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I reckon the natives will still take over, bluebells are thugs

Golf and Guardian

Thalictrums are fantastic for not getting slugged, and (at least some of them)for appearing really early in the spring and helping to fill gaps.

Range of different sizes and flowering times too. Thalictrum Elin is a spring/summer plant, Thalictrum Delavayi a late summer/autumn one

Also happy in severe clay soil and still flowers well in deep shade, so a bit of a miracle plant if you have a small shady sluggy clay garden (most UK city gardens)

Sacking the permanent secretary of the Treasury though, I don't see that as being unreasonable if a government wants to move away from their typical 'treasury-brained' ways. Reporting on it as an argument for Truss' personal failings is just another bit of Westminster psychodrama, so I'd be inclined to ignore it.

For all that the right wing press like to attack 'mandarins', the truth is they are widely respected by all the people that matter, and unlike literally any politician they have had to apply for their jobs and get to the top of the ladder by proving their skills and experience.

They also take the idea of serving the government of the day - whatever it's political flavour - very seriously, and know which side their bread is buttered.

So the only reason Truss and Kwarteng would have had problems with Tom Scholar is if they wanted to do something absolutely insane. He would have had zero problem with them just wanting a change of direction. Alongside the OBR business, it just screams - I don't even want to listen to what the grown-ups have to say -

You can be sure that if John McDonnell, for example, had got in, he would have wanted to change things up dramatically, but known the importance of not spooking people by acting like a madman. Truss was (is) lacking even the tiniest speck of self awareness

punished by the press mainly for seeking a heterodox monetary position

'punished by the markets for increasing their risk by appearing to be a maniac' is the truth of it

More than just the unfunded tax cuts, it was the combination of sacking the widely respected permanent secretary of the Treasury on day 1, refusing to let the OBR produce forecast for the budget, and talking about how said budget was only the beginning and things were shortly going to get even wilder

The markets aren't so much committed to the orthodoxy, as they are afraid of not being able to predict what's coming because the people in charge are dogmatic morons. There is plenty of scope to rewrite all the rules provided you do it carefully and predictably

I want to have a hangout area, with picnic table etc

Currently all just black plastic on top of weeds

What do people do for ground cover - sow grass seed and just put up with regular (or knowing me, occasional) mowing?

Or would you go for woodchip like you might on paths

Probably treated with much stronger chemicals than are on the market today, and will last very well as is

Yes

I’m hoping my Niwaki one is at least made by them!

Niwaki are importers not manufacturers surely...

It spreads a lot (in my garden conditions at least) and is very hard to eliminate. Having said that it never gets huge, and once it gets big-ish it's quite easy to pull out the leafy growth (the rhizomes stay put when you do this though and will regrow). It grows easily through woodchip and gravel so it's hard to eliminate from paths.

Personally I wouldn't deliberately let it grow. But I wouldn't necessarily go to town on removing it.

Certainly appears to have been sucking in bindweed, brambles and cinquefoil from all corners of the galaxy

Done built a shed. Not the greatest quality but it will do a job. No excuses left now for not clearing and digging the rest of the plot

3 year old is insisting it gets painted in pink and purple stripes, which is an uncharacteristically good idea

Yeah exactly

No offence but to anyone thinking about that Koto thing, climb out of your arse and buy this instead for £170

https://www.biggamehunters.co.uk/products/cafe-shop-playhouse

I had bindweed in my borders when I moved to my current house, and managed to remove it without too much effort at all just by pulling it up whenever I saw it, obvs taking as much root as possible. Haven't seen it reappear in several years since.

The real problem with it is how it likes to tangle itself all up in the roots of other plants - if it's all twisted round the base of your favourite rose bush for example, that's a killer.

Isn't that the @Velocio deluxe hybrid from many years ago - sure he could tell you how it's holding up

The Tory candidate in Basildon and Billericay is Richard Holden, the Tory Party Chairman, who used his influence to force his selection as a stitch up, by being the only candidate, in a safe seat down south, after doing the chicken run from his seat in the north east.

ChatGPT is of course completely unreliable for things like this

What the Reform manifesto actually says is that it's not our fault that we did slavery because so did Arabs

I took you as defending this point, with reference to the TV debate audience

NONE of the political parties represent what typical people want - am I wrong ?
The only vote that will shake up the system into something that listens to the people is a strong "non of the above" voice, and that appears to be Reform

Of course it is, rightly so after the last 14 years

But that by far the largest group of people in the country appear to be about to vote for a straight-down-the-middle, sensible-if-stolid Labour party, does not suggest that they are looking to extremists as the answer.

15-20% of the country do indeed appear to be about to vote for a mad old racist, but I don't think you can tar 'the people' with that brush

Vladimir Putin: an admirable political operator
Genghis Khan: the voice of common sense

The sort of people who volunteer to attend a TV politics debate are in absolutely no way representative of 'the people'

Even less so when they've been deliberately stratified to be 50% labour supporters and 50% conservative at a time when labour are polling 40% and the tories 20%.

Splitting the left vote is all the Greens have ever achieved. At the last election they got 1 MP (over Labour) but in 16 constituencies, a Tory candidate won over Lib Dem or Labour by fewer votes than the Greens received. 16 own goals to one.

If Reform can consistently achieve own goals on the right, as the Greens have on the left for decades, it's a gamechanger for British politics.

Hence why the Tories (even someone like David Cameron who understood the value of holding the center) have been trying so hard to swallow up Reform/UKIP.

About a month since taking it on

Slow going! But progress

The pro looking solution is to put them in a rhubarb forcing pot

Companies can't inherit the assets of a charity, so removing charity status would be an enormous headache