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...

Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading. 

Thanks for your comments. 

Thanks for the inspiration from other bloggers.

Hmmm, 400th Post...

 

It's a milestone, so allow me a little time to reminisce...
Our lovely Marsh Lane site opened in April 2009 and I wanted to record our allotment progress. I much prefer electronic records for ease of searching so posted updates on our personal website - but after 2-and-a-bit years I found it too annoying to update and needed an alternative and discovered blogging!

Day 1 of the site

I opted for Blogger, can't remember why, but it's free and offered Picasa for photo storage so suits my needs. My first post was on 12th June 2011 - what a dull post that was...Not even one photo!
Moving swiftly on...

Blogger offers stats, I'm not sure how accurate they are because of robots but I find it quite interesting. These are apparently my top 3 posts ...

1. Fungus Gnats! Well, I'm assuming the title is an oft-searched phrase (523 hits!), not all that catchy or interesting though to be honest.
2. Salad, Garlic and Compost. That wasn't a recipe suggestion! It has a nice photo, so maybe that's why it got 184 hits.
3. French Bean Chutney. Well, that is a recipe and a lovely one so I can see the appeal there for 158 visits.

Well, that's enough of that, back to today...
It was a very windy day, with quite a lot of rain. It wasn't a day for spending much time at the allotment but we did what we intended to do, we got this year's nematodes on the go.

Now, as you know, we don't like killing things, but these slugs are taking liberties! So, nemaslugs strike again - in our potato plot, our carrot plot and in the raised bed where my fennel and salad are going.

(as long as you don't consider slugs as wildlife...)

They needed to be well watered in and they got that! The ground temperature needs to stay above 5° otherwise the nematodes will die so hopefully this is timed right  - not that they'd keep in the fridge any longer anyway.

And now it's British Summer Time! 
Hooray, lighter evenings so we can go to the plot after work!