All These Things That I’ve Done

This week has been all about the weather. Storm Eunice hit on Friday and there was quite a lot of news of trees down in the area but our power stayed on so I could work all day; just looking out each time there was a huge gust. I saw several lorries full of wood clippings where they’d been clearing fallen trees. 

We walked to the allotment yesterday and noticed gaps in hedges which weren’t there before. The lamp post in the photo above must have been entwined by that branch a while ago, but it was the first time I’d noticed it. 

At the allotment we were pleased to see our polytunnel still standing and only a bit of minor damage. Others weren’t so lucky… here’s one of Ivan’s polytunnels 😔

Plot3 was fine but we’d gained a couple of dalek compost bins.

The North-East corner of the site had even more debris so a few of us did a bit of tidying in the hope that plotholders will retrieve their stuff before the next storm arrives (we have a yellow wind warning today).

I’ve felt a bit washed-out after my fourth COVID19 jab last Sunday, but I hope that’s a sign that it had some positive effect on my anti-bodies… The previous day we enjoyed a few hours on the plot. I divided the beautiful geum into several plots.

I hope they grow and flower as well as the original plant did. I potted on the bay laurel that my sister gave us for Christmas, I’m not sure whether it’s edible bay leaf or not at the moment. Joanne also gave us a lovely little holly bush that we’ve planted on the wildlife plot; the birds will appreciate those berries I’m sure.

I did a bit of cooking, using our festival squash and Borlotti beans, as an adaptation of this recipe. That covered me for three meals. Not too sure about using cinnamon in a savoury dish though…

I’ve updated the Wildlife blog which includes the video (which I spent hours faffing about with!) of visitors to the pumpkin which we left out specifically to see who would eat it. Here’s one of the stars of the show - so cute!

I’m looking forward to this free talk in the week. I’m enjoying reading this book at the moment. The memoir includes so much from my life too, with Greenham, Beacon Hill, Combe Gibbet and other local areas of interest along with historical, nature and political interest. It even includes Thomas Hardy references, so it really hits the spot for me!

I struggled to find a song title but chose this one by The Killers (who needs an excuse for a Killers song!)

Year of the Tiger

 This dwarf iris provided a spot of colour on an extremely wet and windy site yesterday afternoon.

It didn’t seem like a day for being outside but working for a few hours on the HAHA wildlife plot was actually very pleasant. We put a wigwam up for the birds to perch on. We noticed that the bullfinches seemed to like standing at an angle when we were watching them last year.

There are lots of baby plants emerging so we wanted to remove the unwanted ones in order to make room for the ones we want - there must be hundreds of seeds in that soil! We tried to only pull grasses, docks and some of the other more intrusive weeds that we recognise. Jamie's cleared the bog garden. Some of the irises have spread well, but other plants we bought have disappeared without trace.

These are a few of the wildflowers that we think we recognise from the plantlets... of course, I welcome correction if you know better.

Rosebay Willowherb and Jacobs Ladder

Foxgloves and Teasle (hopefully) or is it Bristly Ox Tongue?

Cowslip at the top and (possibly) Hairy Hawkbit (left) and Corncockle (right)

As you can see, the cowslips are just flowering. I guess the plants should be divided at some point. The plot doesn't look much at the moment, but up close there are loads of nigella, feverfew and scarlet pimpernel seedlings as well as a few pockets of bulbs, which I think are grape hyacinth, so the bees will be happy when they flower in a few more weeks. In the meantime the blackbirds, magpies and robins were very happy with the bit of trowelling that we did.

When we got home I made some soup using part of the last Crown Prince squash with leeks and celeriac from the plot. 

I was disappointed with the other crown prince this year so I hoped this one would be a bit more tasty. I wasn't too convinced when I had a taster, hence the addition of curry powder! I think I'll use the Festival squash instead when I cook my next squash-based meal.

At the weekend we celebrated the Lunar New Year with a tasty Chinese veggie meal. It was delivered frozen a couple of weeks ago and it was fun opening all the parcels. I must say that the mushroom and veg buns are my favourite and I prefer the fried gyoza to the veggie dumplings. There was way too much for the two of us, so filling! We really should have only cooked half of it.

