawn though.

Thank you

Hi guys,

We have a home visit Memory Clinic Nurse coming for the first time in a few weeks.

Is there anything I should be aware of,

any particular information I should have at the ready incase my own mind goes blank,

any questions you recommend me asking

Any heads-ups so I’m not blindsided by the unexpected

Etc etc

What was your personal experience?

Mum obviously isn’t diagnosed as yet, but I feel she is perhaps already quite a way into this. She’s confabulating a lot, repeating questions closer and closer together, and is absolutely convinced that I am between 2-4 other people as well. Can’t work several appliances anymore, or her mobile phone etc.. She’s already needing an enormous amount of help and support on the daily. And it wouldn’t be safe to leave her alone. Even just the other day I went in the garden, the first time I came back in, normal, she knew where I’d been. I reminded her to just shout out the Kitchen window if she needed me. The second time I came back inside I found her in a panic. Angry with me because she didn’t know where I was or how to get in contact with me.
The mood swings and polar opposite opinions on things are unreal.
She goes through phases of vivid dreams where she wakes and believes they are real, which can cause panic, anxiety etc..
She genuinely, and sustainably (over the past couple of weeks) believes Margaret Thatcher was her school teacher before becoming famous as the PM. Asks me how long she’s lived here. Who else lives here, what rooms she’s allowed to use (I must have misplaced all the other rooms 🤣 Did she live in a mansion in a past life??)

Anyway, I’d really appreciate any wisdom and advice.

Thank you

Hi, how do I deal with this? We haven’t yet paid the (extremely expensive) bill.

We asked for weeding to be done, pulling out from roots, not weedkiller or strimming. Asked for grass in boarders to be left as grass etc.

They have completely emptied two boarders of all small plants and grass!

I’ve totted it up, to replace for size and number etc, it comes to around £580
Not inc delivery fees, which will be significant due to issues sourcing older varieties of plants / wild plants in quantity, also not inc labour costs.

Also gave remit to prune shrubs with very specific directions. They went further than instructed, and also sliced off shrubs specifically told to leave alone, including a third of a blueberry inc the third of the crop for the next several years.

What are our rights with this? When I tot it all up, all things considered it will likely cost us more to rectify than it cost to hire them (to destroy the garden).

I’ve not mentioned anything to them yet. But I cannot pay for destruction. Surely?

How do I go about addressing this with them? What wording / format should I use? What can I realistically expect or ask for here?

We absolutely do not want them stepping foot in our garden again, even to attempt to plant things as they clearly don’t know what they’re doing and they’ve done enough damage.

Thank you for your help.

Side note : why are so many of the comments on this post being deleted and removed by mods?

Hi, how do I deal with this? We haven’t yet paid the (extremely expensive) bill.

We asked for weeding to be done, pulling out from roots, not weedkiller or strimming. Asked for grass in boarders to be left as grass etc.

They have completely emptied two boarders of all small plants and grass!
I’ve totted it up, to replace for size and number etc, it comes to around £580
However that doesn’t include delivery fees. Some of the plants were classed as wild and I can’t find them except on websites that only allow you to order a smaller number at a time. So it would mean multiple orders. Delivery is £10 a time. Depending on what’s available where delivery costs alone will add a significant amount of money.
Then there is the cost of hiring another gardener, who knows what they are doing, to re-plant everything.
These gardeners themselves were £33 per hour. So by their own costs we’re probably looking at hundreds for labor depending on how much can be done at a time.

We gave the remit to prune shrubs (which they cut back into far further than I had said as I gave the instruction ‘without making them look ugly’. Subjective I know, but you would think some leaves would be left!?) They also pruned shrubs I specifically told them not to, including a very big and mature Blueberry bush which they have cut several years growth off including around a third of this and the next several years crop! Again causing a financial deficit because we’ll have to buy from shops instead of our own crop.
They removed the sides of a couple of shrubs when I very specifically said just the very top to be taken off. Stripped all leaves and growth off another small shrub we didn’t even speak about. The only remit for that area was weeding. They’ve cut down small sumac trees on a rockery when I only asked for weeding there. I asked for the small sumacs out of the grass. The rockery is the boarder!

What are our rights with this? When I tot it up with delivery and labor costs it will likely cost us more to rectify than it cost to hire them (to destroy the garden).

They did half a days work and declared finished, I got them back within the original quote to finish the weeding as I could see that many hadn’t been removed from the root. They did return but tried to tell me they had been here almost the entire day. He seemed shocked when I was able to tell them they left at 12.45 (our video doorbell caught footage). They gave me another 4 hrs of work within that original quote, but in that time they then stripped boarders of valuable plants.
It’s obvious they can’t tell the difference between weeds and actual plants, many of which were definitely suffering from having a shrub overgrown above them. However this happens many times over the decades, and every year this little plants flourish and flower copiously in spring.

I’ve not mentioned anything to them yet. But I cannot pay for destruction. Surely?

How do I go about addressing this with them? What wording / format should I use? What can I realistically expect or ask for here?

We absolutely do not want them stepping foot in our garden again, even to attempt to plant things as they clearly don’t know what they’re doing and they’ve done enough damage.

Thank you for your help.

Let’s do this! I’ve done a couple of these ‘most bizarre’ now and you guys always have such an amazing response. We all need a laugh.

Tonight my darling Mum has been telling me all about how Margaret Thatcher (previous UK Prime Minister for those further afield) used to be her school teacher!!

I told her about how she used to be a food scientist and was part of the team that invented food technologies that helped things like Mr. Whippy Ice Cream be invented, and she started telling me about how she was her teacher for a while 😆 I probed just a little to make sure this is what she really meant, but, apparently “Everyone has to start somewhere, she was our teacher for a while.” “A lot of teachers you don’t remember, but I can remember her because she went on to be famous. I think she was Prime Minister.”

It’s been an er, *interesting* conversation 😂

Your turn …. Looking forward to hearing these.

Godspeed lovely ones! You are all absolute rock-stars!

We had grass in some of our boarders under the shrubs to cut down on maintenance, but the reality was it needed strimming and not mowing, and so ended up looking a mess.

Is there anything that covers very quickly?
We’ve just had our boarders obliterated (without our permission) by bad gardeners not being able to tell the difference between a weed and a plant, or a weed and grass 🙄

Need to fill in bare earth boarders asap.

Exactly that. My favourite scent is the pure, unadulterated scent of the freesia flower.
Is there anything in the fragrance world that smells of just this??
I’ve tied some that state ‘freesia’, but smell nothing like it and just a generic perfume bomb.
Any recommendations??

I’ll go first. My Mum has just fed our cat an M&S Bramley Apple Crumble, absolutely convinced it is cat food! Said cat it looking at me for help in utter disgust 🤣🤣 Meow slave must rectify immediately.

So I posted one of these ‘most bizarre’ threads a few months ago and got an amazing response.

Let’s have a light-hearted giggle, coz wow do we all need it! xx

Edit: I have just intercepted another very lovingly prepared meal for our cat. Served up on one of our lap trays.
Mum came in asking if the cat can eat in here with us.
The dinner for the cat? Half a plate of real cat food. The other half of the plate … Raspberry Protein Yogurt!?!
Oh boy. Cat has kidney disease. Is on a special diet to prolong life and lessen symptoms (low protein etc) Oh boy. It seems this may be the new daily now 😬