Monday Monday

The ornamental cherry at home is putting on a spectacular show at the moment. The wind is creating confetti and forming pink drifts in all the corners, it’s so lovely to see. As is this Holly Blue butterfly (male) at the allotment. He was willing to pose on my hand for some time, but refused to reveal his beautiful blue wings that catch the eye as they flutter by.

The weather has certainly been changeable so we weren’t surprised to have seen at least one rainbow. This was from home - photos rarely do them justice, do they?

We’ve been visiting the plot daily to open/close the polytunnel and remove/add fleece. The polytunnel measured a maximum temperature of 44° during the day and -1.3° overnight last week - as I informed the checkout girl in Tesco but I don’t think she cared 🤭. We’ve sown a few more seeds including beetroot, chard and more pumpkins - the pumpkin popped up within 4 days! I’d normally direct sow the beetroot, but the area isn’t prepared yet. The chard I like to sow in modules so I can select the more colourful seedlings for planting out. We finished clearing and preparing the front quarter - intended for sweetcorn, sunflowers and there should be room for some other things.

The covered plot in the other quarter is being used as a nursery for the potted-on perennials. Most of the plants have grown okay but a few have withered away - can’t tell what they were at the moment. There are quite a few more to be potted on once their roots appear in the bottom of their modules/pots.

The weather has been ok apart from the cold breeze. We’re so glad to have the polytunnel to protect us while we’re sitting watching the birds. The swallows have arrived! Their numbers are increasing each time we visit plus we’ve seen great tits flying to a (somewhat intentionally) overgrown bit of plot where they nested a couple of years ago.

Whilst digging at the weekend I was approached by a couple who are clearing their garden; they found a slow worm and wanted to re-home it somewhere safe; nice people!

It looks to be a male and we let him go on the Wildlife Plot. Hope he finds a mate and hangs round.

Jamie and I had a busy weekend; we enjoyed a music quiz with allotment friends on Saturday (did really badly) and yesterday went to a vegan market in Chippenham - we had some delicious teriyaki bao buns from The Garden Restaurants. The allotment is still providing purple sprouting broccoli and rhubarb pickings. We’ve been baking the rhubarb in orange juice with demarera sugar - so tasty with chocolate ice cream.

The song is provided by the Mamas and Papas because, well, it’s Monday and the allotment looked nice in the Sun this morning, with wispy clouds overhead.

I don’t think it’ll be frosty tonight, but we’ll go and zip up anyway. The temperature was just below zero last night (-0.3°)

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.

Snail

We’ve had lots of rain (though thank goodness, nothing like the catastrophic deluge that Storm Babet brought down on some parts of the UK) and a couple of frosts which have turned the plot into the usual Autumn coloured scene. I had two visits to the plot yesterday. The first just to collect some of the mini pumpkins for the nursery school and to get some for my sister. I gave her some beetroot and parsley too.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the parsley plants had survived the frost but I don't think they'll last much longer. I had 5 plants all taken from one Tescos parsley plant - definitely worth splitting and planting out and easier than sowing seeds. Even the one that the slugs ate down to one stem back in May recovered to produce a bushy plant.

The Love lies bleeding has been properly frost-scorched, as has the courgette (small cheer).

The beans from the tunnel really need clearing, but there are a few flowers left unscathed lower down on the Spanish Flag.

Yesterday we were concentrating on clearing the tomatoes and aubergine from the actual polytunnel. The robin flew in there in the morning because I dared to visit the plot with no mealworms for him - he was quite miffed!

I didn't visit that early but the Sun was so low it was casting a beautiful light over the site. 

The temperature in the polytunnel had fallen to 3.4° overnight but it felt reasonably warm in the sunshine and with my thick jumper on. The scabious stellata seedheads are still looking interesting.

The second trug of the day after Jamie and I spent the afternoon chatting and clearing is for me. I’m making a leek, carrot and parsley soup for lunches. And the pumpkins are going to be in a version of this bean and pumpkin curry; I'm going to use some of my dried borlotti beans.

