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

I Just Can’t be Happy Today

I’m attempting to stay calm, so here’s a calming bumblebee enjoying the pollen on a fresh cosmos flower in the warm November sunshine.

I’m actually very angry as our peaceful site has been violated over the last couple of weeks. The communal tool shed was broken into twice and someone had a table stolen from their plot - we couldn’t work out how the thief got in on that occasion. Then last week, on a pre-work visit, we saw that the deer fence was cut down.

It soon became clear that this was worse than we thought, with vandals spraying offensive graffiti on several polytunnels and scattering belongings as they searched for items of any ‘value’.

They even took out our happy bench by the wildlife plot 🤬

Over the following few days, while still waiting for the police to visit the site (don’t get me started on that!) we received more reports of losses as plotholders noticed things missing. Including us, we found that our two forks, a spade and a Wolf tool had been taken from the communal toolshed. Others have lost more substantial and valuable items. We’ve been told by a plotholder, who’s a police special, that the case has gone to the ‘Hate Officer’ because of the graffiti - I expected that would mean a more speedy response. It’s funny how we still expect crime scenes to be finger-printed so that criminals can actually be caught…

Anyway, let’s have some good news - most of our broad beans have germinated. The rain and warm sunshine have really done the job. The geums are back in flower along with the cosmos and the carnation I transplanted the other week also has buds appearing.

I had this extremely tasty borlotti bean, tomato and Cavolo Nero meal the other night. I also re-hydrated a couple of Ivan’s dried peppers. What that naughty man didn’t tell me was how hot they are 🥵! 

Picking the Cavolo Nero gave me an opportunity to update my Allotment Wildlife Blog with information on whitefly - it’s been a very good year for them…

So, after that rather sorrowful post, here’s the sky from last night. So beautiful and look at the trees stripped of their leaves, like Autumn but not cold enough yet. I’ll be moaning about being too cold quite soon!

The title song is provided by The Damned, my favourite band for such a long time. 

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.

Ugly

The weather has been rather changeable. When the sun shone it was lovely but not so good when the cloud took over and that mass brought about 5 spots of rain with it, so the earth is still really dry.

This weekend we had two days of clearing away the three bean wigwams and then we dug the area for our broad beans. We've also managed to do a lot of weeding; it still amazes me how well the weeds grow with so little rain. The nigella have spread seeds and seedlings everywhere - beautiful, but rather a nuisance!

The remaining borlotti beans are drying on netting attached in the top of the polytunnel. The smaller squashes may go up there later when we need to use the chair!

More of the tomatoes are finally ripening but the peppers are remaining obstinately green. With the temperatures dropping to about 4° most nights I wonder if they’ll ever ripen…but you know some good things do come to those who wait. This Chinese Dragon radish was sown months ago, did nothing during the heatwave and finally started to appear a few weeks ago. I thought it would be woody, but no.

It’s hot fresh flavour was a great addition to this lunchtime potato salad with raw beetroot and Chinese cabbage thinnings.

I bought a julienne peeler recently and it’s perfect for carrots and radish but the beetroot was a bit too tricky and messy, so I just sliced that really thin. We’ve been enjoying carrots and pak choi in a couple of stir fries recently too, the Blue Dragon sauces make life easy. But as I’m mentioning brands, if you see these Itsu Bao buns for sale, buy them! They’re so delicious! Talking of delicious..Here’s the bean, carrot and courgette meal I made the other day with last years beans, a can of chopped tomatoes flavoured with smoked paprika, garlic and a little rose harissa.

Someone had cut back overgrown sections of the allotment hedge, so I thought I'd pick the rosehips if the birds aren't going to get to eat them - there are still plenty in the hedge for them. This is the recipe I intend to use to make rosehip jelly which I've never made before. The author of that recipe is quite funny and she is so right - the thorns are so nasty!! I'm a bit concerned that the irritable seed hairs get mentioned quite often in recipes, I hope my draining bag is fine enough to capture them...

The zinnia flowers are still creating a buzz - sorry 🤭 - with bees and hoverflies. I think this is a Common Carder bee (David, please correct me if I’m wrong!) and the hedge is alive with buzzing insects on the ivy flowers. We've also seen a dragon fly zipping about recently - such a huge insect but it never sits still for a photo.

So, you may be wondering, why the title song by the Sugababes? Well, Jamie dug up our single Desiree potato plant and …

Oh dear they're really not pretty and though a little scab on a baked spud can add to the flavour I wouldn't want to risk one of them! That’s what a dry Summer can give you. I just hope they taste okay once they are peeled and mashed. And here are the Sugababes.

Look Up

I spent quite a lot of yesterday looking up. It was so lovely to return to sunshine and blue sky after a few days of feeling rather Autumnal, and it feels too soon.

I have a few very welcome days off making it a very long Bank Holiday weekend.

The weather yesterday was perfect and we enjoyed our lunch on the plot.
The birds were very chattery in the hedgerow, which is full of berries. The swallows are still gathering and swooping, preparing for their Winter Sun - lucky them. Meanwhile, between looking-up-sessions, we were deadheading, feeding and watering the plants - of course. 

The sweetcorn cobs are growing and I only appreciated the other day that the tassels, which develop from the female part of the plant, are each literally connected to what will become the kernel, if it’s pollinated. Obvious really, but I didn’t quite appreciate the link until I read this one. Anyway, the smell of sweetcorn pollen on Thursday, which was a rather drizzly day, was so strong I hope it made it to the tassels and is doing its job.

The bees and other insects are really enjoying the flowers, perhaps even as much as I am! We saw a Hummingbird Hawkmoth yesterday (they seem to be out in large numbers this year) and the other day we saw a Hornet Mimic Hoverfly - the UK’s largest hoverfly. No photos unfortunately but I’m keeping a watch to see that beast again.

You can see that the clouds started to build during the afternoon and it was very muggy.

When the clouds covered all the blue we decided to call it a day.

And as this is a Summer 2022 blogpost and that is the silhouette of a zinnia, How can I not share some of the beauties from their better angle? They have made a delightful bright display in front of our bench.

The wildlife plot has cheered up a bit since we had the rain. It had begun to look rather dead, though one section is thick with birdsfoot trefoil which has remained green and flowery throughout the dry Summer; it’s provided such thick ground cover it must still be wet underneath - hopefully our little froglets are living there. We’ve had to keep watering the bog garden (luxury of a borehole on site) and these lovely bright red flowers (Hesperantha coccinea, I think) have been pretty constant throughout the Summer. We saw a large dragonfly zooming around the plot the other day; it would be good if it laid some eggs there.

Various seedlings are emerging so I hope they’re preparing for next year’s growth (and are flowery plants). The teasels have had a second flush of flowerheads. We haven’t seen any birds eating from them yet, but there are lots of goldfinches around so we live in hope….

We have the HAHA Bring-Your-Own Picnic on Monday, after it was previously postponed because of the heatwave. It’s also measuring day for the tallest sunflower so it should be fun with prizes for that and the Plotholders Choice award. One of our sunflowers (we managed to grow two eventually) is tall but not in the running for a prize. Actually ours are meant to have giant heads, not tall stems so that’s a bit odd. Well, let’s blame the weather!

Song title is provided by Joy Oladokun. Stay chirpy and keep looking up.