These Days

There’s a spot of colour from when we had some welcome sunshine on Saturday afternoon. That little robin is full of song at the moment. Perhaps like us he was relieved that the rain had stopped! October has continued the extremely wet theme of this Autumn. The ground doesn’t get a chance to dry out between torrential rain or drizzle so it’s difficult to do any clearing.

We’ve also had a couple of frosty nights with temperatures dipping below freezing but some flowers are surviving. My little hazel tree’s leaves are changing colour and there are some buds - Ooh, I wonder if it’ll produce catkins this year 🤞

Our sunflowers are looking less happy and sadly the seedheads have gone mouldy so maybe not ideal for birds to eat.

The birds have been enjoying the teasels though they’ve missed a few seeds on this one - I had to remind myself of what the word for this is - VIVIPARY.

The Wildlife Plot is looking extremely overgrown and, until the most recent frost, it was literally buzzing with activity. There were loads of bees and other insects and Jamie saw a little vole in one of the woodpiles. 

This daddy long legs had found a nice soft new teasel head to warm up on. The grass was full of these crane flies last week; reminded me of filling my desk up with them at primary school - I’m not sure why I did that 🤨

I’ve had fleece protecting my butternut squash but yesterday I decided to pick them now that the foliage has died back. I’m glad the slugs and snails all picked on just the one fruit!

And left the others untouched - they’re very small but just right for individual meals.

We’re still picking tomatoes if they show any coloured blush and they soon ripen at home. The peppers we pick as we need them because they’re in the polytunnel which we’ve been zipping up on the cold nights.

The Halloween peppers are tasty and orange ones were part of this halloumi meal, along with our last sweetcorn, potatoes and some parsley.

We were pleased to see that our garlic didn’t drown and a few green shoots have appeared - that’s about 3 weeks since the cloves were planted. And we’ve spotted some fungi appearing on the plot -  I’m not sure of the type; it may be there because of the manured soil.

I’m pleased to say it hasn’t rained yet today (Sunday) but these days our bodies are moving much slower than the clock so it’ll be an afternoon plot visit. The song title is provided by Nico.

Fire

Special delivery! Plotholders are always pleased with a manure delivery - it’s just a shame our plot is at the other end of the site from the manure heap 😩 I only managed three barrow-loads before collapsing, but we’ll get a few more.  HAHA charges £1.50 per barrowful. We pulled the last of our Desiree spuds to use that plot as a storage area until we’ve worked out next year’s planting plan.

I need to pull the courgette from that plot. We’ve had probably our last fruit from it - looks great, but unfortunately it had a hollow heart so no good for eating sadly. But we’re pleased that the Lark sweetcorn are providing us with some delicious cobs, they’re such a sweet variety.

We’ve had some proper stormy weather over the last two days. The early morning lightning was great yesterday (Saturday) as it was still dark when it was lighting up the sky. The rain was torrential and measured 22mm on the allotment. I planted the garlic on Friday - 22 cloves of Carcassonne Wight - so I hope that appreciated the drenching.

We were on site for another torrential downpour but stayed in the polytunnel - it was so loud but no thunder or lightning.

Within an hour we were soaking up the warm rays of dazzling sunshine!

This dandelion looked so pretty drying out in the sunshine and there’s Jamie doing the same on the bench by the extremely overgrown wildlife plot. 😎 

I did a bit of baking last weekend - another ‘floral focaccia’ with a garlic flour mix. Pretty and tasty!

And the plot flowers are still looking pretty - these zinnia were mostly not touched by the frost. Such lovely colours, but the flowers were a bit slow to arrive this year so we haven’t got the flowerbed display I was hoping for. This post is sounding a bit depressed - it’s not meant to be! It’s been a pretty good year, all things considered! And I have a few days off work next week.

Last Sunday we didn’t picnic because we went to see an art event ‘Ablaze’ in Newbury, with fire and music along the canal and in Victoria Park. It was good with lots of people enjoying the metalwork and flaming sculptures.

Which provides the opportunity to use this great track by Kasabian.

HBDMF

Summer arrived - just for a day, but it was tremendously hot and sunny. So I started my holiday early by taking Friday afternoon off and we enjoyed a lovely barbecue on the plot. It was a good start to my 10-day break where hopefully more of the days are like this…

Than this!

Actually those heavy-looking clouds didn’t produce any rain. That’s fine, we’ve had plenty.. and every time it rains the molluscs turn up and eat our plants 😩 Look at this sad display!

Not a leaf left so now they’ve moved onto the flowers. A few things are getting away with less damage and we managed a tasty salad with a tasty peppery turnip.

And we had our first new potatoes Swift with it. They look good and tasted good but that was from a bag where two seed potatoes were planted so it’s a pathetic harvest - lucky there’s only two of us!!

I ventured beneath the netting on the root vegetable plot last weekend and, once I’d cleared the weeds, I found one (yes one!) parsnip, five salsify and a rather weak couple of rows of carrots - ugh, what a year! The garlic harvest was more successful and dried out in the sunshine. Some bulbs have little additional bulblets, I’m blaming the wet Spring for that.

Now, I must stop moaning! A few bees and butterflies arrived with the sunshine.

And the verbena bonariensis is looking stunning alongside the red of the crocosmia.

Also, our wildlife camera snapped a fox visiting the plot - hooray!

