Colours

Autumn has brought the usual misty mornings with a slight chill on the air, but the last three days have (almost) returned to Summer temperatures, which is most welcome. We've been busy the last couple of weekends but have been visiting the plot most days to water and pick veg.

Cucumelon don't seem to be that popular, but I quite like them - as long as they're picked small. Anyway, they look nice and provide an interesting addition to my packed lunches occasionally.

Above is the cucumelon plant - it grows very happily outside and has rather taken over, but the little fruits are so tricky to find! Lots of immature fruits are beginning to drop off now, so I don't think there will be many more harvests.

A couple of the courgette plants have stopped producing and the leaves have developed the usual powdery mildew. We're pleased to see some of our peppers are going red; so many of them are being nibbled by something or get so heavy that the branches snap :-(

This is what the Yard Long Beans look like - that's different isn't it! They've appeared a bit late in the season. What a shame, as they look very interesting. I hope the few that have appeared get long enough and aren't too tough to at least try.

The free tomato plant that we put in the hanging basket has produced quite a lot of fruits and they're nice to eat while we're visiting Plot3 but the Aviditas in the polytunnel are providing us with all the tomatoes we need for lunches and dinners and they're still the best tomatoes we've ever tasted.

I'm still hoping for a long growing season so that my Double Red sweetcorn swell.... but it will surely not be long enough for the Glass Gem sweetcorn, which have only just developed tassles - another one to try again next year... But for lunch today I have our first Lark sweetcorn of the year - not really ripe, but we had to pick one to be sure and it tastes lovely and sweet though the kernels are a bit small.

The song, by The Prodigy, is apt because of the lovely colours our harvests are giving us at the moment.

Walk of Life

What a busy weekend that was!

We've finally planted everything, (oh, excet the brassicas): the Rocky cucumbers are in the tall pots in the front of the photo and a Jack Be Little pumpkin is to the right. This is Plot3 and we've put the mesh up for the spaghetti squash and the Cucamelon to clamber up. My sister gave it to Jamie for his birthday. It's such a tiny plant, hope it grabs the mesh soon and holds on tight!

We've had no rain, lots of heat and plenty of sunshine so have needed to water every day, but it's worth it with everything growing well. The Pickwick dwarf runners have produced masses of flowers and the beans are on their way now...

I wore Jamie's pedometer and walk about 5km everytime we have a watering session, so good practice for the 5km Race for Life walk I did in Oxford with my workmate Ruth on Sunday - I wasn't going to attempt running it. I so love Oxford that I had to take a few photos. Looks good with all the walkers wearing pink (not quite all). It supports all cancers now, not only breast cancer and these events raise a huge amount of money for research.

After having an amazing Paneer naan wrap from Kebab Kid on the Cowley Road I went home and, you guessed it, we needed to water the allotment. The High Street was closed off for Hungerford Carnival so we wandered up and stayed to watch the floats. We saw a few of our plotholder friends in the parade and watching it. Maybe next year we'll be organised enough to have a HAHA float...

We watered everything in the hot evening air, everything looking beautiful around us.

There were 7 Red Kites flying overhead! And so many butterflies fluttering by.

So pleased that some of the freesia bulbs, planted in Spring, have flowered. The fragrance is amazing.

Ivan has stripped down all his pea plants, so gave us his "left-overs". We made a delicious pea soup with garlic, onion and vegetable stock.

So that's another long weekend over - I took Monday off as a recovery day. This hot weather is so gorgeous but it wears me down a bit these days, luckily I have a week off very soon!

The song is by Dire Straits, with such a ground-breaking video in its day!