A Soaking Sunday

We should be used to english weather at our age, but brrrr, after yesterday's lovely sunshine!

A very quick visit to put a sign up, feed the birds and pick a cabbage. A soaking walk and glad to get back home for a cuppa!

Hope you can join us for our first workday of the year!

We have some colour - Blue Sky!

And it was so lovely to be out in the sunshine!

Jamie wheeled a few more barrow-loads of manure down to our site from the HAHA winter delivery, the pile is rather small now, but it's good stuff - very well-rotted so it's a shame to not use it.

I got an additional barrow-load, just to show willling and to make the cost up to £2. It was tiring, even on a cold day! We really should have taken our flask with us. It was nice recuperating with the sun on my face though!

I did some more weeding, clearing the area where we had wildflowers last year. I wasn't sure whether the rosettes were from flowers or weeds but I weeded them all as we may not have the flowers there this year. I still need to do a bit more planning for that half of plot 8, we're waiting for a blueberry to be delivered which is likely to go there, near the raspberry canes (which were rubbish last year). There's also our massive sage plant which keeps spreading and I haven't used sage for about 2 years! I need to look up what to do with it; cooking but also probably to get rid of most of it and put a few plants in pots for sharing.
Look, tiny signs of edible life...

A garlic sprout!

Rhubarb, at last!

And, here's the surprising little songster who was serenading us today - a little dunnock!

Mostly Brown and Grey

The last week has been dull and grey with today being no exception. However, it was mild (8°) with no chill wind so was unexpectedly pleasant on Marsh Lane. It was good to see fellow plotholders and to see worked plots all around - obviously spring is on its way.

Jamie had dug the manure into the onion plot during the week. His work is so neat and tidy! Here's his handiwork. Ready and waiting for a bit of onion fertiliser and the Hylander onions to be delivered by Thompson & Morgan.

And there's the potato plot that he's given a further dig over today.

And here's what I achieved... I haven't dug it, just cleared the weeds and the paths.

I just can't rake! I didn't intend it to be dead flat but it felt flatter than that when I was dealing with it! Where does all the extra earth come from?! It's a treat to be digging and weeding again - funny how much you miss it over the winter months!

This is the quarter where the 'large cloche' (remember, it's not a polytunnel!) is going. Would love to get going with it, but we'll need to wait till March at the earliest...I'm glad February is a short month!

Here's a little video capturing the sound of the allotment - lots of birds and Jamie digging. It's not very good, I only had my mobile with me. Not quite true, I remembered to take my big camera but hadn't charged the stupid battery - duh!

Too Wet to Work so more Birding

That's a bit of an excuse, as we didn't really want to work anyway! We took so much mud home on Saturday that we decided to just feed and watch the birds instead on Sunday.

It was beautiful in the sunshine and the hedgerow and ash tree were alive with birds. We were watching some tiny little grey ones flitting about and picking the (many) gnats from the air. We're sure they were Chiffchaffs, which we could also hear further along in the hedge. I really must take my better camera up so that I can zoom in on the small birds. I sort of managed to zoom in on the gnats which are hanging round all the manure around the plots - I had to 'bold-up' the photo to see the gnats better in the sunlight.

We also saw some pretty goldcrests and the usual blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits. I did manage to photograph this rather bigger visitor. We're always seeing buzzards fly overhead with their distinctive cry but this one sat in the tree before flying off towards the marsh.

We were pleased to see that Robson appears to have a mate, but we're not too sure.  The two robins we were watching were singing away beautifully but they started getting a bit aggressive. The two birds were stretching their necks out and appeared to be flaunting their red breasts at each other. We decided to leave them to it when a third robin appeared on the scene and we thought it was really going to turn nasty!!

 

Hopefully this blog will soon be a bit more allotment-based, but its all looking a bit dull and damp at present... Not long to go though ..