Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: lilyjean on July 25, 2010, 23:01:36
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Two nights ago I was thrilled to see my blackcurrant bushes loaded with fruit. Unfortunately I'd ran out of netting and couldn't cover up the bushes. But I went immediately on the following day only to find that they had all gone :( is it possible the pigeons had a feast on them in such a short time? Strangely, the same thing happened to some other tenants not far from me. But, they covered their bushes with netting......the plot thickens!
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birds strip my cherry tree long before the fruits are ready to pick, i've never had a single cherry off the tree, and its huge.
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sounds like squirrels
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two legged thieves? :)
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Blackbirds or starlings?
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We and several other plot holders had gooseberries that vanished like that 4 years on the trot, I was told it was the birds..rubbish.If it was the birds they waited till they were ready to harvest, did it either in the dark or before 6am, they didn't drop one, they didn't miss one off my 10 bushes, they left footprints and they stripped every gooseberry on all the lotties wether covered or not, they even put netting in a pile, so unless birds have started wearing boots and started tidying up after themselves...... nuff said
XX Jeannine
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two legged thieves? :)
It did cross our minds....but didn't want to think of anything sinister or ill thoughts of our parish. But it is strange.....how the bushes are wiped clean in such a short time :-\
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We and several other plot holders had gooseberries that vanished like that 4 years on the trot, I was told it was the birds..rubbish.If it was the birds they waited till they were ready to harvest, did it either in the dark or before 6am, they didn't drop one, they didn't miss one off my 10 bushes, they left footprints and they stripped every gooseberry on all the lotties wether covered or not, they even put netting in a pile, so unless birds have started wearing boots and started tidying up after themselves...... nuff said
XX Jeannine
My total sentiments! It doesn't help when literally only a night or two before the currants disappeared so did two chickens get stolen. The chicken owners + friends are a little further up opposite to my other friends whose currants also strangely disappeared. And, for the first time in 4 years they had no strawberries......
The disappearance of the chickens hit our local rag. If nothing else our allotment became famous for a short spell!!
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do you all have hobo's in area?
I not sure if hobo still exist but there where common human garden pest in my grand fathers time.
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Oh yes theere are plenty of them there hobo's still around ;D
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Hobos? You mean the unemployed?
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Hobo is an American word for tramp.. a gentleman of the road.
Folks living UK side of the pond say tramp... US side of the pond say hobo.
Mmm nuff said.
XX Jeannine
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Hobo is an American word for tramp.. a gentleman of the road.
Folks living UK side of the pond say tramp... US side of the pond say hobo.
Mmm nuff said.
XX Jeannine
Well well..I didn't know that! I've learnt so much from this awesome site...Brilliant! :)
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Hobo is an American word for tramp.. a gentleman of the road.
Folks living UK side of the pond say tramp... US side of the pond say hobo.
Mmm nuff said.
XX Jeannine
Well well..I didn't know that! I've learnt so much from this awesome site...Brilliant! :)
actually in the US tramp can mean a hobo ( hobo I think is a bit less negative) but more frequently tramp means prostitute.
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Yes Gran, I agree.
UK tramp if female would be a lady of low morals, if male would be a what you call a hobo.
My point is that for someone to use the word hobo in the context of the post ,that poster would be almost surely from the US.
Just geographically working somethng out LOL
XX Jeannine
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Folks living UK side of the pond say tramp... US side of the pond say hobo.
Have not heard the word 'tramp' for a very long time, we are all PC, and just call them homeless.
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Folks living UK side of the pond say tramp... US side of the pond say hobo.
Have not heard the word 'tramp' for a very long time, we are all PC, and just call them homeless.
Yes you're correct- today one would say "homeless".
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My definition of a tramp(male) was like the chap who used to come to my Dad's place once or twice a year when I was young.He used to move around the country earning his living doing farmwork etc,He would help with sheep shearing, crop picking,etc and had a regular route, at my Dads's place he had a sleeping place in a loft, stayed about a week,in the Spring he used to all kinds of jobs, mending fences, planting stuff,digging, in the Autumn he used to come back quite late in the year and do year end clean up etc .Mum gave him his meals etc.He would not sleep in the house. He had no regular home to my knowledge,but he worked hard to support himself and would not take anything he didn't work for.
I remember one year my Mum gave him some clothes that Dad didn't want, he accepted them but next morning before he left he trimmed all the hedging which surrounded the orchard.
XX Jeannine
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The word 'tramp' as in homeless derives from england.
On the passing of the Poor Laws of 1832, it became a criminal offence to be vagrant and homeless. The penalty was you could be locked up in the Poor house for a month, doing mailbag sewing to earn your keep.
This was superseded by the invention of The Poor Law Unions, or the 'Spike'. The Spike offered you a place to sleep and a meal, and then the obligatory sermon and prayers. You were then locked in for the night and ejected at 6 AM next morning. Now the way he law worked, was you couldnt stay in the same Spike more than once every month, so you were forced to walk to the next spike, and they were all placed about ones days walk apart. So for more than 100 years, this bizzare ritual of vagrant people (usually men) 'tramping' from one spike to the next, round and round the country, constantly kept on the move, took place. The Poor Law system was not formally abolished until the 1948 National Assistance Act.
George Orwell wrote a brilliant account of it in' Down and Out in Paris and London'.
