Cousins

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

The Newbury Weekly News covered both of our unhappy news items last week. 

Good that they covered them, but we’d rather have more positive news stories than these 😞

Look at our lovely site, even in Winter. How could anyone even consider building on it?! Idiots 😡

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.

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 🙄

I posted a photo of spindleberries the other week, but this is when they look their best; with a beautiful blue sky backdrop.

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.

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

Death of Democracy

Look at those interesting clouds as we left the allotment Sunday afternoon -  I zoomed in on my phone which is why the foreground looks a bit weird. We got home just before a storm hit, with a bit of thunder and lightning. Last week was rainy with more than 30mm being measured, but it’s remained warm and on Sunday it was 17°.

It was a clearing weekend. On Saturday I cleared the sweetcorn plot, although the already-full compost bins need to shrink a bit before that lot can be added - it shouldn't take long especially if it stays warm. On Sunday we cleared the flower bed. The zinnia, cosmos, marigolds, chrysanthemum, lobelia and plenty of weeds were taken home for the Council green bin collection. The flower bed now has several perennial plants which should spread by next year and gaps can be filled with annuals, including a million nigella seedlings! The concern with perennials is that the weeds (I'm thinking of bindweed) can take hold and are more difficult to clear, but we'll try to keep them under control in the meantime.

Fellow plotholder, Aimee, is resigning her plot at the end of the year so she was offering her flower plants to people - in case the new plotholder decided to just dump them. I accepted a dianthus Doris, which is a lovely pink and has that pretty blue-green foliage, and this delphinium which has managed to avoid the frost. It has a silver/grey tint to it which the camera hasn't quite managed to pick up. I'm not sure what variety it is, but it's very beautiful.

Talking of beautiful flowers, some of Ivan’s irises have had a new flush of blooms. I love this one, what a fabulous colour!

That damp photo was taken the same morning that the Sun popped out for two minutes and bathed the site in this golden dawn light. Obviously the photo doesn’t do it justice - they rarely do!

The trees and hedgerow are looking amazing in their Autumn colour and the spindleberry (Euonymus europaeus) is showing off its inner seed - I so love those colours together! We have several spindle trees growing along our allotment site hedge and the leaves turn a fabulous red in Autumn.

Jamie pulled the last of our Salad Blue potatoes yesterday. He has plans for our Halloween meal next week. There were plenty of tubers; they’re rather scabby but seem to have escaped slug damage- unlike half of the remaining beetroot. I’m assuming that’s what has caused this damage though the pests I found at the crime scene were wood lice - surely not…

Thank goodness some have escaped this massacre so I still have some to eat! I pulled a parsnip - luckily I wasn’t expecting a prize winner 😄 but there’s enough flesh there for my needs. The Spring onions are still good and very pungent!

And this is what the beetroot (not the ones in the photo!), parsnip and spring onions became - served with a beanburger and fried chard.

I started with clouds and I’ll finish with clouds, this time early morning clouds with a sliver of a moon. Such amazing colours - when I saw it I thought 'someone could easily paint that, not me though'. It's a shame but I know my skillset and art isn't included!

And now, on the day we welcome our third Prime Minister in 2 months ... An excuse to share one of my favourite songs by Kula Shaker. Possibly the only good thing about having a historically appalling period of Government, although it should mean there will be a general election soon to actually let the people decide who represents us.

Army Dreamers

We have froglets! The tiniest you’d ever see! I’m so happy 😊

There are a least five. The weird thing is that there are still lots of tadpoles which haven’t even developed legs yet. And, weirder still, the frogs are smaller than the tadpoles! 🤔 Here you can see how small this one is compared to duckweed.

After a bit of a chilly start to the week, yesterday was lovely and, because it was a Bank Holiday, the site was really bustling. We planted out our three types of climbing beans: Scarlet Empire runners, Lingua di Fuoco borlotti beans and Blue Lake French beans.

Jamie’s planted the All Green Bush courgette and the Sunburst patty pan. We’ve put slug pellets around these small plants with netting/fleece for protection from the weather and to stop the birds eating the pellets - they are the legal ferric phosphate ones, but we’d still prefer the birds to steer clear.

I’ve sown another row of carrots… 3rd time lucky? And I’m pleased to see some of the parsnip seeds have germinated on the ‘paper towel trick’, so I’ll plant them today.

I finished digging the other trench in the squash tunnel after we’d had a bit of rain at the beginning of the week. So the ground is waiting for the plants now…. They’ve just begun to germinate, so are a bit slower than I’d hoped.

As you can see, Plot3 is still a plot-in-waiting, but at least it’s weed-free now though it won’t be if we don’t get some plants in soon!

Here’s me with fellow committee members, Liz and Richard, with our HAHA-decorated jubilee tree. All the organisations in the town were offered a High Street tree to decorate. And this is what my pompom bees were for, along with seed packet/veggie home-made bunting and decorated flower pots.

We wandered up the High Street yesterday to look at the other decorations. I think it’s a nice idea. Here are a few of the trees. I really like the Nursery School’s golden wellies 🙂

Anyway, back on the allotment. We’ve been potting on marigolds, colourful chard and amaranthus (love lies bleeding).

We’ve had our first harvest of delicious broad beans.

Before applying spray to the annoying black fly, which always breed quicker than the ladybirds 😖

And I thinned the beetroot so enjoyed those thinnings with a halloumi dinner the other night. They were rather earthy-tasting - needless to say, Jamie didn’t want any 😀

The potatoes were earthed-up and fleeced at the end of May as there was concern for a frost. It was fine, only dropping to 3.5° then on the night of June 1st the thermometer recorded 1.4°! But no frost damage.

