With thanks to John, Brenda and Andi.
And… 20.
2019: Stay away from negative people.
2020: Stay away from positive people.
The world has turned upside down.
Old folks are sneaking out of the house,
and their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!
You think it’s bad now?
In 20 years our country will be run by people
homeschooled by day drinkers.
This virus has done what no woman had been able to do …
cancel all sports, shut down all bars, and keep men at home!!!
Do not call the police on suspicious people in your neighbourhood!
Those are your neighbours without makeup and hair extensions!
Day 7 at home and the dog is looking at me like,
“See? This is why I chew the furniture!”
Does anyone know if we can take showers yet,
or should we just keep washing our hands???
I never thought the comment “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a six-foot pole”
would become a national policy, but here we are!
Me: “Alexa what’s the weather this weekend?”
Alexa: “It doesn’t matter – you’re not going anywhere.”
I swear my fridge just said
“What the hell do you want now?”
When this is over …
what meeting do I attend first …
Weight Watchers or AA?
Quarantine has turned us into dogs.
We roam the house all day looking for food.
We are told “no” if we get too close to strangers.
And we get really excited about car rides.
If you keep a glass of wine in each hand,
you can’t accidentally touch your face.
This cleaning with alcohol is total b.s..
NOTHING gets done after that first bottle.
Kinda’ starting to understand why
pets try to run out of the house when the door opens.
I’m so excited it’s time to take the garbage out.
I wonder what I should wear?
Where’s your husband?…. In the garden …. I didn’t see him …. You just need to dig a little.
My Mom always told me I wouldn’t accomplish anything by laying in the bed all day…but look at me now! I’m saving the world!
Whoever owes you money,
go to their house now.
They should be at home.
Homeschooling Day #5:
They all graduated. #Done.
Home-schooling is going pretty well so far,
except two students were suspended for fighting,
and one teacher fired for drinking on the job!
++++++++++
***********
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
I’ll admit it, the fridge one got me XD
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LOL.
🙂
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The most telling list is the one that ends with,
Life is so fragile………
Great BIG session this week,many keepers.
Love the one with our submarine pm.
Thanks for a great start to the day.
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Well, Dave, if we started a few days off with a smile… Job done, I think.
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Trump with carpet tape stuck on his face had me in stitches. Thanks for the laughs.
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Aye, Rab. If only someone would do that to him, and tape up his fingers so he’d stop tweeting.
Glad you enjoyed.
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Fair cheered me up. Thanks
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Glad to hear it, Tatu.
We’re very lucky that we get so many people sending stuff in and even drawing toons especially for us.
Sun is shining here so Munguin is setting me a task of planting up the annuals! How I’m going to get his ironing done a the same time, I just don’t know…
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Some crackers in there (sorry, no cheese).
BoJo is due a relapse. How far can his govt’s credibility slide before he does?
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He’s threatening to be back at work this week.
I’m not sure that a relapse would be a good idea. It would kinda setback the idea of herd immunity.
I’m sure he’ll find another excuse to get off work though. He’s really done very little since he became PM.
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Pic 5. Clint Eastwood – “toliet paper or not toliet paper? – that is the question…”
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I’m sure he could get some toilet paper for a Fist Full of Dollars and some hand sanitiser for a Few Dollars More. One of the neighbours couldn’t get any soap and we now call him Dirty Harry.
It’s been a strange time and as for human nature, well I’ve seen the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The UK government, well they’ll be Unforgiven.
I was reading on FireFox that there will be a Sudden Impact on the economy. Things are on a Tightrope and we are not far from Heartbreak Ridge. There are few buses but I have seen Two Mules for Sister Sara and a Pink Cadillac…
(I can’t match John and Andimac for puns but song and film titles, I have some skill…)
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Brilliant, PP! Look out for the Gran Torino behind the Pink Cadillac Stay safe – Any which way you can!
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Panda Paws……Excellent! 🙂
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Brilliant, PP.
🙂
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You just “made my day ‘arry”, every which way but loose.
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It’s certainly not “nobler in the mind”
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I liked Trumpy with tape over his mouth. Dr. Fauci has developed an internet following BTW. 🙂
The media coverage of the pandemic is the subject of two recent pieces from Bill Maher’s HBO comedy/commentary show, “Real Time with Bill Maher.” (I hope that HBO copyright allows them to open on your side of the Atlantic.) It’s a serious subject that’s tricky to comment on, and Bill Maher’s famously outspoken commentaries outrage some and entertain others. He pissed off enough people to get thrown off of broadcast network TV, which landed him on HBO Cable. I enjoyed these pieces. However, Maher is generally disdainful of touchy-feely politically correct liberalism, so his mileage in the more left leaning precincts of MNR may vary. 😉
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Hmm..
