Winter

It was bright this morning so we decided to visit the plot. By the time we got there it wasn’t very bright but it was very cold ... brrr. I’m only slightly sorry that the snow started about 30minutes after we got home.

The ground is far too wet to dig, but we decided to weed and trowel over the area where the shallots will be planted. Quite a satisfying bit of work. We’ll get the shallots planted as soon as it dries a bit. If it doesn’t dry off soon we’ll have to start them off in pots.

While we were working we noticed a flock of redwings; it was at that point we decided to do the Big Garden Birdwatch 😊 and had quite a good count:

No sign of the robin unusually and I didn’t attempt any photos. The kestrel was hovering over the site and then we saw him land on an aerial so I won’t add it to the official count.

Yesterday I went through all the seeds and have a planting plan, (I know! Haven’t been this organised for a few years!) Of course, it doesn’t include any offerings from fellow plotholders which I find so hard to refuse and there are a few things missing, but we know where they’re going eg spuds, toms, peppers,..

All the trailing squashes, apart from the pumpkin, are going to form my squash tunnel which I’ve been talking about for years! Ooh, it’s a dangerous thing... to make a plan in the middle of a pandemic, but fingers crossed. 

Something I planned for, and did yesterday, was to make some of Shaheen’s Sweet Potato & Cumin soup. I’ve had a taster and am very pleased that it should provide me with 3 or 4 tasty workday lunches. Thanks Shaheen! And a few leftover sweet potatoes to make some roasted wedges for tonight - yum!

The song title is by Tori Amos. The snow has stopped now and turned to cold rain with dripping wet trees. Bye-bye January.

Cake

Getting out of bed for the last couple of weeks has been a struggle. The mornings have been so dark. I'm glad the clocks have changed back to GMT today, at least there may be a few weeks of getting up in daylight rather than seeming like the middle of the night! I've mentioned before that working from home is a bit too intense - staring at the screen all day, even during meetings and catch-ups with work friends and colleagues. But at least I don’t have to get up so early and drive to work. Let alone those mornings when you need to scrape the ice from the windscreen, get petrol or sit in a traffic jam.

 

We ventured out to the allotment yesterday afternoon and got a drenching, but it was nice to be outside. And I was suprised to see the Anemone de Caen in bud (photo above). I'm sure it's meant to be a Springtime flower. The weather has been quite mild but the lowest temperature on the polytunnel thermometer was just below 2°.

You can see we’ve not had a frost because the begonias are still alive and flowering. I expected our broad beans to have germinated and broken through to the surface, but no sign of them yet. As soon as they pop up we'll protect them with plastic bottle cloches, otherwise mice will enjoy them.

This is the ash tree by our plot at the end of the site's central aisle. Sadly it has Ash dieback - a disease which is apparently infecting 80% of the ashes in the country. We have a couple of other ash trees which need to be removed - it’s more obvious in them as they’re completely dead. 'Our' big one is between the site and the canal towpath so there's a debate going on about who's responsible for it. Luckily we have a plotholder who is a tree surgeon so he can advise.

On Friday night Jamie and I had our own Oktoberfest evening, you see, we’re very good at social distancing :-) The Heck veggie sausages were very tasty and a nice selection of German beers (we didn’t drink them all - honest!) and bier nuts.

You may remember the huge Tromboncino squash that somebody gave us last week. I actually did make it into a cake - the last time I made a cake was 2011! I only needed to use the long stem (the bulbed end I fried in chilli and had with other veggies for cold lunches in the week). I grated the squash and squeezed out most of the water before weighing and mixing with the other ingredients.

I used this Hairy Bikers recipe. The only changes I made were using mixed nuts, instead of walnuts, and olive oil instead of vegetable. 

It‘s very tasty and I’ve enjoyed having it for breakfast (and snacks). I wonder if the next cake I make will be in 2029?!

The B52s provide the song title.

Cold Day in the Sun

With sub-zero temperatures and frosty nights over the last week we weren't expecting to do anything on the plot today, but decided to walk up to feed the birds in the afternoon.

The sun was shining and the sky was such a fabulous blue that we opted to walk along the towpath which was frozen solid, as was the canal!

There was evidence that some boats had moved but most were moored in sunnier spots with their heaters on and doors shut down.

There were lots of thrushes, robins and wrens on the allotment - quite a bit of squabbling too as they try to protect their territories.

The sun's heat had managed to melt the top layer of frost, but where the heat didn't get through there were interesting things to look at:

A frosty brick, looking like a frozen landscape in miniature

Puddles which had frozen - is this a spanish galleon?...

Then melted and re-frozen trapping the air bubbles in bizaare shapes (I'm pretty sure there's a sea creature in there).

We left before the sun went down. I got up before the sun today, specifically to take photos of the steamy River Dun from the A4 bridge. It was beautiful, but so cold!

And today's song title is brought to you by Foo Fighters...

The Other Side of the Hedge

It was such a lovely day that we walked up to the allotment after work - just to check that our new plantings/sowings weren't drying out too much. Well, they were rather, so we gave things a water and then walked back via the canal which was looking especially beautiful as the hedgerows are beginning to spring into life.

I took the above photo from the Kennet and Avon Canal side of the Marsh Lane Allotments' hedge. It's directly under 'our' Ash tree. We could hear our little robin but couldn't see him from this side of the hedge - he was probably still eating the worms we had taken up for him :-)

We forgot to put the St George's flag on our bean pole this year, so here's a photo of the flag flying on Hungerford's St Lawrence church.
Look at that lovely blue sky!
 

Blue Skies and Cold Temperatures

We made our final trip to the plot before our holidays. It was a beautiful sunny morning and such lovely blue sky. We just did a bit of composting (I added the dried out sweetcorn sticks and vegetable waste from home to the bin.
The ash tree has lost all of its leaves now - hope this one doesn't get infected by the ash tree dieback which is spread by a fungus. The fungal disease has spread to the UK from Northern Europe and is currently a big concern for all our ash trees :-(

The temperature has reached a minimum of -1° in the last week - with frost on the car a couple of days. Our rhubarb is gradually dying back but appears to have established well since it was planted at the end of July.

So that's that for two weeks - I doubt it'll look much difference when we return. There's not much to change the look of the plot at this time of year.