Tramp in reference to woman of low morals is an American word. In england she would have been referred to as a 'hussy' or 'Scarlett woman'. "The Lady Is a Tramp" is a show tune from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical Babes In Arms':
She gets too hungry, for dinner at eight
She loves the theater, but doesn't come late
She'd never bother, with people she'd hate
That's why the lady is a tramp
So in 1937 a 'tramp' when used to describe a female actually was nearer to what we might call a 'free spirit'.
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I agree about the ladt definaition but not that way now..XX
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Wow! Thank you lincsyokel2 for that interesting little tale. I love learning the origins to our vocabulary....fascinating! :) How amazing is this site; everybody has a tale, story, information to share......Brilliant! :)
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Wow! Thank you lincsyokel2 for that interesting little tale. I love learning the origins to our vocabulary....fascinating! :) How amazing is this site; everybody has a tale, story, information to share......Brilliant! :)
Interesting that we wandered from berries to definitions of tramps. Probably someone will bring us full circle.
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well in my grandfathers day hobo's where not above stealing the odd fruit off of trees or stealing the odd chicken. Hence my reference. In USA hobos' where also known for riding freight trains. A good example of this can be seen in the Lee Marvin movie :Emperor of the North,
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I don't expect anyone would mind the 'odd' apple diappearing from a well laden tree but chickens sounds more serious. I had one apple on a very younger tree last year and it disappeared just as it ripened I was very upset. I had waited two years for that single fruit. It was supposed to be a bramley so not only was it not that variety but it vanished. Wasps and birds are a pain but in neither case does the fruit completely go without a trace.
I thought a hobo was a migrant worker. I think the expression here is also 'of no fixed abode'.
We also have travellers (formally known as gipsies) who camp out on the highways and byways and graze their spotted horses at the side of the roads. Some of which particularly the old drovers roads are quite wide. They help themselves to things in the hedgerows, but then we all help ourselves to blackberries, sloes and elderflowers. When I was young we used to bolt our door and take the milk in very quickly if they were in the neighbourhood. But now we have lots of groups in the vicinity and I have not heard of any major problems.
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My point is that for someone to use the word hobo in the context of the post ,that poster would be almost surely from the US.
Just geographically working somethng out LOL
XX Jeannine
From the US, somewhere round the latitude of Philadelphia. I haven't tied it down closer than that.
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;D ;D
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My point is that for someone to use the word hobo in the context of the post ,that poster would be almost surely from the US.
Just geographically working somethng out LOL
XX Jeannine
From the US, somewhere round the latitude of Philadelphia. I haven't tied it down closer than that.
It was not I who mentiond "hobo" first!
Anyway to refine the definition: hobo-types didn't always work but migrant workers do. They have a very hard life and especially their children. I shudder to think.
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Birds have ears, they listen to you, and if you say you are going to pick the fruit tomorrow, they think 'quick eat it'. They are very clever these birds and one day the bush is full of fruit and when you think it is ready to pick, so do they. Probably why fruit cages were invented. Birds like ripe berries too. I wish I knew who, or what dug a big hole where I planted two pepper plants, that I have been watering everyday on the allotment and left no trace of the plants. Must be the same animal that run across my pumpkins, fox I think. I would rather the birds had the fruit, then some nasty person. Starlings can strip a tree in minutes, haven't seen the green parrots yet this year. They are probably waiting for the sunflower seeds, which they love, and are welcome to.
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I wonder which part of the US Plainleaf is from, he mentioned it first XX Jeannine
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I wonder which part of the US Plainleaf is from, he mentioned it first XX Jeannine
I think ACE knows
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Jeannine I believe that plainleaf resides in, or near, Reston, VA.
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Tramps used to leave marks scratched on gateposts, to indicate various things to other tramp, such as if the occupiers were kind, or didnt welcome tramps, if there was food or water , somewhere to sleep, of if they would call the police, or there were guard dogs.
These were called Tramp Marks. Interestingly, the term fell out of use after the Poor Laws were repealed, since the system of tramping then slowly vanished, persisting until the late 1960's, but then reappeared as 'Tramp Mark' or 'Tramp Stamp', a tattoo on the small of the back on women of low morality and biologically accommodating disposition.
I love words.
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Birds have ears, they listen to you, and if you say you are going to pick the fruit tomorrow, they think 'quick eat it'. They are very clever these birds and one day the bush is full of fruit and when you think it is ready to pick, so do they. Probably why fruit cages were invented. Birds like ripe berries too. I wish I knew who, or what dug a big hole where I planted two pepper plants, that I have been watering everyday on the allotment and left no trace of the plants. Must be the same animal that run across my pumpkins, fox I think. I would rather the birds had the fruit, then some nasty person. Starlings can strip a tree in minutes, haven't seen the green parrots yet this year. They are probably waiting for the sunflower seeds, which they love, and are welcome to.
;D ;D ;D Loved it! Brilliant!
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Thank you Flighty..do all the others live with him XX Jeannine
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Flightysorry but i don't live close to Reston VA.
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Am I getting the feeling of De ja vu
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I recommend The Autobiography of a Supertramp, by William Davies (What is this life if full of care...)
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Oh may we ask where you do live please XX Jeannine
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and I thought a hobo was someone from Hoboken NJ
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and I thought a hobo was someone from Hoboken NJ
;D ;D ;D I'm sure Hobokenites will just LUV hearing that one!
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I think Hoboken is a bit posh now, but you've got to admit it was a tad rough in times gone by :D
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I'm sure me old mucker is from neverland, or there abouts. :-X ;D ;D ;D