Alice in Wonderland

Bye-bye October - it’s been a long month but it’s been a good one. This is one of my favourite displays from the Spectacle of Light at Welford Park. So clever, look closer and you’ll see that the sculpture throwing the shadows is all scrap metal; doesn’t really look like a ballet dancer at all!

The other displays were beautiful especially wandering through the lit-up trees with haunting music playing, just lovely.

We stopped for a drink and a pizza and by the time we moved on nearly everyone else had left! We ended up last so as we strolled through the final elements of the spectacle we were discreetly followed by a couple of security guards so they could lock up as soon as we were out of the gates 😀

Welford Park, you may know, is where The Great British Bake-off is filmed. Which is a spurious link to say I’ve done some more baking - I know, twice in one month 😳 I used the remainder of the glacé cherries to make these Cherry and Almond biscuits - yum yum - the dough stayed in the fridge and I cooked batches over the course of 3 days. The first were impossible to bite through 🤭 but after that batch the rest were a perfect snack with a coffee.

Last night we enjoyed Halloween night. Jamie worked on the Boo pumpkin, much trickier (especially post-stroke) than the traditional carving technique, but it’s a good effect.

And we left a little Jack-o-lantern up the allotment, as is our tradition.

All our pumpkins are small this year, all from one Jack-be-Little plant, but they have plenty of flesh and, obviously, played a key role in our Halloween celebratory meal.

We had pumpkin and red pepper soup as a starter - very tasty, Roughly based on this recipe. Unfortunately we had to buy the peppers as our last surviving three growing in the polytunnel had been eaten by rats ^{* go to end of post} 

The main was just sausages in rolls and then dessert was a pumpkin pie roughly based on this recipe, but I roasted the pumpkin and then forgot to add milk to the mixture, which didn’t seem to cause any issues. (So much cooking in this post!) It still tasted lovely with cream and a few lychees with food colouring to make them look spooky (or perhaps disgusting!).

Then we watched Attack of the Killer tomatoes <hmmm> and ate the treats as no Trick or Treaters visited us.

And the song title, well the Spectacle of light had an Alice in Wonderland theme and we kept hearing the voices of the characters. The Cheshire Cat was particularly good as it evaporated into the trees.

The Disney theme song has been stuck in my head ever since, so now I’ll pass it on to you ☺️ I don’t attempt those high notes out loud - make sure there are no glasses nearby if you choose to!

* how do we know it’s rats? Because we saw two in the polytunnel 😳 They panicked more than we did and ran off - so the remaining squashes went home and the polytunnel got a bit of a tidy. The jack-o-lantern will go into the compost bin rather than being left for wildlife this year. The HAHA committee have had a couple of pest controllers visit to check out the rat situation as some plotholders are worrying. But I’m pleased to say they confirmed it’s not an infestation and that it’s to be expected given our spot by the canal. Phew.

Transformation

We’ve been watching the cygnets this year and noticing the plumage changes as they move towards adulthood. They join in the feeding frenzy when we feed them from the canal or river bank, but only the adults seem to spot the feed that lands out of the water 😊

The war memorial is one of their feeding locations, with our fancy new memorial bench, this tree also puts on a fabulous transformation display. The fallen leaves just add to the display don’t they.

Our neighbours, who are also plotholders, have an excellent display of pumpkins - their largest was 36kg! Amazing considering how dry the year was.

Our display of squashes is rather less impressive but I am hoping to make this recipe from at least one of the fig leaf gourds, but I’m not sure whether they are ripe enough to have the spaghetti-like texture. Will find out, I guess!

We’ve had a couple of plot visits since my last post - I weeded the plot where the onions and garlic have begun to poke through and have done a bit more clearing. Spotted this tiny sunflower that’s made a late appearance - the flower is only about 10cm in diameter!

We’ve had a delivery of Apsley Farms mulch which I can spread once I’ve cleared the planned area, but I need to dig a trench for all the foliage from beans, squash, etc and I can’t face doing that at the moment - we’ve had such a lot of rain it may be a nightmare job.

We got an absolute drenching when we visited the Welford Park Spectacle of Light on Sunday.

Four miles of wandering amongst beautiful fantasy woodland with lovely musical accompaniment.

We really loved it, despite the rain. I really liked these conical lights amongst the trees.

And this area was where we sat having refreshments. The spheres were really great but didn’t photograph too well. But just look at those huge lit-up trees - stunning.

It’s only a few miles from Hungerford - it’s where the Great British Bake-off is filmed. It was fabulous, rather expensive but worth the visit, the drenching and the aching legs! More photos if you fancy a peek.

And here’s another cygnet photo showing a bit more white plumage - the brown feathers moult apparently, though it looks like they’re changing colour to me 🧐

So, you can see why this post’s song title is what it is - by David Gray.