The Life of Riley

Robbie was keeping an eye on my digging technique last week as I dug the bean trench on Plot8.

It took me three separate visits to complete, as it was hard work. The soil was bone dry and like concrete at the bottom of the trench which is about 50cm deep.

There were a few weeds but it was mostly salsify roots, though I still wasn’t inclined to take any home for eating.

Phew, finished, I left the hollyhocks at the end. I added cardboard and emptied the builders bag of decomposed weeds - hoping the seed heads are rotted and deep enough to not re-emerge - along with some partially-composted vegetables before adding the sweetcorn stalks. All that organic matter should provide a good base for our climbing beans next year and helps with the plot clearance.

The trench has had a good drenching over the last couple of days so there may be room for a bit more green waste before I back-fill that soil heap.

Whilst working on that I uncovered this little field vole. It was trying to hide under dried grass where I was working so I caught it in a pot and released it in the hedge. So cute.

On the Saturday I knew when the steam train The Flying Scotsman was passing through Hungerford so I secured my spot to get a reasonable view - it’s not the best view from the allotments, but good enough.

There it goes! I took a small video but the camera lost focus at the vital point 🙄

Here’s a rather better record of it passing over Hungerford High Street, courtesy of Oxygen Aerial Images. Perfect.

On the chilly Sunday morning I joined a little group of Britain in Bloom volunteers in returning to the roundabout to plant Spring bulbs (I think there were 400) and sow some drought-tolerant wild flower seeds. The perennials that we planted in May have grown pretty well, considering the weather.

Since May other volunteers have been watering and borage-pulling, it’s always threatening to take over. Such a lot of work and dedicated volunteers involved. Hungerford won the Silver Gilt award in the Small Towns category of the 2026 RHS Britain in Bloom competition - I’m not sure that the roundabout played any part in that, but it has looked good and should look even better next year.

Yesterday I was at the hairdressers as we watched Storm Austen stripping leaves and blowing horizontal rain up the road. Jamie and I were meant to be going to see lit up trees at Welford Park’s Spectacle of Light — we aren’t sorry that the visit has been postponed for a few days, we got a drenching when we went last year. We popped over to Oxfordshire last week and saw quite a different spectacle at Millets Farm.

Dahlia Beach

Pick your own dahlias and pumpkins! It was a very grey and rainy day but both fields were very impressive. I was sneaking up a muddy side track to get a peek of Dahlia Beach before I realised it was closed so could wander about a bit more, but couldn’t get in amongst the blooms. The buckets in the foreground are for collecting bunches of the flowers and they also sell the tubers. And I’ve never see so many pumpkins! They planted/planned for 100,000 fruits 😳

Pumpkins galore

And another cool thing. Jamie’s been having one-to-one swimming sessions with Next Stroke Swim School since finding that he could no longer swim post-stroke. Well, last Sunday he swam unaided for the first time - on his back and his front. “Drowning slowly” he calls it, but I call it a breakthrough 👏 Mike (and others) have been really great. I’m so glad we spotted their advert.

Jamie’s tutor, Mike, urging him on

This morning there’s a blue sky with pink clouds as the Sun’s just rising. We’d better go to the allotment later to see what damage the wind and rain has caused - hoping our polytunnel is still in one piece.

So to the title song, by the brilliant Lightning Seeds for this mishmash of a post. Well, since I retired, 8 months ago, I determined to achieve at least one thing each day rather than lounging. Last week on a rainy day I made a cherry and almond flapjack which counted as ‘an achievement’. I really do think some people could say I’m living the life of Riley!

Digging Your Scene

I’ve pickled a jar of  tomatoes. We’ve not tried them before but I found the recipe on the British Tomato Growers Association website while searching for inspiration. It’s mainly the tiny redcurrant tomatoes and a few cherry toms from the polytunnel plants which have all been removed now and sent off to the Council green recycling. 

As you can see it has garlic and a few herbs added to the white wine vinegar. Each tiny fruit was stabbed to let the pickling flavours in. We ate one of the small jars of tomato chutney that I made in August, it was very tasty so I hope these same tomatoes are just as flavoursome pickled.

This trug contains the last two courgettes of the year as well as the last tomatoes. I haven’t cooked the pumpkin yet, but the other veggies went into this colourful rice dish - the veg were fried in oak-smoked oil and just soy sauce as an additional flavouring. Yum.

Before going to Slimbridge and since returning I’ve had some tiring but satisfying digging sessions. Although we’ve had some meagre rain the ground is still very dry, but I was pleased to find some worms.

I was hoping to harvest some beetroot but the beets had grown too woody and they looked to have had two growing seasons so they went into our compost bin. I’ve left the chard growing, it didn’t grow very well in the Summer but the leaves and stems can provide a bit of Winter colour, even if it doesn’t get eaten. 

