Wow

I took Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday off work, specifically because of the forecast heatwave and it was right. Phew, what a sweltering few days; over 30° in Hungerford and sunny. Lovely!

We spent some time at the allotment - it was so hot that there was only Jamie and me there much of the time. Us and the birds - just listen to that! What a joy to be back on the plot.

Neal said that we could have some of his lettuce seedlings. I chose the two red varieties - the green ones (Lobjoits Green cos) have all been nibbled - looks like by pigeons - whereas the red appear to be untouched (it's not that obvious in the photo, but trust me!)

I also planted the squash plants that Liz gave us (a patty pan and a spaghetti squash, I think) plus a courgette plant from Ivan - to replace one of ours that the slugs decimated. Jamie cleared some weeds from Plot3 and trimmed the long grass round the edges of Plot7, in the hope that it’ll keep the slugs away from our few plants - we don’t have enough to share this year! Unlike Ivan who always needs a wheelbarrow for his huge harvests - that’s the last of his strawberries.

He gave us a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of redcurrants. They were a colourful addition to my breakfast.

And I cooked the remaining redcurrants with sugar - they weren't as tart as I'd expected and only needed a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

I sieved the sauce - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reckons you don't have to, but I wouldn't fancy eating all those seeds and skins.

It was delicious on ice cream and with scotch pancakes.

There were lots of butterflies on site, but they weren't in the mood for posing for photos unfortunately. I definitely saw some ringlets, tortoiseshells and peacocks among the usual whites. This Scarlet Tiger moth was easier to photograph as it came into our sitting room - dragging me away from my work :-)

As I write this we're in the middle of a hailstorm - the weather has changed: it's dazzling sunshine one moment then dark clouds covering the sky the next as the wind builds up - our poor plants, I wonder how they're doing. I hope to visit again during a lunchtime next week.

Jamie’s excited about my new project (NOT!). I saw this amazing embroidery of an allotment site (twitter.com/sewnbycollette) and was inspired, so immediately bought a selection of threads from Amazon.

Now, I haven’t embroidered for about 40 years, so mine is more, err, primitive, we’ll see how it goes... My sister kindly gave me some fabric and has lent me her old book. It’s our plot, as I’m sure you can see 😏 Well, I only started in yesterday {I wonder if it will ever be seen again on this blog :-D}

The ‘Wow’ of the title refers to various things from this week. I’m so glad that plot neighbour, Kate, told me about the stunning fields of white poppies which we could walk to from the allotment.

I didn’t expect to see so many fields of them - how beautiful! Having not walked far for weeks it was quite exhausting walking the slight incline, especially in the heat, but so worth it.

Shops and some restaurants are beginning to open up in England. Some people definitely seem to think that the time is right to get back to normal life, but I'm happy with just the occasional trip out and am not missing (non-internet) shopping one bit! Even the Government isn't suggesting a return to work for the likes of me yet - thank goodness! Great song from Kate Bush, obviously - sing along, or maybe just do the moves ;-)