The cardboard steamer wasn't quite as successful as we'd hoped, as the gyozas stuck but it was a fun parcel to receive. We need to take our excitement where we can these days 😏 Saying that, I have my fourth COVID-19 vaccination next weekend, so that's a trip out of Hungerford! - fingers crossed it provides me with a higher anti-body count than I'm currently seeing.

Saturday was a much nicer day, but we only had an hour on the plot in the sunshine, this was the view through the hedge to Freeman's Marsh.

Anyway, the predictable song title is provided by Myles Kennedy.

Christmas time

Two days of leave, then a final two days of work before I stop for Christmas - hooray!

As  usual, we’re going to have a quiet Christmas and, as last year, it sadly doesn’t include any gatherings or proper get-togethers. But we live in hope for next year if people can be a bit careful and consider the implications of 90,000+ COVID cases every day - the figure is astounding isn’t it?! At least the government is leading by example <ahem>. Anyway, moving on…this is my Christmas post!

Do you like my wine cork reindeers? Finally I found something to do with those corks I can’t help but save! We only visited the cold allotment last weekend to gather some suitable sticks for their legs, tail  and antlers. 

Our Christmas tree is up and is colourful and full as we like it, with decorations made or collected over the last 33 Christmases and a few from even before we were together, including this little Santa.

This blog is the only diary I keep. I’ve been looking back over the last few Christmases. I’m looking forward to visiting Christmas markets, light shows and lovely Oxford again. In the meantime, we have good films to watch, plenty of food to eat and lots of Christmas cheer to be enjoyed. 

Whatever your plans, stay safe and enjoy your time. The song is provided by the great Smashing Pumpkins.

Arwen’s Song

We enjoyed a bit of snowfall yesterday. Nothing like the weather that Storm Arwen brought to the north of the country, but we don’t usually get much snow so I always think of it as a treat. A little slow-mo video.

We had a freezing night and this morning we awoke to a frozen dusting of snow on rooftops and a beautiful dramatic sky. You can (just about) see the crescent moon in the photo too.

I’m having a long weekend so we went to the allotment this morning to pick a couple of carrots and see how the site looked. Ok, so neither the carrots nor snow are that impressive, but it was nice crunching through the icy grass.

We were glad to have protected the broad beans at the weekend. They looked a bit limp through the tunnel, but not too bad.

Something had left interesting tracks on a plank. I can’t work out what made them. Brrr, chilly little feet!

We didn’t stay outside for long and came home to make a leek & potato soup, using a Jamie Oliver recipe. It only needed two smallish Kestrel potatoes. We really need to dig up the last plant, but not today!

We bought leeks as ours aren’t big enough yet and the soup has celery in it too. The carrot added a bit of colour. We blitzed it rather than leaving it chunky and it has a nice texture and flavour. 

Last night I ate my last spaghetti squash. It’s a shame I only got two fruits this year, but I’ll try again in 2022.

Roasted for 45 minutes then toasting after adding a cheese, nut and paprika topping. It really is a tasty squash variety.

We missed out on the Christmas lights switch-on and preparations for the Hungerford Extravaganza which we’ll also skip this year. We’ll stick to the plan to hopefully avoid Covid-19 including the new Omicron variant which has recently surfaced. We both took antibody tests today, mostly out of interest to compare our results rather than anything else.

I hope the storm didn’t cause you too many problems and this beautiful song from The Lord of the Rings is the only reminder of the first named storm of this season.

Setting Sun

It’s an hour before sunset and it’s only about 3:30. Time is moving too fast for me at the moment.

After doing a bit of HAHA admin this morning, we got to the plot after lunch to do some November tidying. It felt cold but it was sunny and, after moving about a bit, I soon needed to remove my big coat. The temperature was about 10° today. During the week it dropped to -2.8° and was very frosty; We only visited the plot one lunchtime to collect a honeyboat squash, pick some sage and chard to make this delicious meal. It includes re-hydrated Borlotti, Gigantes and runner beans, shallots and garlic from the allotment too, but I had to buy the chopped tomatoes and it has smoked paprika. 

