Showing posts with label kale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kale. Show all posts

Tuesday 10 October 2023

Morning Glory

Yes, it’s filtered, I had to because it was a bit blurry and then Photoshop offered me this and how could I refuse?! It was quite a nice photo with a distant hot air balloon.
Anyway, that was Saturday as the Sun was just slipping down behind the treeline. Jamie and I enjoyed a barbecue on site and had a couple of games of pรฉtanque in the warm weather. The Sun is setting at 6:30 now and is rising at about 7:30 - this was the lovely sunrise sky on Saturday morning (no filter required).
They may only be short days now that we’re in October but what a lovely sunny Sunday we had. The flowers are still making the most of it on the plot. Our morning glory took a long time to flower, but look how beautiful they are now.
And my one dahlia has finally developed a flower, after the amazing dahlia year everyone else seems to have had! Oh well, it’s still pretty.

And finally a melon Mangomel had matured enough for us to eat for breakfast - it was tiny, barely a mouthful but super-sweet.

The bees, hoverflies and butterflies are really making the most of the fine weather and on Saturday we were so pleased to see a Hummingbird Hawkmoth enjoying the verbena bonariensis. The antirrhinum have got to be one of the best self-seeded flowers. So many different colours; they’ve been flowering for months and the bumblebees love them.

I planted 2 garlic bulbs, which provided 20 cloves, (Caulk White) on Friday and I’ve now planted up all the flower bulbs I ordered. I’ve put some in pots and some in the ground: various alliums, daffodils and anemones. I hope they don’t get wiped out by mice like they did last year… we’ll see what appears next Spring. A few have gone into the flower bed where I’ve cleared masses of Nigella seedlings, but never fear… they’ll be back!.
And here’s a before-and-after weeding photo at the front of Plot8. I’ve put some bulbs in front of the irises and amongst the grape hyacinths. As you can see, the irises have been trimmed back to 15cm for over-Wintering.
HAHA has a seed swap container in our communal shed, so I’ve packed up a few of our collected seeds this weekend too. Lots of beans and flowers - if plotholders don’t want them we’ll find somewhere else to share them.

Yesterday I had a meal of Yin Yang beans, curly kale (thanks to Nia), tomatoes and onion flavoured with a bit of garlic, oregano, soy, tomato puree with a little finely grated cheese on top - delish and so easy to make!

 And, just one last thing - look at this potato! Is it the veggie version of ham-fisted? ๐Ÿ˜Š

The song title is provided by Oasis. What a song, haven't heard that in a while but can't believe it was released 28years ago!

Monday 12 October 2020

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 ๐Ÿ˜ƒ 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.

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.
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.

Monday 14 September 2020

Free Falling

I’ve been working from home for 6 months now. I know lots of people don’t get on with it, but I’ve found it ok. It’s a bit intense, with too many meetings and I miss the general chit-chat and the random corridor chats but I’ve found I’m more productive with work and at home - look, I even made a blackberry & apple crumble! I haven’t done that in a few decades ๐Ÿ˜€

The blackberries were from the allotment hedge and the apples were windfalls left outside a house we walked past at the weekend (Thanks!). It’s very tasty and I had some for breakfast. I added some almonds to the crumble, but can’t really taste them, I should have added a few more.

We walked to the plot because the East-bound M4 was closed all weekend so all that traffic had to drive along the A4 and was queuing for miles, we didn’t fancy getting caught in that for the sake of a mile walk! You can just about see some of the traffic in this photo from the site’s entrance.
It was a lovely sunny weekend and we spent a good few hours on site both days. We did lots of weed clearing, trimmed the edges, dealt with the compost, hoed everywhere and enjoyed the sun and wildlife. I was given two kale seedlings (Thanks Min!) so planted them in the netted area on Plot3 - the weed seedlings are happy with all the extra space so we’re going to have to hoe it regularly. This is an extreme close-up of a tiny section of ‘bare’ earth!
Jamie spotted this great looking Herald moth on the back of our bench. I love the wing-shape.
We’re still enjoying runner beans which are very long but surprisingly not gnarly yet.
These few went into a stir-fry, made with peanut satay sauce and Naked Glory ‘roast tender strips’. I hadn’t tried them before and they were a really tasty veggie-protein fillet to use as a ‘meat replacement’ - I’m not keen on that phrase but it’s hard not to use it sometimes.

It’s sweltering today (Monday) and it was nice to have a quick lunchtime visit to the allotment - I won’t be able to do that when I eventually make it back to the lab. Talking of which, have you seen the news about life on Venus? Well, maybe not life as we know it ๐Ÿ˜Š

Tom Petty provides the title track, though I added the 'g' because I'm just not that cool to get away with it and Blogger can’t handle apostrophes in titles :-D