Say Hello Wave Goodbye

This is the obligatory look back over the year - a year that certainly didn’t follow any plan and I don’t suppose there are many who aren’t happy to see the back of 2020 with high hopes for 2021. Even though the year has obviously been dominated by COVID-19, horrible statistics, social distancing, lockdown tiers and face masks this post is only covering my highlights. 

I read more books than usual and I think I’ll continue to do so, rather than just reading on holiday which is how our year started (little did we realise how lucky we were with our timing). 

Aah, those costumes and fabulous drummers! Carnivalesque - Such a fabulous time to visit Tenerife. 

Shielding and lockdown kept me indoors for more than 70 days, working from home was enough to drive anyone stir crazy... my hair bore the brunt of the boredom.

My first trip outside was at 4am in June to see the sun rise over Freeman’s Marsh. It was worth getting up so early.

The poppy fields just up the road were well worth another walk outside and the weather was beautiful.

It seems that 2020 was a good year for flowers in and around Hungerford.

Birthday trip to Chalk Hill

I was inspired to do some embroidery - the first time in decades. Loved doing it and love my sewn Plot7 but it seems that isn’t a hobby I’m going to keep doing.

Feeling creative I also did some decorative baking (after seeing it on the Veg Hog’s blog) - focaccia will definitely be made again.

I made a foraged blackberry and apple crumble. (Bear with me, I don’t cook much)

And even baked a cake, with a tromboncino squash donated by a fellow plotholder.

We did get to the allotment and enjoyed some lovely hot days, or lunch hours, up there. We even did a bit of clearing, but didn’t get much planted. Our generous allotment friends and my sister made sure we got fresh fruit and veg though.

Our sad overgrown plot

The allotments got a flurry of new plotholders and a substantial waiting list, as recognised by the local paper. (That’s our plot in the photo 😊)

2020 was also a good year for wildlife, particularly when the traffic was so reduced in the Spring and with the reduced air pollution because so few planes were flying. On the allotment we saw these great caterpillars - I was so pleased to find my first hawk moth and then found a second one!

Elephant hawk moth

Elephant hawk moth

Pale tussock moth

So, my blog was much more of a lifestyle blog, I hope it features much more of the allotment next year. This morning, for the last time this year, I hung around by the canal while Jamie went shopping. It was cold and frosty with just a couple of men working on their narrow boats and a family feeding the ducks.

So it’s goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021, song title provided by Soft Cell.

Thankyou for visiting and we wish you all a Happy New Year 🥳 

Just a Little Bit Longer

We don't need to move to have a lovely new view from our window for a few weeks and the weather has been so dreary that it’s been a welcome spot of brightness even during the day.

Hmm, what else has happened over the last week... well, I had a day off and went to a shop... it was self-service so I didn’t really feel the COVID-shopping experience. I did get to cook the one and only spaghetti squash that we grew this year - it didn’t get looked after as much as it normally would, which I guess is why it only produced the one fruit, but it was quite a big one. I had two meals of it as Jamie doesn’t like it. It was so delicious with Spanish spicy beans and topped with cheese.

Halved and cooked cut-side down for 45 minutes at 180°, then filled and put back in the oven for 15 minutes was just right for keeping the ‘spaghetti’ firm. For the last 15minutes I pricked the skin to let the juices escape.

I also made some thick and tasty chilli, carrot and coriander soup. I’m missing our usual supply of home-grown carrots and squash, we’re so used to eating loads at this time of year, so I put a shopping order in with Jamie 😊 (He's looking forward to me getting the corona virus vaccine before him so that I have to do the shopping!)

We had a couple of hours on the allotment yesterday. It wasn’t foggy, like Saturday, but it was very dull. I cleared the bean poles away and put all the runner bean stalks into the compost bins. Look at that root! I’ve never seen them grown thick like that before and it had a really strong smell of runner beans.

We were watching the birds while we sat having a cup of choca-mocha in the polytunnel. 

The robin was enjoying finding grubs where I’d moved a large pot and these goldfinches were chirping away in the trees in the hedge.

And now a question for you growers. I saw this on Facebook: 

Is my globe artichoke actually a cardoon? I hope someone can tell me! Or maybe I just need to chop off some of those stems to taste them  - what do you think?

We’ve just watched the Hungerford Virtual lights switch on video. Fun to see so many plotholders who are involved in other town groups. Our HAHA Happy Christmas is around 14mins 20secs if you can’t sit through the lot 😁 And the beautiful Hungerford Christmas lights are on - yay, we can see a couple from the flat but I think we'll have to take a wander up the high street one evening next week.

So, Jackson Browne provides the song title with a little poetic licence, just a little bit longer in Lockdown#2, a little bit longer till Christmas and a little bit longer till the vaccine is available to us - hooray, lots to look forward to!