There are more bees and beetles about and we watched this lovely mullein moth caterpillar chomp through a flower on the wildlife plot (apparently they can stay as a pupa for 5years!) but butterflies and ladybirds seem to be laying low at the moment. We need a few less blowy days I think.

Anyway, it’s time to get back onto the plot. Great song by Kate Bush dedicated to our army of tiny frogs (apparently that is the collective noun).

Spread Your Wings

My 10 days off work started well, with some lovely, albeit windy, weather. Jamie and I lazed under the blue sky and had a barbecue on Friday.

It really was too hot to work - not that we were intending to do any. Instead, we were delighted to watch the great tits fledge. Jamie noticed that the chirping had changed. We saw a parent fly to the nesting site with a green caterpillar which it ate rather than taking it to the nest. Then we watched as four chicks flew out in turn - rather wobbly flying, but not bad for the first trip out. Then one of the parents returned to the nest site, chirped a bit and flew off. Finally, the last of the brood made its way to the edge of the crate and flew over us to join its siblings and parents in the hedge. Such a pleasure to watch and perfect timing for us!

The rest of the afternoon I mostly looked up at the beautiful blue sky and sweltered.

Aah, blue sky! How happy it makes me!

Saturday was still mostly sunny and warm so we managed to do some digging on plot3. Jamie’s dug and manured the hole for the melon, which is growing on in the polytunnel for the timebeing. I’ve dug the first trench for one side of the squash tunnel and filled it with manure. I’ve sowed the seeds in pots at home under the grow-light: Honeyboat, Festival, Winter Celebration and Sunshine. 

Talking of seeds, I’ve got some parsnips Sabre (hopefully) germinating on some paper towel so I can plant out if the seed proves viable… perhaps I’ll manage to grow more than 8!

I showed some newcomers around site yesterday - such a pleasure to show the site off when it’s looking so beautiful. Of course, they were enamoured with Ivan’s irises, so I can’t resist sharing some of the fabulous blooms here again. Just stunning.

And HAHA has its first iris in the bog garden on the wildlife plot. There are plenty more buds to follow that one.

And the foxgloves have flowered. Loads of evening primrose is growing, so that will be good for moths, which will in turn be good for bats. We’ll have to have a Summer night visit with the bat detector.

Our Cleor pepper has arrived so is growing on a bit at home, along with the tomatoes. The temperature dipped to 3° In the polytunnel the other night, so we're still playing it safe and not planting everything out yet. The song title, provided by Queen, is dedicated to those five little great tits. Out in the wide world for the first time, how frightening and a frost is threatened for tonight 😖 They should go back to their cosy nest, poor little things.

Before you Leave

I received a 'help - urgent' message on my phone at the weekend, from a plotholder. It was because her partner and a fellow plotholder had to hide in a polytunnel while this lot decended on the site - the plotholders felt like they were being dive-bombed as the sky turned black and the buzzing built to a crescendo!

By the time I got there the excitement was over so I just took a few photos. I think they're honey bees. The swarm had selected a blackcurrant bush to rest on while the bee scouts went to find a suitable location to re-home.

They had moved on when we looked a couple of hours later so I was a bit disappointed to have missed them leaving. 

I'm suprised they didn't decide to stay on site with Ivan's amazing bearded iris plots providing a colourful centrepiece to our site. They really are stunning and a real talking point as people walk to their plots.

I'm pleased that we can sit on our bench on Plot7 and see the lovely colours. The whole site is looking beautiful at the moment, especially at the sunny weekend with lots of plotholders working and bringing various plants down to plant up - it's a fab time of year, isn't it?

The recent sun-rain-sun weather has been perfect for growing (weeds) and has made digging easier, so we managed to clear and dig the final quarter of plot 7. There are two deep holes filled with manure for the courgette and pattypan to be planted into in a week or two. The rest of that quarter will be for sweetcorn and maybe a few flowers and other bits and bobs.

The potatoes have all emerged, with plenty of space for earthing up when the time comes. And the beetroot and radish will be providing me with a bit of salad quite soon. The florence fennel mostly germinated but is always at risk from slug damage - I'm hoping that sown into the middle of a plot it may be less susceptible... 

The carrots and parsnips have been less successful.... germination has been very poor even though we've done two sowings of carrots (already). It looks like I may get 8 parsnips(!) from the thickly sown row. I may have to try another sowing of them as I do love parsnip soup.

At the moment we're only harvesting rhubarb but the broad beans are on their way, plumping up nicely. The aphids have found them, of course, so whenever we find a ladybird we put them onto the beans to have a good feed and hopefully stop the beans getting spoilt. I thought this one was a Pine Ladybird, because of the rim round its wing-cases, but it seems it is just a Harlequin.

We have various seeds germinating in the polytunnel - still no giant sunflowers though 😞. A few of all the beans need re-sowing but we expect to have at least five plants of each type which will be plenty for us. We've dug the area on plot 8 for 3 wigwams - over holes filled with manure.

I have a few days off soon and hope to get the holes, or trench, dug for this year's squash tunnel. Plot3 is looking a bit abandoned at the moment, but shouldn't be too tricky to get that ready for squashes. I haven't been doing much cooking but have prepared this year's chive flower vinegar.

And, I've been doing a bit of this.... but more on that another time..

The song title is provided by Pepe Deluxe - and is referring to the bees. I'm suprised to see that I haven't used this song before, it's so great! Dance along now 😄