I’m Free

I have more than a week off work - Yippee! And the weather is good - Hooray! 

Actually the weather has been beautiful continuously since my last post. The photo above was from last Sunday when the clouds put on a marvellous display throughout the day. And look at these beauties.

We spent most of the weekend on the plot, but needed the shade of the brolly at times. The daily watering continues.

Our one gladioli 

We spent much of the time potting up flower troughs and pots of begonia, lobelia and fuchsia - some of these will go on our shady doorstep, but we’ll let them enjoy a bit of sunshine for a while. Talking of flowers, our beans (runners, borlotti, French and Gigantes) are all on their way.

The Gigantes is winning (of course it’s a race) and there’s only one plant so I hope it produces a lot of beans!

The race is also on in the squash tunnel. The Butternut is definitely winning. In fact, some of the plants look more like bush varieties, but I hope that isn’t the case… Look how dry it gets between watering, but we have the bottle waterers so the roots are reaching water and the plants should be fine when there’s a bit more foliage.

A lesson learned this year: don’t write labels with stupid pink pen! They’ve all faded so I need to re-do them, or just wait and see what develops - Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

Ivan let me pick some of his blackcurrants so I made a sauce with added lavender. It was so delicious on ice cream or vanilla soya yogurt and look how pretty it was pre-cooking.

The broad beans are over now. I had the last, rather gnarly, ones fried into ‘falafel’ the other night. They were very tasty made of broad beans, mangetout, onion, garlic, cumin - all ground together and fried. I couldn’t get them to hold together so fried them in metal pastry cutters. I had them with a grain mix and a tiny courgette and tiny patty pan. And, I successfully microwaved a couple of beets ☺️ 

Neal gave us beets, turnip and lettuce yesterday. It made for a tasty lunch. The thinly-sliced raw turnip was nicely peppery. I had the remainder boiled with dinner, very tasty but no longer peppery. I must grow some again next year.

The wildlife plot is doing its job attracting pollinators. The bumblebees love the evening primrose flowers.

They also spend ages on the teasel flowers - the plants are over 8ft now!

This mallow is stunning, but doesn’t seem to attract as much wildlife as I thought it would. I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week as there are loads of butterflies about now.

So that’s me caught up before the holiday-on-the-plot begins. Great song by The Soup Dragons

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 😄

March March

Everyone agreed that Sunday was too cold. As one plotholder said “it’s a lazy wind; it doesn’t go round you”! The wind was bitter. With the hedge offering us some protection on our plots we did manage to stay for a few hours and as the sun began to make a show it felt a little warmer, until the wind blew again - brrr!

I finished clearing the plot for the potatoes. It'll have another dig over when the potato fertilizer is added but it's nice to see some clear soil with all the annoying grass and weeds removed. You'll notice the canes topped with plastic bottles. I still think these could be something of a mole deterrent - they don't like vibrations caused by the rattling. 

We'll see; there are certainly a lots of worms if the mole does visit us. Last week the HAHA committee decided (thank goodness) not to kill the moles. The general concensus, apart from the cruelty aspect, is that it's too expensive and wouldn't solve the problem anyway - I don't consider them a problem; they eat slugs. Last year definitely seemed to be a good year for them but who knows what this year will bring.

Jamie was in his cage most of the afternoon GiggleCl Clearing all the weeds under the brassica netting. He pulled a lot of these, which appear to be poppies - not too sure where they blew in from but we hope there are some outside of the cage too, particularly on the Wildlife Plot.

I'm having a beanfeast this week - a Tuscan Bean stew made following this recipe. I went a bit over the top and soaked too many beans then couldn't resist cooking them all.

I should have frozen a couple of meals worth, but I've only just thought of that. I ate it last night with tortilla wraps; tonight I'm going to add purple sprouting brocolli as we intend to nip up the plot at lunchtime.

It's very tasty. One thing I thought was going to be needed was fresh bay leaves, but I must have seen that on another recipe. I have two bay trees now, but you can see that their leaves are quite different. They both claim to be Laurus Nobilis so should be edible but I'm not sure whether they both are... Any advice?

The song title by The Chicks, it was more appropriate if I'd posted this yesterday for International Womens Day, but actually in this sad world at the moment we have quite a lot to march for - or more likely against - but covid cases are rising again so I'll stay put... and now I really must login to work!