China accounts for around a quarter of the worlds population. It is also pretty densely populated. It would be pretty bright to worry about the possibility that infections might start there. I watched both these examples of blame attribution, and was frankly unimpressed.
Is he right about the live meat markets? Possibly.
The purpose of the likes of the WHO is, inter alia, to identify potential causes of (epi) and pandemics. It did it’s job.
If this is true, then it will be part of the honourable history of identifying causes of disease. The London Cholera epidemic of 1854 – all these years ago – is still an example of a society of people waking up and smelling the coffee. And doing something about it!
The utterly relaxed attitudes of the West nowadays is what allowed it to spread. They were warned by both the WHO and the Chinese themselves that this was, de minimis, an epidemic.
From a UK perspective this reminds me of storms in the English Channel, storyboarded as “Europe cut off from England!”
We were far too exceptional as to catch a mere virus!
I think that this claim for ‘being exceptional’ has probably run out of railway track and is about to fall off that ricketty bridge you see just up ahead.
I usually like Bill Maher, but frankly, this is not him at his best. He has American exceptionalism on speed dial up his ass.
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Douglas…..Good comments! I don’t disagree with much. As you know, if one doubts American exceptionalism, they won’t often find such doubts expressed on American television….where Bill Maher resides. 😉
I did however come down with a generally more favorable view of these Maher pieces you did, viewing them specifically through the lens of American media and current events.
One of them was about American media’s absolutely hysterical pandemic coverage…….which seems to go FAR beyond a measured responsible account of an ongoing national and global tragedy. Using the specific examples he quoted from current American news coverage, I thought Maher made his case admirably. But as I said, it’s a touchy subject, and others may have an entirely different view.
The other item was mostly about the Tweet from Congressman Lieu, which immediately sent the mainstream (generally liberal) American media into a tizzy about how it’s racist to label a virus (first identified in China) with a Chinese name….in accordance with the traditional naming convention. Why? Because racists pick up on it and start hating Chinese-American citizens! Maher’s view expressed here is that you don’t change the virus naming convention simply because hateful racist morons decide to use it as a justification for hating people. Congressman Lieu…..shamelessly pandering to his Asian-American constituents in the 33rd Congressional District of California…..went so far as to make a stupidly irrational suggestion that you could equally well name it the “Milan virus.”
So I’m wholeheartedly with Maher on the naming issue and his view of the political pandering of Congressman Lieu. But then I also share Maher’s disdain for “touchy feely” California liberals who are eternally distressed when racial and ethnic minorities get offended by American free speech. The point is that there is no American constitutional protection against being hurt and offended by what people say to you and about your ethnic identity. If someone’s feelings are easily hurt, the USA is probably not the place for him. Americans with a politically conservative view, tend to view liberal Democrats as a bunch of whiners who feel constantly hurt and offended by something or someone. This is fundamentally the political correctness issue that’s a very big part of the conservative/liberal (Republican/Democrat) culture wars.
Legally defined “hate speech” that advocates violence, and violent behavior itself directed against racial and ethnic minorities is an ENTIRELY different thing of course.
Anyway, since Maher comes down hard on American left wing liberalism (as practiced in Congressman Ted Lieu’s California for example,) I pointed out that he might find a less friendly reception from democratic Socialists of the UK and Europe than he does from me for example.
Thanks for the feedback Douglas. I enjoyed your comments. 😉
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It’s still Monday so time for more laughs – even groans. maybe…
The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from too much pi.
She was only a whisky-maker, but he loved her still.
No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.
A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab centre said:
“Keep off the Grass.”
The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
If you tried to jump off the bridge in Paris you would be in Seine.
A vulture carrying two dead raccoons boards an airplane. The stewardess looks at him and says” “I’m sorry, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”
Two Irish Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during root-canal?
His goal: transcend dental medication.
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Brilliant, John…
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Why did houses in the Basque country have so many doors ?
To avoid putting all your Basques in the one exit.
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ARGHHHHHHH
ROTFLOL
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Brilliant, tears roiling down my face here!
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So glad for humour at the moment.
Some of it is a bit crude; some a bit cruel, but we really need a laugh.
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Excellent. He’s very funny and very direct.
My problem with place naming viruses is the effect it has on the stupider members of the public.
People with a “Chinese look” being beaten up for being Chinese. People refusing to buy Chinese takeaway meals.
It’s not been played much here.
Trump, as in everything, overplayed it. It’s almost like he has to blame someone for everything so that it can’t be his fault and he can go on feeling that he is special.
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Yes Tris, I agree it’s a terrible thing that American racists equate a hideous viral product of bizarre Chinese culinary culture with Chinese-American citizens and Chinese-American restaurants. ( A Chinese “culture” BTW which the dictatorial modern government of China should eradicate from the face of the earth…..the disappointed people of Southern China who want to eat bats be damned.)