And I couldn’t bring myself to pull the last of the antirrhinum which are still flowering along with bindweed’s prettier cousin Convolvulus which has come to life late in the season and self-seeded so is scrambling on the ground.

The Apsleys mulch was left on top for a few days before the final dig in with chicken manure pellets.

Yesterday I planted 22 cloves of Sultop garlic, from 2 bulbs, and 42 onion sets - a mixture of white, brown and red onions. I’ve netted the onions in an attempt to protect them from birds and mammals. The garlic are planted deeper so don’t usually attract their attention.

The area where the onions were last year, on Plot8, plus some of the salsify forest(!) has been cleared of bindweed (ugh, I know it’ll be back), dug over and covered in a thick layer of Apsleys mulch plus potato fertiliser as that’s where they’ll be planted next year.

At this time of year it’s good to see clear areas with plans for 2027. There’s still a lot more to do and I’m trying to progress before the weather turns hateful and we’ll want to hibernate.

The weather is rather grey today but it has been nice and warm recently. We walked up to town and sat by the canal. The swans have 5 large cygnets now. The female slowly waddled from under the bridge directly towards us. 

She stared at us for a bit then walked off disgruntled as we didn’t have any food (must remember to put some in my handbag). As you can see in the second photo, she has a broken beak but Swan Lifeline have apparently checked her over last year and she’s ok living with it.

The Sun is just appearing and although windy it’s quite warm out there - I think I feel some digging coming on… blasting us back to the 1980s (oh, so 80s) with the Blow Monkeys.

Fine Time

We’ve just got home after a lovely 3-night break at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre, we managed to book ‘Chiffchaff’, the same shepherd’s hut where we stayed mid-heatwave in July. It’s such a cosy retreat. 

There’s Jamie in one of 13 hides available across the site. It was rather fun and because it was a rainy day we had a lot of the hides to ourselves. We like watching and listening to birds but aren’t very good at recognising them so tend to refer to most of them as ‘gull’, ‘goose’ or ‘duck’ - often just ‘bird’ which isn’t very helpful really! Here are a few photos ( I’ve added names mostly based on Google Lens so feel free to correct.)

Spoonbills

Northern Lapwing

I’d recognise a lapwing as my junior school’s playing field used to be covered in them - sad to think they’re now on the ‘red list’.

Pied Avocets

Tufted Duck

There wasn’t a lot of colour on show because it’s not mating season - I expect that’s why the tufted duck looks so grumpy 🤭

Here’s a bit of colour to cheer the page up. Flamingoes are odd-looking things but the colours are fabulous.

There are 6 different species at Slimbridge and can live to be 60 years old. This Lesser Flamingo is the smallest at less than 1metre tall and I really like the pale pink colouring.

Flamingo

But the cutest resident award goes to little Tilly, the otter. So sweet. She was quickly on the scene when her keeper arrived though initially had to be tempted into the water with food. Later we saw her happily playing on her own flipping a pebble around in her paws. Look at her lovely thick coat. I hope we see Hungerford’s wild otters one day.

We were very glad we took our Winter coats which we hadn’t needed on the first day. This is me in one of the hides. I opened the window and that’s the wind blasting in pushing my hair back. Brrr. 

We went up the Estuary Tower Hide which was really cold and the wet weather didn’t provide for great views over the Severn, but I like this view from one of the lower level hides.

We saw so many birds and heard even more. The Common Cranes were especially loud to wake up to each morning - they’re a success story for re-colonising in Britain. At 1.2m tall they’d be impressive to see in flight. I love the rhythmic sound of swans flying overhead and there were many, but this photo is Canada Geese, I think.

The early mornings and evenings sitting outside our shepherd’s hut were great for watching birds (note the generic term) fly overhead and using the Merlin app to try to identify some of the crazy pips, squawks, tweets and whistles coming from all directions! I miss those unusual sounds now we’re back home.

It was a cold and clear night after the wet day so we had an evening of star-gazing and yesterday morning there was the thinnest sliver of moon before sunrise. Beautiful.

We had a little trip out to the Sharpness Dockyard, Severn View Point to eat a pizza one evening. We went for the Sunset but enjoyed seeing two big ships manoeuvring to their moorings. This one (Misje Kandy) was ~90metres long. I was interested to see it’s a hybrid vessel built this year, you can look up all kinds of ship details through this link.

It was such a lovely break. I look forward to Hungerford’s Wetland scheme progressing over the next year. I want to suggest they follow the Slimbridge example for benches - aren’t these great?

The song title is courtesy of Cast, because we did have a mighty fine time ☺️

Memories

We’ve moved in to October and the cooler, dark nights are upon us though the daytime temperatures have been very pleasant over the last week. We’re still picking a few more tomatoes which I’ve been using with  some basil from my sister to make cheese on toast lunches a bit more interesting.

