Home vs travel

[funflair]

Automatic watering systems are great - solar powered with access to a few water butts - even keep our plants in the "shed" (aka outdoor ish summer room) watered and healthy.

Robot mower keeps grass perfect (we came back to 3 foot high grass once!)

Not many weeds.

But just loads of house jobs/maintenance stacks up.

And worst, it breaks routines at home with friends and contacts and too much travel does keep you an outsider a bit

We have a couple of lawn mowers going at the moment, one even fertilises as it goes but doesn't have a bluetooth app sadly.

 

[Buddy1012]

It’s a 3rd world issue but the hardest thing I find about going on motorhome tours is that our garden / allotment doesn’t get the attention it deserves. As we are avid gardeners timing our planting , sowing cycles harvesting to adventures is a real challenge - let alone the watering issue .

We also find that after a few weeks away we miss our home and when I’m home for a while we miss the motorhome .

Crazy eh ?

Been away for 9 weeks over this relatively dry, hot summer. Came home to this - best investment ever (alongside m’home of course).

 

[Jewellbags]

Been away for 9 weeks over this relatively dry, hot summer. Came home to this - best investment ever (alongside m’home of course).

Just about to rip ours out and replace with a drought tolerant gravel garden.

 

[Lusky]

We have a couple of lawn mowers going at the moment, one even fertilises as it goes but doesn't have a bluetooth app sadly.

how does it fertilise ?

 

[Minxy]

how does it fertilise ?

You need to ask the rabbit ...

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Minxy]

Every time I return from a longish trip, there's a jungle awaiting me. I currently have a hippo size bag plus a few other bags of tree prunings and I still have about 30% of the tree still to do.

Wow ... respect, we only have lions and tigers in ours and cages to catch them in!

 

[Puddleduck]

We've got the point of pretty much 'sod' the garden! We went away for most of September and just before we went I cut the grass and did a load of clipping, lopping etc, came back to some of the grass being 6" high! Fortunately no tigers or lions were hiding in it and hubby gave it a highish cut with our old corded electric mower as the cordless one would've struggled (plus it's MINE and I wouldn't trust him with it!). When we get a couple of sunny dry days and it's dried out a bit I'll give it a proper cut as its too soggy at present.

Last year we went away in July and came back to a jungle ... I'm sure I saw Tarzan at one point!

We have a robot lawn mower. I think irnbru also has one.

 

[EzeeRider]

A robot mower should solve the lawn issue. You can program it from your phone whilst away.

Had another thought from a memory that someone had turned their lawn into a wild flower meadow to save cutting it.
ezee

 

[MikenPauline]

We’re the same. When we’ve been at home for a few weeks we say it would be nice to go away then after we’ve been away for a while we say it would be nice to get home. We have a greenhouse which when we were at work full time I used to love growing things from seed but struggled with thinning them out etc., Now we’re retired I have the time but as we’re away so much it’s a waste of time trying to grow anything. Garden is small and low maintenance so that’s not an issue.

Pauline

 

[Lenny HB]

My wife loves gardening she out there all day every day when we are at home. I hate and moan like a drain when I have cut the lawn every two or three weeks. Lawns too rough for a robot lawn mower.

Daughter promises to water the garden she only lives a couple of hundred yards away but often forgets.

I'm only allowed 6½ weeks away in the van at a time as boss has to get back to see the grandkids.
Once away in the van I don't want to go home.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Simonjdcooper]

It’s a 3rd world issue but the hardest thing I find about going on motorhome tours is that our garden / allotment doesn’t get the attention it deserves. As we are avid gardeners timing our planting , sowing cycles harvesting to adventures is a real challenge - let alone the watering issue .

We also find that after a few weeks away we miss our home and when I’m home for a while we miss the motorhome .

Crazy eh ?

the relatively huge amount we have invested in the motorhome, to my mind, demands we use it as much as possible. That said we are not massive gardeners but we do need to make sure the Chickens are fed and watered!
About 10 days in the Moho is enough for us to be craving the creature comforts of home, less if there is no easily accessible black waste point!

 

[Tonks]

Really pleased to read this, as we have exactly the same problem - we sing in a local chamber choir, a couple of voices to a part so absences are hugely noticeable!
Last year we only managed a trip to Scotland by taking one week away before the Easter break and another one at the start of the new term. Drawing the conclusion that Motorhoming and singing are not very compatible!

I used to sing in choirs, but not nowadays although I am a church bell ringer and sometimes there are very long gaps between times I can ring at my local tower. I was interested in joining our local excellent choral society for this term as they're singing several very nice items in prep for the Christmas concert, including part of Handel's Messiah, but then I discovered the concert date is the evening that I'm going to hear Anna Lapwood play the Salisbury Cathedral organ (I'll be camping in the van at Old Sarum), so it felt a bit pointless to do all the rehearsals when I can't sing in the concert! Luckily I'll be about for my Mum's choir's concert in December.

Had another thought from a memory that someone had turned their lawn into a wild flower meadow to save cutting it.
ezee

A couple I know have a beautiful wild flower meadow front garden. People think these are just a case of throwing a packet or two of mixed wild flower seeds down, and that does work to a point, but in a garden setting it took these folk two years to establish the garden so that it looks attractive (actually, it's gorgeous), and it does still take maintenance, although can be left for longer periods than grass.

I have a small house and a small paved garden with large pots and a big trough. The trough especially suffered a bit during this summer's very hot weather, but it's all pretty low maintenance. I have lovely neighbours who have offered to come in from time to time and water, but my outside tap is on the wrong side of the house (whoever fitted it clearly wasn't a gardener, and in hosepipe ban times such as now it makes no odds!) so it means leaving containers of water outside. I won't leave full watering cans since I found a dead mouse in a part filled bucket once. On the whole, there are only a few plants which I'd be REALLY upset to lose altogether. A dwarf flowering cherry which was a gift, a rose, and a clematis I've had for about twenty years. Of course I don't want to have to totally replant my garden every year as even in a small space that becomes very expensive very quickly.

I'm not retired, so my trips tend to be short ones. The longest since Covid has been a fortnight. So it's a bit less challenging to leave the house and garden. For a long time I wasn't that keen on coming home at the end of a trip because the house never felt very welcoming, but now that I've spent a lot of time, energy (& funds, UGH) on making the house a nicer place to be I do like coming back. As my van is a CAMPERvan rather than a motorHOME I do enjoy stuff like always having hot water on tap, a 'proper' loo, more space to move about etc. But I love getting out and about in the van, too.

 

[gilbaro]

Never liked coming home from holiday as a child. Now many years on I haven't changed.
We have veg growing in pots and luckily our neighbour waters and eats it.

 

[scotjimland]

We have a 'wildlife friendly' garden for the bees and insects .. takes care of itself .

 

[gus-lopez]

neither of us has any interest in gardening really. This year though the wife put in some flowers & I thought it was sensible to use an automatic watering system whilst we were away.never again ,flowers died as the weeds took over being abundantly watered. Took six weeks in 40º+ heat to clear them
Personally I have always hated being at home anywhere . I could live in a travel lodge & still go out every day. 'Home' to me is just something that requires work & the last place I wish to be found

Automatic watering systems are great

. Only thing I want is parking space for vehicles & a decent area inside to work on them

If I had to opportunity moving to spain again,& with what I know now, I would look for an industrial unit that I could live in also

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[cyberyacht]

Day 5 of tree pruning and I've finally finished. Not counting the bagging of the detritus, of course. That'll take another day and a second tip run. Feel I've earned a trip away now if I can persuade OH.