This is the Life

The photo makes it look like a tree; it's not, but this plant in a pot is providing us with some lovely courgettes at last! And we've had some beautiful blue sky and hot days during August. We're having a bit of rain now, which is quite welcome as long as we see Sun again at the weekend.

Look at those pretty multi-coloured chard leaves. I like chard. The taste is a bit too earthy for some, but I enjoyed it steamed and served with a tofu chinese curry and it's such a colourful addition to a meal or salad.

And the plot is looking a bit more colourful too as the zinnia are finally flowering - just one at a time at the moment but they're getting there...

That trug contains one each of our two types of courgette. The yellow ones are a bit firmer than the stripey ones. Our third courgette plant is meant to be a Zucchini but no fruits on there yet. The carrots are all tiny and multi-legged but taste carroty so that's fine! And every harvest includes at least one not-so-mini cucumber.

The courgettes were stuffed with shallots & garlic, fried in oak-smoked oil, grated carrots and peanuts with a teaspoon of marmite and topped with cheese - so delicious! And the cavolo nero was chopped up small and steamed with butter and pepper added on the plate. Yum Yum!

That is our first showing of a butternut.. it's not really been a good year for them as they like a long growing season... I wonder if it will make it. I'll probably cut off all the other growth to give it a fighting chance when it reaches a stage when it looks like it could survive.. we'll see.
Unfortunately I had to pull up one of the cavolo nero plants - I think it had downy mildew as the leaves were yellowing and there was definitely some sort of grey fluffy mess in the growing centre. It seems strange that the other two plants appear to be entirely unaffected - let's hope it stays that way...

These are our Halloween peppers. They are meant to go orange, but can be eaten black. We tried one, it was green inside and wasn't ripe enough so we'll let them mature a bit before trying another. They look good though and are sweet peppers, not chillis.

That not-so-wee beastie is an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar. Jamie spotted it walking up a pathway so I moved it to the butterfly bush on the wildlife plot where there is a lot of willowherb which it eats. Fabulous to see. And another good spot by Jamie was this Orange Swift Moth which had just emerged and was in the process of pumping its wings up. Both were worthy of updated entries on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

The swift moth was spotted during our latest Sunday picnic, which ended as a star-gazing event as it was during the Perseid meteor shower. The moon slipped over the horizon and it was a beautiful dark sky. We saw plenty of shooting stars and were quite shocked to see how many satellites were moving about up there - not the International Space Station as they weren't bright enough. They were mostly GPS satellites. It was a beautiful evening after a glorious hot afternoon.

So, a final few trug photos and then I need to nip up the allotment for more beans (and a cucumber probably!) before work. The cucumbers in hte bottom photo should be star-shaped and heart-shaped for our next picnic I think!

Aahh, this is the life! Thanks to Amy Macdonald.

Count your Lucky Stars

We had a stroll up to the allotment in the early hours of this morning to look for shooting stars during this year's Perseids meteor shower. It was a beautiful night and the moon had just dipped out of view from the bench so we had a great dark sky to view. 

That's not a photo :-) We only saw a couple of meteors each, but it was worth venturing out. An owl was very active and noisy in the trees around the site and on our way through the Croft a hedgehog trundled across our path! We'd only mentioned yesterday that we hadn't seen one for a couple of years.

We had a lovely sunny afternoon on the plot yesterday; watering, feeding and deadheading various plants.

And look! The sunflowers are here! The tall ones are still growing but not flowering yet, but the short ones are very sweet and the bees love them.

We picked a few bits for dinner - our yellow courgettes are getting greener each day! Cucumbers are featuring in every harvest now.

A bit annoying that this was amongst the carrots. That could have been our entry for the 'funny shaped veg' in the show next week. I expect there will be more to choose from though!

Welcome to 2014!

I thought I'd add a quick New Years message to my blog. As we haven't really got any news from the plot I thought I'd find a nice picture on line... so...

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and veggie-filled
 new year!

A rather odd-looking spud I think you'd agree - but we've all grown one of them :-)

From http://www.scrapalbum.com/xmasp13.htm

And, this one obviously attracted the eye because of the beetle, and brings me to another fave subject - astronomy...

From http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/collections/local-history/social-history-images/19646817by

The Quadrantids meteor shower should be at its peak over the next two nights. So, if the rain holds off we may just be lucky... This sentence in particular is of interest....

"Early viewing on the evening of 3rd January therefore might just bag you a spectacular haul of shooting stars"

Asteroids and Meteors

After the amazing footage of the meteorite falling in Russia this morning I'd been looking forward to seeing the DA14 asteroid this evening from the well-placed allotment site.

Russia, not Hungerford

We took our flask of coffee, binoculars, camera, sky map and star map Android app along with a little rum and settled in the container at about 7:30 ready for the start of the 'show' at 7:50.
It was a fabulous night for star gazing. Lovely and clear with a newish moon not causing too much light. The DA14 asteroid passed between Earth and some satellites but it's only small so not visible to human eye without at least binoculars.

DA14 asteroid image

The moon looked great through the binoculars and Jupiter was shining brightly. Sadly, finding the planned location of the asteroid wasn't as simple as that. My hands were shaking so much with the chill that I could barely make out the stars of the plough constellation through the binoculars. So, tracking down the star M94 and the asteroid near that was an impossible task!
So, we returned home fairly quickly, just as clouds began to cover the sky. Never mind, we'll stick to going out for the perseids in August when it's warmer and easier to spot!