Ant Music

I’ve been on leave and the weather was glorious at the beginning of last week but is now rather dull and rainy. On the better days we visited the plot and, although it’s not obvious, we have done some clearing and I sowed a row of cut & come again salad leaf and Jamie sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans.

We’ve harvested our first courgettes and we're pleased that some of our over-wintered onions didn’t flower, so we have some lovely whites and browns, but no reds. 

We were given some delicious runner beans and french beans by Jenny; Ivan gave us some Rooster potatoes and perpetual spinach and my sister gave us some multi-coloured tomatoes (as well as the multi-headed sunflower in the top photo).

The beans went into a separate meal, but Saturday night’s meal was all delicious fresh veg.

I'd pre-wilted the spinach for the bottom layer, then tomatoes, then potatoes & onions and finally pre-fried courgettes and a cheese topping.

This is something else we've been eating since Jamie pops into Waitrose every week or so at the moment. Ever since we gave up eating meat, about 30 years ago, I've fancied kippers (strange really, as a meat eater I hardly ever ate them!) but this 'not bacon' has satiated my craving - I definitely think it's more kipper-like than bacon but, whatever, it's delish!

On the sunny plot days I mostly just sat under my sun umbrella watching the wildlife. The robin has his young one with him and the magpie family keeps a close eye for us to move. I saw a cat pounce on a slow worm! I made chase but the cat kept a few steps ahead of me even though the slow worm was clearly wriggling too much and got away. Good to know there are (I presume there are more!) slow worms on site, we certainly have plenty of slugs and snails for them. I had meant to do the Big Butterfly count, but have until 9th August so hope the sun re-appears. There are so many peacocks this year and blues - but they're so hard to photograph as they flutter by. 

Our allotment friend, Alison, pointed out that much of the rhubarb on site has developed some sort of fungal infection. Our giant plant on Plot 7 has it, but the plant on Plot 3 seems to have escaped it so far. As long as people dispose of the infected leaves/stems carefully it should hopefully not cause too many problems and by next year the plants should be fine. It's a shame, we normally just leave the plant to die back naturally rather than cutting back the leaves/stalks before the first frost and they won't be able to go in the compost bin.

I've done a bit more embroidery this weekend. I bought a new coat for our Tenerife holiday in February and when I got home I found a hole in it, so I've mended it and added a bit of colour to the coat.

So the song, obviously, is by Adam and the Ants and refers to one of our compost bins which has been occupied by ants - rather impressive isn't it? Look what they've done to all that garden and kitchen waste, amazing!

So here's the song for you to bang your drum along to.