Sunday, 20 November 2022

Cousins

Moon and aeroplane

This was the lovely clear view of a very skinny moon early this morning. And the next photo shows the sky looking towards the sunrise, beautiful (my camera made the sky look a bit darker than it really was but the stripes really were that bright). The clear night on Friday slipped the temperature down to 0.4° but there’s not much left growing to be affected by low temperatures now.

Blue and red stripey sky

In the week Jamie cleared all the remaining tomatoes and the peppers, which still refused to go red. So there is a lot of green pepper added to meals at the moment and these two yellow ones were delicious stuffed with shop-bought veggie fritters for a quick and easy meal. I added cheese for the final 15minutes in the oven, I should have taken a photo as they browned really well and tasted so good.

Stuffed peppers

We had a lovely sunny day on the plot on Saturday. The temperature only reached 6°, but you wouldn’t have known it while in the sunshine. Jamie weeded the potato plot and I did some weeding around the chard and pulled all the remaining beets which all had slug damage.

Chard in Winter Sunshine
I wore my hearing aids and was amazed by all the birdsong. Not unusual apparently but I’ve not been using my aids, just turning the sound up on my work laptop and TV - I forgot what I’d been missing! It was mostly robins and great tits but the gulls over the canal were very vocal too. And this huge crow was cawing in the big tree.
Crow
The magpies and blackbirds got excited when ‘Ginge’ was around, but he was more interested in compost bins on Saturday. He has been seen taking a magpie from the air though!
Ginger cat
The Newbury Weekly News covered both of our unhappy news items last week. 
Vandalism and theft
Good that they covered them, but we’d rather have more positive news stories than these 😞
Allotment lease issues
Look at our lovely site, even in Winter. How could anyone even consider building on it?! Idiots 😡
Marsh Lane Allotments
I pulled carrots and parsnips for this evening’s meal. I was really pleased with the parsnips… well, I should say… I was really pleased with the first parsnip I pulled - they got progressively worse, but there was plenty to eat, no matter what the shape of them.
Parsnips
The parsnips and carrots became this gratin meal, roughly based on this recipe. Mmm, tasty and enough leftovers for a lunch. I meant to add the tomatoes to the sauce but forgot, so stuck them on top instead 🙄
Parsnip and carrot gratin
I posted a photo of spindleberries the other week, but this is when they look their best; with a beautiful blue sky backdrop.
Pink and orange Spindleberries
We didn’t go to the allotment today as it was a bit grey, a bit sunny and a bit rainy. Every time the Sun shone We wished we’d gone up, but it did seem a bit chilly. The ground is so wet, but it made it easy to pull weeds yesterday.
Me digging parsnips with my new fork

The song title is courtesy of Vampire Weekend, in appreciation of my cousins Paula, Jen and Steve for very kindly buying me that replacement fork after thieves stole all our digging tools - THANKYOU SO MUCH xxx

2 comments:

  1. Good post and pictures. That's a good looking mini-tiger. Well done on making the most of a dry, sunny day which seem to have been a rarity recently. xx

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    Replies
    1. It was so uplifting to see blue sky for a change.

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Belinda