The honeyboat squash is so delicious and the dish has served me for three meals. Final night tonight and I added red chard and also made some crispy seaweed-style chard with sesame oil and seeds. (Neal, if you’re reading this, I owe you some red chard ☺️)

The broad beans have grown well over the last 3 weeks. We’ll leave their cloches on for a bit longer but don’t want them to grow too tall. The shallot bulbs have begun to sprout, but no sign of the garlic yet, although popping one back into the soil (probably a bird pulled it out) I could feel that the roots had started to grow.

The polytunnel is clear now, apart from stored squashes and now there’s room for our chairs. While Jamie was riddling the soil from the peppers grow-bags I was collecting Kestrel potatoes; one plant from a bag and one from the ground. I expect the ground-grown ones to have a few slug holes, but they all look pretty good.

We had celeriac for Halloween and this one I used in a chestnut and celeriac soup. It’s very tasty and will cover a few lunches. There are a few chunks of chestnut remaining for a bit of added interest. Yum!

Another job today was to cut off the strawberry runners which have rooted into their pots. They’ll be happy left outside, behind the polytunnel, over Winter and can be planted in the spring.

So another weekend is over. We’ve had our flu jabs and my 3rd, not booster, third COVID jab is booked for next week. Kidney transplant patients are to have two of the Pfizer jabs this time… hope they do the trick so that life can be a bit more varied and perhaps that will slow time down a bit! The song title is provided by the excellent Chemical Brothers.

In the Meantime

These weekends are flying by; the weeks are too, but I don't mind that so much! The previous weekend was warm and dull, but last weekend was mostly sunny and very warm. That’s when we saw this interesting cloud formation (cirrus uncinus?)

We had some rain in the week but have still needed to water, but as crops are dying back we have less watering to do (thank goodness!)

All those pumpkins, plus at least two more which have crept into the tunnel, are all on one plant! They're New England Pie variety so I'll have to try making a pumpkin pie this year. 

Some of the other squash foliage is dying back and un-ripe fruits are beginning to shrivel. The Festival still has the greenest foliage and started to produce later than the others. There aren't as many fruits as I expected; I don't know whether the Tromboncino hogged the water or whether making the plants climb used more energy. Anyway, they have a few more weeks to do their thing before they get composted if they haven’t ripened. On Sunday I decided to measure the longest tromboncino (drum roll please)… 134.5cm! It’s not a record breaker; it’s 42cm shorter than the European record!

We’ve been harvesting the sweetcorn over the last few weeks.

They are so tasty, I think I prefer the cobs grilled rather than boiled. The pollination was a bit hit and miss, with probably half of the cobs not being fully pollinated. Still enough kernels to slather in butter though 😋 

We’ve also been enjoying the Nicola potatoes, which were grown in bags. They’re very versatile and have been good roasted, baked, mashed or boiled.

Cold or hot.

Finally a couple of peppers; one red, one orange, have ripened and we’re having them in a meal tonight. I hope we get more than two peppers from the plants, but the slugs have enjoyed them sooo much 🙄

Up till now I’ve had to make do with bought peppers for lovely dishes like this (with Naked Glory soya-based strips). There are still a few more french beans to eat, but the runners have gone over.

I’ve had the last of the patty pans and I think the courgettes, which are now marrow-sized are past their best. So the year is certainly moving swiftly on. I’ve updated my allotment wildlife blog as there are so many interesting creatures about at the moment. This weekend the Ivy hedge was full of life so I made use of the macro settings on our camera, still need a bit of practice but some shots I was pleased with.

I sadly missed out on the Horticultural & Handicrafts Show this weekend because I’m still basically shielding until I get my third COVID jab. Well done to all who joined in - especially plot neighbour, Neal, who won the Banksian medal. We’ll be back next year… (hope, hope hope!) but in the meantime Neal can wear the crown 😄 Only joking, but here’s the song title by Spacehog.