Walk of Life

What a busy weekend that was!

We've finally planted everything, (oh, excet the brassicas): the Rocky cucumbers are in the tall pots in the front of the photo and a Jack Be Little pumpkin is to the right. This is Plot3 and we've put the mesh up for the spaghetti squash and the Cucamelon to clamber up. My sister gave it to Jamie for his birthday. It's such a tiny plant, hope it grabs the mesh soon and holds on tight!

We've had no rain, lots of heat and plenty of sunshine so have needed to water every day, but it's worth it with everything growing well. The Pickwick dwarf runners have produced masses of flowers and the beans are on their way now...

I wore Jamie's pedometer and walk about 5km everytime we have a watering session, so good practice for the 5km Race for Life walk I did in Oxford with my workmate Ruth on Sunday - I wasn't going to attempt running it. I so love Oxford that I had to take a few photos. Looks good with all the walkers wearing pink (not quite all). It supports all cancers now, not only breast cancer and these events raise a huge amount of money for research.

After having an amazing Paneer naan wrap from Kebab Kid on the Cowley Road I went home and, you guessed it, we needed to water the allotment. The High Street was closed off for Hungerford Carnival so we wandered up and stayed to watch the floats. We saw a few of our plotholder friends in the parade and watching it. Maybe next year we'll be organised enough to have a HAHA float...

We watered everything in the hot evening air, everything looking beautiful around us.

There were 7 Red Kites flying overhead! And so many butterflies fluttering by.

So pleased that some of the freesia bulbs, planted in Spring, have flowered. The fragrance is amazing.

Ivan has stripped down all his pea plants, so gave us his "left-overs". We made a delicious pea soup with garlic, onion and vegetable stock.

So that's another long weekend over - I took Monday off as a recovery day. This hot weather is so gorgeous but it wears me down a bit these days, luckily I have a week off very soon!

The song is by Dire Straits, with such a ground-breaking video in its day!

A Little Time

There's always something watching; normally it's magpies ..This time it's a VOLE.

I know! Enemy of the broad bean grower, but really! How cute is that? Rustling around in the neighbour's strawberry bed while Jamie was digging. I think he did well to get this photo before the little chap scurried off (the vole, not Jamie).

As long as he stays on the neighbour's plot and doesn't find my mangetout growing in the greenhouse I don't mind :-)

It's Easter holidays, so Jamie planted some of our potatoes on Thursday (13th April). We have two short rows with 4 spuds in each: 1 x Burgundy Red, 1 x Orla, 2 x Kestrel and the other row is 4 x Desiree. Our other potatoes are going into bags, which we'll try to do in the next week or so.

Sowing the chard in modules means that I can be selective for which colours I plant out on the plot. Plenty to choose from there. We're having a plant sale in June so none of these will be wasted - I only need about 3 plants but like to have one of each colour.

Music provided by The Beautiful South,  as I have a little more time before going back to work.