On Saturday a group of us plotholders were given a tour of the site for the Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve which is 40acres of ancient water meadow which we really hope will get planning permission in the next few weeks - it’s literally 5minutes walk from our front door and will be great for us, nature and the town. Exciting!

It’s been a great start to my holiday and yesterday we had a picnic, which included a birthday cake, too much wine and a lot of laughter.

Thanks to the Dropkick Murphys for the fabulous song, though I clearly don’t agree with the sentiment 🥳 it does make me laugh. Enjoy.

Give Me Just a Little More Time

Mmm, look at those little jewels against the blue sky - beautiful! Uh-oh, I see a snail got in the picture to confirm it’s 2024! Jamie made a sauce with the redcurrants from Ivan’s communal fruit cage.

Luckily Ivan is a regular visitor to maintain the fruit bushes as the HAHA ‘community’ element hasn’t gone quite as well as we’d hoped. Perhaps we’ll have a more time later in the year to manage it a bit better. With the weather, work and even our social life slowing our progress we are just about now catching up with things. Not that work and socials have been unwelcome! We enjoyed our second wedding of the year last weekend in the beautiful Shropshire countryside.

What a fun event, interesting slant on the traditional with guests including Darth Vader and Robocop 😀. Our night in the Shepherd’s hut was cosy as the rain poured down but the Sun shone when it needed to on the day, although it was very cold - pity the poor Cypriots who had come over for a Summer wedding and the campers! Great food, company and entertainment kept us cheerful though 🙂

Since being home we’re still enjoying broad beans and strawberries and I’ve included garlic scapes in a couple of meals as a tasty mild garlic addition.

We’ve planted out our beans to grow up both sides of the tunnel frame again: runner beans, French beans and the two borlotti that actually germinated. That’s the valerian in the background, still producing a lovely scent.

The Lark sweetcorn are planted out too - they’re so small we’re leaving their little protective cloches on for a while. And we have two Festival squashes planted in that section to clamber and provide some tasty Winter squash hopefully. The Halloween Orange peppers are planted in the polytunnel and the mini cucumbers are planted in pots on Plot3. So things are progressing at last.

Signs of things to come on the yellow courgette that’s growing in a pot, but not much movement on the ones planted into the ground. We have leek, carrots and beetroot seedlings but I’ll have to get a magnifying glass to see any evidence of salsify or parsnips 😖

We’re mostly doing pre-work visits for watering but last Thursday was the start of a ‘heatwave’ so we enjoyed our lunch sitting in the sunshine for a while. So beautiful as the bare earth is beginning to show signs of planned growth all around. I finally started clearing the unplanned growth on the last quarter on Plot7 today but the earth is like concrete. I cleared the front of weeds and sowed a row of chard and a row of radish, with the intention that some will go to seed to produce the peppery pods.

I was attempting to clear some other weedy areas on Plot8, but there are so many, with bindweed being the worst by far. These two varieties (double or single-flowered) of feverfew arrived naturally and put on a great show each year.

These pretty flowers are spreading on the wildlife plot, they’re so bright and cheerful plus they have a great name ‘Fox and Cubs’ aka Pilosella aurantiaca.

The teasels have almost taken over (we were warned) but they are so impressive and the bees love the flowers then the birds love the seeds.

One more week of June - all going a bit fast, isn’t it?! Leading me to the title song by Chairmen of the Board.

Raining Again

This was such an amazing rainbow! It was so bright and huge, much more impressive than this photo shows but it’s the best I could get. So beautiful, I stood and stared for a while.

Sunshine and showers definitely sums up the weather over the last couple of weeks/months. I’ve got a few days off for Easter, but the hoped-for plot-days haven’t worked out yet…

We’ve had plot visits and have even done a bit of weeding but it’s hard work having to do it by hand because the ground is too wet to walk on let alone to dig.

Well, that’s the leeks patch cleared to make way for root crops. It’ll need better digging than that to grow some straight carrots!

The leeks were good this year. It’s worth planting them nice and deep to get plenty of white stalk.

The blackthorn has flowered in the hedge but the lovely flowers didn’t last long. The wind, rain, hail didn’t help, but hopefully they were pollinated.

We’ve seen bees enjoying the dandelions, dead nettle and grape hyacinths as well as the other Spring bulbs that are popping up here and there.

I was pleased to see some tadpoles in our little pond although I haven’t seen them since. I have seen a couple of frogs recently though and there’s some frogspawn appeared in the pond on the HAHA wildlife plot.

The teasels on the wildlife plot in a rainstorm yesterday (Good Friday). The sky went black but no thunder like we had on Thursday when the hail was apocalyptic.

Here’s Jamie fighting against the wind and rain while we were trying to secure a honeysuckle trellis which had collapsed on the wildlife plot.

We have achieved some tasks in the last couple of weeks. I’ve managed to weed and feed the garlic bed and Jamie’s cleared the bean tunnel.

And we’ve collected some of the manure for future use - it’s in a compost bin for now. £1.50 a barrow-load from HAHA - what a bargain 😊

Talking of HAHA. We have a fully tenanted site again - it’s great to see the newcomers joining us old-timers 👨‍🌾 And on the sunny breaks it has been a lovely busy site with lots of chat and catching up with plot-buddies. Aah, we do love our allotment and we really should get out there while the Sun is shining because it looks like today may be dry…. with just a small threat of showers… Moby provides the song title.