Count it Up

This was a great week to have off work - amazing weather and now we've also had some very welcome rain. During sunny-ish Friday I chose an hour from 1pm to do this year's Big Butterfly Count for Butterfly Conservation.

I sat near our mass of Common Knapweed, which the bees love.

Raggedy Red Admiral

The butterflies weren't as numerous as I'd hoped. Apart from lots of cabbage whites!

I retrieved this Gatekeeper from a polytunnel.

So the final count was:

• 2 x Large Whites
• 6 x Small Whites
• 2 x Gatekeepers
• 1 x Red Admiral

Shame it wasn't a bee count...

Song title provided by Field Music

Spaceman

50 years on from the first man on the moon I figure space deserves a mention on my blog.

Of course, this isn't a spaceman, but he looks like one to me.

We had a trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford yesterday.

What an amazing place - so much to see!

Too much, on the hottest day of the year at 30°.

I loved all the masks and figurines - apologies for the quality of photos, the glass cases make it tricky.

The whole place was stacked full of interesting artifacts, though we missed the shrunken heads. Some were just plain freaky!

Bad photo - but you get the gist

The Museum of Natural History was interesting too. Not just the architecture.

I loved seeing all the skeletons, particularly the huge ones. But not keen on all the stuffed birds and animals.

We went up the Carfax Tower. Those 99 spiral staircase steps were hard work, but worthwhile.

So lovely to see the Dreaming Spires from that height.

And be above the crowds in that heat.

It was so hot that we actually didn't buy anything (apart from food). It was just too hot to be shopping!

Aah, such a lovely day. Back to my birthplace on my birthday.
And the song is by Babylon Zoo.

Walk of Life

What a busy weekend that was!

We've finally planted everything, (oh, excet the brassicas): the Rocky cucumbers are in the tall pots in the front of the photo and a Jack Be Little pumpkin is to the right. This is Plot3 and we've put the mesh up for the spaghetti squash and the Cucamelon to clamber up. My sister gave it to Jamie for his birthday. It's such a tiny plant, hope it grabs the mesh soon and holds on tight!

We've had no rain, lots of heat and plenty of sunshine so have needed to water every day, but it's worth it with everything growing well. The Pickwick dwarf runners have produced masses of flowers and the beans are on their way now...

I wore Jamie's pedometer and walk about 5km everytime we have a watering session, so good practice for the 5km Race for Life walk I did in Oxford with my workmate Ruth on Sunday - I wasn't going to attempt running it. I so love Oxford that I had to take a few photos. Looks good with all the walkers wearing pink (not quite all). It supports all cancers now, not only breast cancer and these events raise a huge amount of money for research.

After having an amazing Paneer naan wrap from Kebab Kid on the Cowley Road I went home and, you guessed it, we needed to water the allotment. The High Street was closed off for Hungerford Carnival so we wandered up and stayed to watch the floats. We saw a few of our plotholder friends in the parade and watching it. Maybe next year we'll be organised enough to have a HAHA float...

We watered everything in the hot evening air, everything looking beautiful around us.

There were 7 Red Kites flying overhead! And so many butterflies fluttering by.

So pleased that some of the freesia bulbs, planted in Spring, have flowered. The fragrance is amazing.

Ivan has stripped down all his pea plants, so gave us his "left-overs". We made a delicious pea soup with garlic, onion and vegetable stock.

So that's another long weekend over - I took Monday off as a recovery day. This hot weather is so gorgeous but it wears me down a bit these days, luckily I have a week off very soon!

The song is by Dire Straits, with such a ground-breaking video in its day!

Everything is Transformed

This time last week I was buzzing about, getting into a bit of a panic about the fete planning and the Hungerford in Bloom judging, which both happened at the weekend - you may have noticed.

Jamie and I did some final frantic clearing of Plot7 on Friday - Jamie's neat edging always makes it look tidy and the polytunnel now looks like a growing area, rather than a messy shed! We have three Aviditas tomatoes on the left and three peppers on the right.

The judge took 3 hours walking around the site, judging the plots and scoring them according to size - HAHA decided a couple of years ago that it was difficult to compare a 1-pole plot with a gardener who has 16-poles. Jamie and I only entered Plot7 into the competition - it's the only plot in my name (I don't know why that is, but it was a good job).

Anyway, because everyone who entered had made their plots look lovely for the judging, the site really was looking its very best for the fete on Sunday afternoon. And the sun shone - phew, it was hot!