First

Three weeks into January already? How did that happen? January always felt like the longest month of the year. Not in 2022 it seems. To be honest, not much has happened. Weather has been mostly wet and when it’s not wet it’s freezing. I forced myself outside one sunny morning and walked up the High Street. The swan family are looking good and hassling people for food.

They’re so big when they walk up to you out of the water! They spend a lot of time preening to look as beautiful as their parents one day. There are seven cygnets in this family.

We’ve visited the allotment most weekends but it’s been too chilly to hang round and too wet to do much, even if we were so inclined. We actually had an excellent snow shower one work-day afternoon; lovely huge flakes and it quickly settled, but 10minutes later it had all disappeared! I’m still working from home and hope I can continue to do so, at least until after my fourth jab which is due in February.

I made a tasty spicy soup, with a Festival squash which had been stored in the polytunnel over Winter. Unfortunately a lot of the pumpkins went mouldy so we put them outside and they’re being eaten by wildlife now. I think I’ll set up a wildlife camera to see who’s enjoying them.

Ivan gave us a couple of yacons that he harvested last year and had stored in his polytunnel. Fellow plotholder, Min, started growing them and shared some growing tubers. The bushy plants have small yellow flowers. It’s an interesting sweet tasting crunchy fruit and it’s very juicy. We have one more saved in the fridge.

I made a Smokey bean stew, with dried Borlotti and runner beans. Two tasty evening meals and enough for a lunch with these blue corn tortilla chips that were included in a hamper we received for Christmas from my nephews.

I’ve literally only left the flat about eight times this year, with two outings to Swindon last week (one for a blood test and one for a clinic appointment 😄) That’s enough excitement for one week so now I have a couple of days off work. We visited the freezing plot yesterday afternoon. Unsurprisingly no-one else was there. We saw three grey squirrels frolicking in the trees and were joined by a very friendly robin near the wildlife plot. We saw a female bullfinch there last week - I must remember to take my big camera, rather than just my phone.

As I walked back to our plot to get the monocular to look at some other birds, I noticed a movement in the hedgerow. Look at this little bank vole! 

He was so unconcerned by me that I’m worried that he may not be long for this world ☹️ So cute and lovely to see. 

I never did get the monocular. It was so cold after watching the vole, for about 20 minutes, that we went home. Look at that sky and the weather says that today is going to be more cloudy!

My first post of the year with an appropriate song by Cold War Kids.

Sunrise, Sunset

When I opened the curtains on Thursday morning and spotted the moon, I had to dash for my big camera to get a photo and I was pleased to see it was in focus because 10 minutes later the moon was hidden by mist as the Sun arrived.

The HVFB weather vane is on top of the old firestation opposite (now a hairdressers). To be honest, that was the most exciting thing that happened all week. The weather has been cold, though not very frosty and now it's windy and raining as Storm Barra is on its way.

We had a couple of hours on a cold plot on Sunday afternoon, the rain mostly avoided us but we did get to see this nice rainbow. This is a kestrel, but the photo is mostly showing the beautiful clouds. When I see a sky like that I always wish I could paint (or had my good camera with me!)

We did a little bit of clearing but the before and after shots didn't look much different on a typical December allotment plot!

And then it started to go dark, so the Sun provided some photo opportunities. It was more impressive in real life, obviously!

A couple of hours later we took a wander up the High Street to see the Christmas lights.

The blue tree is particularly beautiful and the little trees attached to all the shops are always lovely to see, though the traffic was too busy to show the High Street off in all its glory - perhaps we'll do a late-night visit when the road is empty.

The canal has to be the most photographed part of Hungerford and The Rose of Hungerford often has a starring role. When we drove past earlier there was quite a crowd gathering to have a canal trip with Santa 😊

So apart from that, I have barely moved from the living room in the past week, except to do some cooking...

I made these bean balls with gigantes and runner beans. The smoked paprika tomato sauce was very tasty and the green spinach noodles were a colourful addition. This is the bean balls cooking - I mashed them together with fried shallots and a bit of bell pepper, they were very tasty although not very photogenic.

I'm working my way through a packet of chestnuts and a Festival squash at the moment, so had a ricey-tomatoey meal last night.

And for lunch I've just had cold roasted squash, with chestnuts and a bought salad with lambs lettuce and beetroot slivers.

Sweet and delcious, but now I have to do some more work. I've just seen that a meeting has been cancelled - that's always a bonus! Aah, and a song title from Fiddler on the Roof - haven't seen that beautiful film for years.. maybe it'll be on at Christmas 😏