Who will come with me...

To 2018...

Here's the obligatory review of the year 2017.

Starting with the playlist of the 82 song titles I selected for this year's blogposts. Unfortunately a couple of songs have since been blocked so won't play, plus there are very annoying adverts, but I hope you've enjoyed my soundtrack of the year.

It was fun finding appropriate song titles for posts and tricky at times. I haven't decided whether I'll do the same thing in 2018, I'll see how it goes...

Anyway, for my interest more than yours, are the top 5 posts of the year.

1. Five Years - the excellent news that we had a new 5-year site lease, though it still hasn't actually been signed by the landlord (grrr). But I wonder if the David Bowie track made it the most visited link..
2. Viva Tenerife - our home-from-holidays post. I'm sure a lot of these visitors were from the Tenerife forum and also fellow street art lovers.
3. Pretty Vacant - there must be a lot of old punks out there who couldn't resist the title... No, I'm sure this was the interest in our new lottery-funded composting toilet.
4. Fire Starter - such a great track but I think the mention of the glass gem corn may have been the draw to this post.
5.  Set the Fire to the Third Bar - I only posted this 2 days ago so I expect it to get more visitors. Maybe the snowy rooftop photo was appealing or perhaps it's because people have more time to sit and read during the holiday season.

My favourite memories of 2017 include the great fun allotment holders barbecue in September, the plant sale in June and the many home-made soups and salads that I enjoyed throughout the year.

I'm looking forward to a better squash grotto this year and hopefully some successful glass gem corn cobs as well as plenty of sunshine, rain only at night and PLEASE less windy weather!

Happy New Year!

And here's the last track of the year from the oddly pleasing Kelly Family...

On a Day Like Today...

... you don't feel like leaving the flat. However, it's the new year!  

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Good luck and good wishes for the next 365 days and beyond...

So, although it was rainy and rather cold, with no risk of snow (shame), we ventured to the plot to pick some sprouts.

We're pleased that they've grown, though the stalk is shorter than the advertised 1m; we think they are a bit stunted because we didn't plant them out till the end of July. We don't need many for our chestnut, sprout and (Quorn) chorizo stir-fry tonight and there should be enough for another 3-4 meals at least.

The top dish is roasted, chopped/mashed potato, carrot, parsnip which we re-baked and had with vegetarian haggis for our New Year's Eve meal. I prefer the Stahly haggis rather than the Waitrose, but it's hard (expensive) to track down. The soup is parsnip and carrot with garlic - really tasty - it was just two carrots and the two legs of that parsnip with about 1pint of stock and a bit of paprika. It's probably the first soup I've made where I haven't added an onion, just garlic. I think I'll try that again.

This year I'm going to attempt to use a song title as the title of each post. It's tricky thinking of new titles for each post anyway, so this is only going to make it harder, but I'll see how I get on... I hope this isn't the last song title I think of!!

I was thinking of the Keane song and someone's helpfully added the lyrics in Spanish to this video - enjoy!