I also agree with Maher who says…..”We can’t stop telling the truth because racists get the wrong idea” about Chinese-Americans.
And of course Trump overplayed it and used it for his own political self-interest. He does after all depend on the votes of those racists……who are both hateful AND too stupid to sort out the difference between a Chinese virus and a Chinese-American restaurant owner.
And for that matter, Congressman Ted Lieu of the 33rd Congressional District of California…..who posted the absurd Tweet about Milan…….was also acting in his own political self-interest among the eternally offended liberals of California and his many Asian-American constituents.
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“And for that matter, Congressman Ted Lieu of the 33rd Congressional District of California…..who posted the absurd Tweet about Milan”
was that in lieu of sense?
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PP…..Very good! I wish I had thought of that. 😉
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LOL… you just can’t stop, can you?
I blame John and Andi. They are bad influences.
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Politicians gonna make political capital, Danny. No matter where they come from.
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Tris……Oh yes! There are tons of political hay being made on both sides. Trump is by far the most extreme offender of course since he is unencumbered by actual facts. 😉
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… or indeed any decency, or intellect… and most other things that people humans, human.
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“A Chinese “culture” BTW which the dictatorial modern government of China should eradicate from the face of the earth…..the disappointed people of Southern China who want to eat bats be damned.”
Chinese “wet markets” are a deal more complex than that and virtually impossible to eradicate.
Briefly (and skating over timelines) Chinese agriculture has developed into two distinct groupings in the last 30 years :
1) Megafarms – pigs/chickens & increasingly dairy cattle are the classic examples here. Mass production/slaughter to supply the rich coastal areas;
2) Smallholdings. Around 200 million people depend on those.
The smallholdings can’t compete with the megafarms and indeed were actively encouraged to diversify into other areas to survive – such as other meats. The bats for example are bred, not caught & would be a cash crop rather than the main business of the smallholding.
The last couple of SARS outbreaks have resulted in temporary bans on the markets but trade just got driven underground which made it harder to inspect/police.
So not as simple as it seems.
Whether this time changes things? We’ll see…
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Thanks, Vestas.
We really need to tighten up as much as we can on hygiene in agriculture.
Maybe farms need to make more money but feeding ground up cow carcases to cows was not sensible and led to Tory ministers feeding beef burgers to their daughters!!!
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Or do what the yanks have done – drop their standards further while nobody is watching too closely.
Their “health inspectors” in abbatoirs must be amazing if they can inspect potentially 3 birds a second – or perhaps not given the yearly increase of 9% in salmonella cases BEFORE they loosened the regs again.
Coming soon to a supermarket near you if LBJ/Cummings survive (politically/whatever) long enough to crash any Brexit talks, grab a shitty deal with the USA, cash out their billions in speculative positions and walk away laughing at us all.
Cynical? Moi? 😉
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Its not that long ago that a hapless idiot minister in England announced that virtually all eggs were contaminated with salmonella.
Again, probably due to feeding them ground up chicken bones.
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The mortality rate in modern chicken rearing system was so high there wasn’t enough live ones to eat the ground up dead. The answer? why not put the surplus dead chickens into calf feed pellets and most calf feed pellets go to the dairy calves, a developing, confirmed vegetarian, ruminant, ffs!
Salmonella wasn’t the worry, the developing BSE was, and similar to the ignored Cygnus report on the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic, the Westminster government ignored the warning of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) from Dr. Stanley Prosiner, in 1982! He called the culprit a prion protein, pronouncing it “preeon.”
I had to cull some very good animals because of the BSE regs. Very few abbatoirs were sanctioneded to deal with the cull. The one I had to use tried to con me out out of the compensation money, the same one that, a few years later, was at the start of the foot and mouth outbreak, connected to Grampian foods.
Probably a bit more than anyone wanted but I needed to get some of that off my chest. I can now enjoy the puns and chuckles more. Thanks all.
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Jeez. It’s horrific.
But look, there was the ever present chancer who thought to turn disaster into a money making scheme. The Jacob Rees Mogg of yesteryear.
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Horrific, I didn’t mention my workings for the origins of Ecoli 0157. I sent it off with the detail, references etc to the BBC and Scientific America. Heard thing back, not even an acknowledgment. I must have been more naive back then than now.
Ssshh, it was the Americans.
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*didn’t hear*
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LOL
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Vestas……that’s very interesting. I can appreciate that the Chinese practices that are sources of world epidemics would not be easy to get rid of. But I thought that Maher’s comment that a dictatorial government of China that enforced one child per family on pain of involuntary sterilization should be able to stamp out just about any Chinese practice that was endangering the world market for Chinese exports.
