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.

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.

Scary Monsters

It’s that time of year again Halloweeeeen, ooh spooky 👻 

Our mini pumpkin was included in the meal, decorated our dinner table and Jamie even managed to carve one, but it was a bit fiddly.

The scary monster is a yellow dung fly - we’ve had another manure delivery to site. Hooray! We had a 10 tonne delivery and nearly half had been carted off to plots by the end of the weekend - we had a few barrow loads.

Behind the manure are our broad beans Aquadulce Claudia which we sowed at the weekend. As usual, they’re protected by plastic bottle cloches and netting. The netting doesn’t protect from everything though 🙄

Our little visitor is back to his friendly self and he joined us in the polytunnel during a sharp shower.

The showers were torrential at the weekend but it was reasonably warm and very pleasant when the Sun came out. We noticed that that the wasps were making the most of Ivan’s grapes, which have sadly gone to waste this year.

They were definitely drunk on them. All binging together - we’ve all been there 😀

It seems that we’re well into Autumn now - November today, unbelievable! The leaves finally changed colour. This is a Creeping cinquefoil leaf, so pretty throughout the year, but it does take over.

Even my little hazel tree looked autumnal.

The pot has some excellent moss forming the ‘forest floor’ for the little tree.

But Storm Ciaran is clearing the remaining leaves off the trees today. I have a day off work, so we’ll go up the plot and batten down the hatches later. First I’m having a toasted cheese and beetroot sandwich for lunch. I’ve always liked cheese and beetroot together, but toasted is even better - totally delicious! Talking of delicious, I made this pumpkin and bean curry the other night - mmm, coconut tastiness but unfortunately I didn’t cook the beans for long enough; even though they’d been soaked overnight they would have needed cooking for 30mins I think, not the 15mins I gave them - they were rather hard still.

I had a bit of good news recently - I wrote a poem (I know! Me!?) and WON a £50 voucher from Nomads Clothing. I love their clothes so I was very pleased 😊 Here’s the poem and the coat it’s written about.

The song is provided by David Bowie.

Someday Soon

Oh, I do love a close-up of a chitting potato at this time of year :-) Here's another for your enjoyment (or at least, for mine) 

Look at those tiny emerging leaves, so cute. Talking of er.. cute... here are some more <ahem> 'babies'.

Lots of teeny tiny snails waiting to emerge from hibernation just in time to breakfast on our seedlings. Pesky things! I hope now they've been revealed that a thrush will find them - over the hedge, where I moved them to!

 

HAHA arranged a manure delivery in the week so lots of people were working on the site at the weekend, even though it was cold. I wheel-barrowed 5 loads to Plot3 - it couldn't be further away from the manure pile, so that was a workout that my lockdown-body isn't used to!

We had a lovely few hours on the plot yesterday. By the time we got there, the sun was just strong enough to burn off the clouds and coats and jumpers were soon removed. Especially as we were digging. I dug a trench where I'm going to try again to grow celeriac.

 

The shredded bills and well-rotted manure will hopefully provide enough water retention to help these thirsty plants to bulb up. We'll see... I know they need A LOT of water. Anyway, first I need to get the seeds to germinate, which I'll do at home as they like to be warm.

 

And Jamie dug the carrot trench. He got the raw deal. There were so many roots in that part of the plot - well, there certainly aren't any roots of stones left in there when he'd finished.

Last week I was eating this really tasty Chestnut and Fennel soup - I topped it with some Seaweed (Kelp) Flavour Boost with either chives or chilli to add a bit of interest.

 

The song title is provided by KT Tunstall. Because, someday soon I'll be making soup with home-grown veg again and sitting on the plot watching things grow... And we'll be out of lockdown (my fingers are crossed).

Being Boring

I wasn’t going to write a post as very little has happened, but we’re waiting for a plumber to fix a leak so I need something to do (I’ve taken a day’s leave as we’ll have to clear up the soggy bedroom carpet later 😖).

The photo above shows some lovely shiny tomatoes going into the oven with garlic, thyme, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. And here’s the resultant dish of roasted toms. Sweet and tasty with a bit of fresh basil. They’ve also been a nice addition to cold salad lunches.

Our harvests are tiny so it’s been great to receive tomatoes and cucumbers from my sister.

We had a very pleasant couple of hours on the plot yesterday after some welcome rain. Jamie fed the plants and I collected three barrow-loads of manure - we had a HAHA delivery to site in the morning. It nearly killed me, I haven’t moved much over the last 6 months! And the weather is still humid but not over 30° like we suffered last week.

We think these snails were hiding in the leek flowers to avoid a further shower. We haven’t seen them doing this before but it looks cosy.

And this is something self-seeded, rather pretty isn’t it? We thought it was going to be a tiny sunflower, maybe it is..

So, as you can see, apart from finding my biggest ever elephant hawk moth caterpillar not much has happened over the last two weeks other than work.

So, rather like this post, the song is boring by the Pet Shop Boys. But at least the leak is fixed!