This is Halloween

We always enjoy celebrating Halloween with a meal followed by a horror film. This is the first year in ages that we had to buy a pumpkin rather than growing our own. Of course, the pumpkin seeds weren’t wasted. I roasted these (about 20mins on 180°) with oak-smoked oil, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. So more-ish, but afterwards, as Jamie said, it is rather like having eaten a balsa wood model airplane 😂

We managed to avoid the rain when we popped to the allotment to leave our 2020-style Jack-o-Lantern on the bench to ward off evil spirits from our plot ;-)

The creepy couple from Plot7

We had a starter of green spicy parsnip soup and for the main had our favourite Stahly’s veggie haggis with roughly mashed roast Festival squash (thanks Kate!) and roast spuds.

And for dessert we had bloody lemoncello.

So that marks the end of October 2020. What a year and we’ve just learned that England is going back into lockdown for a month from next week. It won’t make much difference to my life, particularly as allotments are still able to remain open. The song music is provided from the Nightmare Before Christmas (great) film soundtrack.

There Will Be Time

Look at that nice little harvest - all home-grown but mostly by Neal :-) The lettuce and french beans are from our plot... Thank goodness for other plotholders growing too much veg!

This is our black kale, one of our two tiny plants. It has grown additional leaves since it was planted but it's not going to be the huge leafy greens that everyone else has on-site... Well, mini-veg is a thing, right?!

Another addition to our mini-veg range is this - 2 plants from Min planted today (thanks Min!). It's leaf cabbage, Winter Jewel. It's a bit late in the season to be planted out but maybe the weather will stay reasonable.

After all the rain we've had it was a lovely sunny day yesterday. Jamie sowed the broad beans - 2 rows of 8 plants, that'll be 17 plants then 😃 And I hoed all the tiny weedlings that are also enjoying the weather and chopped back more of the bramble and weeds which have taken over part of plot 7.

October 2020 

In the more than 6 months of working from home the view from our window has changed to Autumn - the horse chestnut is always the first to lose all it's leaves and the other tree (sycamore?) looks lovely and bright when the morning sun hits it.

April 2020 

By the time we made it to the plot this year, ants had fully colonised our hibiscus pot so it's been struggling, but yesterday it had managed to produce it's first pretty flower of the year.

The song title is provided by Mumford and Sons with Baaba Maal - I'm sending positive thoughts to all our plants that need a bit longer to grow.

Wow

I took Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday off work, specifically because of the forecast heatwave and it was right. Phew, what a sweltering few days; over 30° in Hungerford and sunny. Lovely!

We spent some time at the allotment - it was so hot that there was only Jamie and me there much of the time. Us and the birds - just listen to that! What a joy to be back on the plot.

Neal said that we could have some of his lettuce seedlings. I chose the two red varieties - the green ones (Lobjoits Green cos) have all been nibbled - looks like by pigeons - whereas the red appear to be untouched (it's not that obvious in the photo, but trust me!)

I also planted the squash plants that Liz gave us (a patty pan and a spaghetti squash, I think) plus a courgette plant from Ivan - to replace one of ours that the slugs decimated. Jamie cleared some weeds from Plot3 and trimmed the long grass round the edges of Plot7, in the hope that it’ll keep the slugs away from our few plants - we don’t have enough to share this year! Unlike Ivan who always needs a wheelbarrow for his huge harvests - that’s the last of his strawberries.

He gave us a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of redcurrants. They were a colourful addition to my breakfast.

And I cooked the remaining redcurrants with sugar - they weren't as tart as I'd expected and only needed a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

I sieved the sauce - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reckons you don't have to, but I wouldn't fancy eating all those seeds and skins.

It was delicious on ice cream and with scotch pancakes.

There were lots of butterflies on site, but they weren't in the mood for posing for photos unfortunately. I definitely saw some ringlets, tortoiseshells and peacocks among the usual whites. This Scarlet Tiger moth was easier to photograph as it came into our sitting room - dragging me away from my work :-)

As I write this we're in the middle of a hailstorm - the weather has changed: it's dazzling sunshine one moment then dark clouds covering the sky the next as the wind builds up - our poor plants, I wonder how they're doing. I hope to visit again during a lunchtime next week.

Jamie’s excited about my new project (NOT!). I saw this amazing embroidery of an allotment site (twitter.com/sewnbycollette) and was inspired, so immediately bought a selection of threads from Amazon.

Now, I haven’t embroidered for about 40 years, so mine is more, err, primitive, we’ll see how it goes... My sister kindly gave me some fabric and has lent me her old book. It’s our plot, as I’m sure you can see 😏 Well, I only started in yesterday {I wonder if it will ever be seen again on this blog :-D}

The ‘Wow’ of the title refers to various things from this week. I’m so glad that plot neighbour, Kate, told me about the stunning fields of white poppies which we could walk to from the allotment.

I didn’t expect to see so many fields of them - how beautiful! Having not walked far for weeks it was quite exhausting walking the slight incline, especially in the heat, but so worth it.

Shops and some restaurants are beginning to open up in England. Some people definitely seem to think that the time is right to get back to normal life, but I'm happy with just the occasional trip out and am not missing (non-internet) shopping one bit! Even the Government isn't suggesting a return to work for the likes of me yet - thank goodness! Great song from Kate Bush, obviously - sing along, or maybe just do the moves ;-)