Prunus laurocerasus

That shrub is a pretty shape :o)

lol hope it stays that way! I must dig out the photos I took last September, when I viewed the property, to see the "before". Of course, I don't know how long the garden had been untended.

I may have doubled up on pics, as it's now showing; if the prevoius has no comments, I'll take it out

Yup, it's showing fine now Fran :)

typical , so is the other one! and that's got comments too, so don't want to deelte

After reading the comments on the other pic, I was reminded about hearing recently that P.laurocerasus can cause poisoning when pruned. Didn't want to scare you if I was wrong, so I googled it, and came upon this interesting article...http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz/prunus_laurocerasus.htm

It seems that there's no need to worry as long as you don't chew it, or shred it. It contains compounds that can turn in to cyanide! They never tell you that when you buy it do they!? And not only this plant, but other members of the prunus family, almonds etc!

thanks, dear!

so far I've not touched it, well, maybe touched it a bit - the pruning was done by a gardener before I actually moved in

wow, that's alarming! i had vague plans about composting smaller stuff, leaves etc, and drying the rest to burn on my mini-barbie "bonfire"

yeah, it's amazing what they don't tell you, isn't it?

you'd think there'd be warnings, like "side effect" leaflets on medication.

i'll certainly check that link, and thank you for thinking of it x

ps, could you poast taht link as a new blog or something, to spread the word?

pps, I would, but as you brought it to my attention you should get the credit!! xx

Well, ok! The whole website is fascinating anyway. It's from thesis on garden at Alnwick...by the person who planted and researched that.

I saved the link and flipped through the A-Z - Snowberry's on it too, so that's another reason to diminish it!

I've ordered the book 'Is that Cat Dead' that is written by the same author. Looks fascinating!

noticed it! but sadly, I have great trouble reading books - depends on the typeface and font size they use; I can manage some with a stuggle, but others are impossible. At least I can read some where I can't read newspapers, the line spacing makes all the difference.

tell me how good it is, please?!

Do you use a kindle at all Fran?

I did check them out, Karen, but I don't think they'd be any good for me. I know the text size can be enalrged, but it'd be like a pdf - I can zoom right in with that, but then I only get a few words onscreen at a time; i have to try to memorise each section until I reach a full stop, then try to reconstruct the whole sentence!

I tried a friend's and it did zoom to the rigth size for me, but it only held a few words: it would mean "page up" eery few seconds, which would be a bit weraing for a novel-legnth book - lol after spending five minutes trying to find yhe tiny "page up" button!

I know some ersions do talk, but I need to check them out before spending money on what might not be any use: talking software rarely knows how to pace a sentence, where to put the stress and so on.

lol I did ask if they made A4 versions, which would solve a lot of probs, but they don't.

Besides, ebooks are a bit like talking books on CD - you can only get what books they decide to convert to those media, and I'm not into a lot of what is "pupular" reading these days.

ha, when I get my books unpacked and also get my mike set upl maybe i can recrod my own talking books!

lol! I understand exactly what you are saying Fran. It's a real pity that you can't find a solution so you can read a good book...for the first time! I can see what you need is a really huge kindle...at least A4 size. I wonder if any of the support organisations are lobbying for that! They should be! :)

I don't know of any that is, or I'd sign up! Visually-impaired people being able to read for themselves (either zoom on a screen or audible)is still so new that tweaks and alternatives are only just starting to be considered -- the system needs to sink in abit deeper and get generally accpted first. lol it's a bit like VHS and Betamax!

I can convert pdf to Word, but it's a lot of faffing about - if ebooks are set up in Notepad format, they're formatted line by line, not paragraph by paragraph - so when they're put into Word and the font size enlarged, a pargraph can be spread over a couple of pages, word or two on each line, and they have to be stitched back together, line by line.

I've done that with some ebooks, but what was maybe 250 pages becomes nearly a thousand pages in large print, and every page has to be reformatted line by line. You really have to want to read a book to go through all that! When it's all reformatted into pargraphs and chapters it can be about 700-800 pages.

lol maybe I could reformat them back into pdfs and then try them on a Kindle! but i'm not sure that would be any better than small print zoomed up.

but it depends on what format has been used to create the ebook; there are other formts that I can't even open, let alone convert. it's a bit like buying music online: i bought a BBC radio series, but it came down as one single track, all episoes in the series lumped together, and I cant separate them; they're "mp3" but with a tweak that preents them from being broken into indiidual episodes. so i have to play the whole series to find the one episode I really want to listen to

Well, you do some amazing things for a woman with a lot of challenges! Moving right across the country for one! And gardening for another! So just keep on truckin!

thanks Karen! lol difference between "doing" and "doing well" - got to make lotsa mistakes to get the prectice.

I still can't quite beleive that I moved 200 miles, all on my own, all organised and sorted by me. lol maybe I'm still slightly jet-lagged