On the other hand, maybe even the government of China would not like to have to go so far as shooting the farmers who don’t change their ways for example…..if that’s what it would take. Maybe there are measures that even the famously brutal Chinese commies wouldn’t do anymore. 😉
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They tried to ban wet markets at least twice in the last 20 years & failed. Short of starving 200 million people (no cash crop = no seeds next year for example) there’s not a lot they can do.
Oh and the one child policy only ever worked in the cities. Rural areas took bugger all notice as you need more than one child to keep the farm going….
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Vestas….that’s really very interesting. From a “sensible” ( 😉 ) American point of view, if a brutal communist state can’t work its will by simply shooting everyone who won’t do what they’re told, then what’s left to believe in? 😉
And if some Chinese like to eat bats and other weird animals so much that they raise them for the purpose, we’re clearly dealing with deranged people who can’t be reasoned with. 😉
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-wildlife/animals-live-for-man-chinas-appetite-for-wildlife-likely-to-survive-virus-idUSKBN20A0RK
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I wonder what bat tastes like… Gotta be better than Grits! 🙂
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Tris…..you have it right about grits…..LOL. If you ever travel south of the Mason-Dixon line, don’t make the mistake of ordering grits. But they’ll probably serve them anyway. 😉
In formal dining in China, I wonder what wine is served with bat.
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oh dear… we’ll need to consult the etiquette book Munguin has in his study …
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🙂
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I think the attitude may stem from a substantial number of people knowing that the Spanish Flu got that name because in neutral Spain there were no censors to suppress reporting – unlike the countries at war. Various places have been implicated but there is insufficient epidemiological evidence to definitively tie it to any of them.
My dad had it bad when he was a teenager. He almost died of it.
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Brenda…..There was a very very elderly family friend who told a story about a job he had when he was a young kid in 1918 delivering telegrams for Western Union. He said he remembered delivering death notifications and seeing people weeping as they read the telegrams.
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I’ve just skimmed the Wikipedia page on it, Brenda. I had never thought much about it, but it is not certain that there actually was anything particularly Spanish about it at all. As you say, that seems to have been down to the freedom of the press in Spain and the non freedom of the press elsewhere.
To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Newspapers were free to report the epidemic’s effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit. This gave rise to the name Spanish flu. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic’s geographic origin, with varying views as to its location.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
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Tris…..I was amazed to read that there wasn’t really anything Spanish about the initial outbreak of the 1918 pandemic.
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That Wiki article is really good.
It could have originated anywhere from France, England, Kansas…
Really worth a read.
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OT and wrong day… but, does anyone know what this is growing in a graveyard?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV_u2fwXYAAvWdh?format=jpg&name=small
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Tris, it’s Common Horsetail (Esquisetum arvense) in its early growth stage. It’ll soon turn into the bright green fronded nuisance that infests my garden (word used loosely). It’s almost ineradicable.
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Thanks, Andi. Bugger le Panda had it up on Twitter. I said that someone from Munguin’s Republic would know, and you didn’t let me down.
I’ll let him know on Twitter.
Who needs Wikipedia?
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Horsetail, panscrub, equisetum arvensis, all the same very old (oldest?) plant. This is the early stage, the spore producing spears appear in the spring. This spore stage is not photosynthetic, will die quite quickly and then up comes the green sterile plant.
Hard to get rid of, the root run can be several feet down. I associate it with a drainage problem deep down. I was never too upset to see it growing, as long as it wasn’t out of hand, it was very useful. It holds more silica in its growth than any plant, making it very useful to strengthen other plants against fungal attack, when used as a folier spray and as a pot scourer hence one of its common names. I’ve used it many, many times, very good, as a panscrub I haven’t tried.
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Sorry Andi, didn’t see your reply, till after I posted.
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Geez, sounds horrific.
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My brother, the gardener, says the stuff to knock the weed back is ‘NEUDOFF’.
It’s a very strong weedkiller but he can only find it in farming areas.
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I’ll put that up on the Twitter feed, Dave. Thanks.
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That’s not going to do it.
Going to have to rotovate/dig over that section then treat it with an appropriate weedkiller maybe 3-4 times over the course of 2 years if you want rid of it for good. Rotovator is (in normal times) easier to start with as you can just rent one for the day to break things up.
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Be better to move house!!!!
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😊 just don’t build your house on top of it. It is a determined plant, like rhubarb, indoor foliage coming up through the floorboards.
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Even though I am late getting to this post, the humor did not fade. Thanks so much for the laughs, especially the Clint Eastwood one about shaking hands.
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Welcome, Geri.
We all need laughs right now, don’t you think?
🙂
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Yes I do so keep it up if y.ou can for your readers
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I’m on it! 🙂
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