We had lots of visitors - happy children when they saw the bouncy castle; happy adults to see the tables set out down the centre of the site and happy everyone when they saw the amazing stock of cakes and the barbecue.

We had several games as well as the tombola - Guess the Teddy name, treasure map (based on the site plot numbers), the spray boat and blow boat races went down very well. A little friendly competition between partners ...

..and friends. I beat Ivan. I won with dignity I feel :-D

The ping-pong pots game, coin toss and ultimate lemons (have you ever tried balancing a coin on a lemon in water?) proved popular too. As well as the FlowerPot pressies for children.

The wheel of fortune was an excellent piece of engineering and raised quite a bit too, drawing attention whenever it was spun.

And the Aunt Sally and HorseShoe tossing games also kept people entertained. The trouble with running a fete is that you miss out on so much of the fun yourself, don't get to take enough photos and it was exhausting. However, I managed to talk to lots of visitors (never managing to finish a conversation) and it was a pleasure when they marvelled at our site on its 10th Anniversary.

We were visited by ex-plotholders, local councillors, the local newspaper photographer as well as people who had never visited the site before. Also, Bill Ackworth who was a councillor when the site was sourced and first set up in 2009 - so lovely for him to see what a fantastic community he founded. It was definitely a great event for raising the profile of the allotments in Hungerford.

 THANKYOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED, DONATED,

LOANED OR VISITED US AT THE WEEKEND!

Guess the weight of the cake! 1.8kg

And finally, after our mad bit of tidying, planting, edging and clearing <drumroll please> we won 1st place in the '2-3 Poles' category in Hungerford in Bloom! What a welcome surprise!!

And we pulled our garlic

The song is by Jorge Drexler "Todo se transforma" which is referring to the site - because of the beautiful plots and also how different it looks when there are lots of people there!

Too Much Too Little Too Late

July has arrived! A lot has happened since my last blogpost but I've been too busy to post. Lunches have got more interesting, with radishes, broad beans and mangetout joining the salad leaves.

We've had lots of visits to the plot, with too much to do, but we have managed to get a lot done and watering each day. Finally we've managed to plant up (most of) the remaining courgettes and squashes and the Double Red and Glass Gem sweetcorn, which germinated within a week of sowing in the hot greenhouse.

We pulled out all the poppies and dug holes, filled with manure, for the squashes - pretty sure that won't be the last we've seen of those poppies!

I planted out the globe artichoke and I've protected that, plus the squashes, from slugs with coffee grounds. Not sure whether they work or whether the dry weather has helped keep the slugs at bay, plus our resident frogs.

Our Kestrel potatoes have their first flower.

We've had some lovely sunshine and very high temperatures - too high to work on a couple of days, but we planted out our HAHA competition sunflowers. They look a bit weedy compared to other people's!

We've watched a robin parent feeding its young and now the baby is feeding itself, but it hasn't got a red breast yet.

Jamie's planted the Lark sweetecorn on Plot3.

These mullein moth caterpillars are enjoying the ragwort on Min's plot - they are stunning to see, especially the big ones.

All the different beans (Yard Long, Gigantes, Speedy, Pickwick) have been planted out and seem quite happy. The Pickwick (dwarf runners) are in flower.

The pak choi and rocket plants went to seed a while ago, so I've filled the gap by sowing more beetroot and salad onions.

The carrots are happily growing under their enviromesh cloche - they've got a while to go before we're going to be able to eat the thinnings.

The strawberries continue to be delicious. Certain areas of the site are full of the scent of them - fabulous!

Our raspberries are on their way - though the birds are happy to eat them before they're red enough for us - we really need to get them under netting.

We have some gorgeous blooms on show.

But our french marigold and snapdragon seedlings are too small to produce a show for the Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging on Saturday! They'll be beautiful in a couple of weeks though - just too late for the judging and the fete :-(

All involved are busy preparing for our fete (have I mentioned the fete? This Sunday?) and I enjoyed a little break from that preparation, work and life-in-general by making a pretty tea light holder, for the allotment, at a craft session as part of the Hungerford Summer Festival - pretty and so easy to do.

The song refers to how my life is feeling at the moment. Luckily I have Friday off and then Saturday to finalise everything for THE FETE! And the sun is going to shine and England Ladies won't be in the final for the Women's Football World Cup, which I'm not pleased about ...but...