A cheesey snack

I took the last of the onions and shallots home which have been stored on the allotment since they were harvested in July.

Last weekend Jamie planted our new shallots for next year in the raised bed - it’s been topped-up with more Apsley mulch mixed in with onion fertiliser, the shallots seemed to like it last year. We’ve chosen this long variety this year, Griselle and there are 12 bulbs.

We finally had a single-serving harvest of dwarf beans that we sowed direct in July. We may get a few more but they’ve had a stressful time with droughts and now cold nights. Luckily the green courgette provided me with a bit of side veg for dinner too and I really do think that’s the last one..

I’ve dug, fertilised and mulched the area where we intend to over-Winter the broad beans. We’ll sow them in a few weeks. I’ve also bought garlic and onion sets but I need to do a bit more prep before they can be planted. The Apsleys will need digging in and mixing in the soil for those bulbs whereas the beans should be okay sown directly through the mulch. The leeks are looking rather dry but we have had some rain. One particularly short sharp shower while we were on the plot.

The little pond looks a bit more natural now it has its stoney surround and a bit of gravel in the bottom.

We’ve had a couple of lovely woodland walks, looking for acorns - they are extremely scarce this year, whereas squirrels are abundant 🤔 Savernake Forest is an ancient woodland with some oaks over 1000 years old - amazing isn’t it and very beautiful with the sun dappling through the canopy.

Savernake Forest

The leaves haven’t really started to turn yet but the ground was covered in the super-spikey chestnut cases.

At Greenham Common, Newbury, we walked round the old airbase area. I remember the first time I saw all the barbed wire and armed guards when the US missiles were sited there - it was shocking after we’d been used to going there for the Air Shows when we were younger and Jamie remembers going as a Sea Cadet to hand out pamphlets ☺️

Greenham Common

We parked where the Women’s Peace Camp was in the 1980s, there are information boards about the campaign now, but at the time many Newbury people didn’t look on the peace campers too kindly. I remember going with friends to ‘Embrace the base’ round the USAF base for CND one weekend. It was amazing to see so many thousands of people there. 

It’s returned to its natural state now with no camps, barbed wire fencing, armed guards or missiles - just the missile silos remain - and we wouldn’t fancy eating anything foraged from there.

Greenham Common

Well, after that little bit of reminiscing I really should get moving. We’ve got our flu/covid jabs later so I need to start on that allium bed prep this morning. Just time for one more photo - meet Albie, my sister’s gorgeous new puppy 🥰

Now, please enjoy this song by Maroon 5.

Smash it Up

We have a new pond! It’s only small, but bigger than the bucket it’s replaced. It’s in front of our bench in the flower bed. I only finished it yesterday so it’s still a work in progress.

It took me two mornings to dig it out, exhausting in the hot weather. It probably would have been easier to lay a pond liner rather than making the hole to fit the preformed liner, but I managed it eventually.

We’ve transferred the large stone from the bucket which has brought the duckweed and probably a bit of other wildlife to the clean water. It needs to settle for a week or so before I add the surrounding stones and a few plants. It’s surprising how much soil came out of that hole, though my back and arms remember how many shovel-fuls <groan>.

That soil will be used to top up the raised beds and pots. We’ve had some rainfall but the soil was dry all the way to the bottom of the hole (about 45cm). The mornings are definitely feeling like Autumn but we’ve had a couple of hot days which has been lovely. A week ago we had rain, but not the storm that this sky appeared to be threatening.

The hedgerow knows it’s Autumn - it happens to be the Autumn Equinox today, so it’s downhill from here with the nights closing in - boo!

I’ve actually started a bit of clearing, but lots more to do. We’ve bought a few seeds to sow over Winter, including broad beans and carrots and I need to plant garlic.

The peppers have grown well in the polytunnel, clearly liked the hot weather. And that may be the last of the courgettes.

The Incredible sweetcorn were delicious but the last couple have succumbed to birds/mice/squirrels. Who could blame them?

I made a focaccia the other day. I didn’t do as much decoration as I’ve tried previously because the mixture was so bubbly it was difficult to work with, as you can see.

After 5 hours of raising and folding it could be cooked and it turned out delicious. I’ve frozen half and the other half we had with home-made courgette & tarragon soup.

And I picked the biggest pepper a couple of days ago. There are a few still needing to redden-up and then I’ll be able to clear that raised bed in the polytunnel to sow carrots and salad. I’m sorry that we don’t have any brassica or other Winter crops growing but maybe we’ll be better next year…

That giant pepper stuffed with veggie mince and tomato was joined by a new favourite meal accompaniment, smashed potatoes.

And that offered the opportunity to use The Damned song title - one of my favourite bands back in the day.