The carrots are crazy; mostly multi-legged and some monstrous ones! And there are snails absolutely everywhere - loads of tiny baby ones looking for somewhere to over-Winter and then come out in Spring to eat all our seedlings 😖

Song title provided by the Smashing Pumpkins.

Rainbow

We have a LOT of mini pumpkins (Jack-Be-Little). They're actually a bit too small and may be a bit of a pain to cook, but they'll look nice in a Halloween display. My sister and a local nursery school will benefit from a few of them and I'll keep the slightly bigger ones for roasting.

We put them all in the polytunnel and zipped it closed ahead of the forecast frost at the weekend - and it did arrive. Brrr, we weren't used to it at all! 0.3° on Saturday night.

We weren't cold during the day on Saturday because it was a HAHA Workday. Lots of hedge-cutting - only to stop the fence getting overgrown; the birds are enjoying the berries far too much to cut back the laden branches. The bonfire was mostly old rotten wood from pallets and the like. The Sun shone for much of the day and it was a nice gathering of plotholders. We were watching the activity on the ivy in the hedge - so full of life!

Literally buzzing with flies, bees, hoverflies, ladybirds and wasps - all enjoying the nectar and pollen.

The frost has taken out some dahlias on site but our plot is a bit more protected because of its proximity to the hedge and our flowers are still blooming - the hummingbird hawkmoth was enjoying the verbena again at the end of the day yesterday.

I pulled the first parsnips yesterday - look at that monster. Of course I stuck the fork through that, so it went into the compost bin but I was pleased with the one on the right. Though they need a bit more frost to get the true parsnip flavour out of them, I'll try roasting some to see if that draws the flavour out.

The leeks were some which weren't transplanted but have grown quite thick in their original sowing location. That Wintery trug formed the basis of our gratin dinner - I added some chopped nuts and cheese to the top but I think the all-home-grown dish looked better before the cream and topping was added.

On Saturday, just when we were feeling ready to go home, there was a very timely (it damped down the embers) and very heavy shower! It was quite unexpected and we had to run for cover.

And then we had a lovely rainbow to enjoy!

And when the big black cloud moved on, we were bathed in sunshine with blue sky again - crazy weather!

So that's why today's song is provided by Marmalade - love the hippy lady, she reminds me of my sister back in the day 😀

Changing

The verbena bonariensis is so pretty and I do love the mix of colours with the nicotiana. They’re usually buzzing with life but I didn’t see many bees yesterday, even though it was pretty warm for October (October already!?) and wasn’t breezy.

We had a busy day on the plot and my aching body isn’t used to it! In the morning I weeded and dug this area where the garlic is to be planted. We’ve had a delivery of very well rotted manure to the site so I dug some of that in - a barrowful for £1.50 - bargain. Jamie spent the time clearing, digging and chalking an area where the potatoes had been - for our broad beans to over-Winter.

In the afternoon I spent time clearing the weeds from the leeks bed. The weather has been warm with a bit of rain - the weeds have loved it… the bindweed had started strangling the leeks and the grass and bittercress has also enjoyed a fresh burst of growth. I tried hard to pull out unbroken bindweed roots, but it’ll be back 😩 I’ve cut back the parsnip leaves which had become a slugfest and there's a row of leeks there which have been chomped. Hopefully they'll recover now they can see the light of day again.

Now that the foliage is dying back we can see all the mini Jack-be-Little pumpkins. Those two plants have been happy it seems! We need to get some shelves up in the polytunnel so those little fruits can go in there to cure. Jamie was making some room in the polytunnel today by removing a couple of the pepper plants. I'll use the soil for planting up some bulb pots. So, as well as sweetcorn, we had peppers for our meal last night. They were meant to go orange, but they taste good green too.

We had halloumi and roasted veg - I've started just adding the halloumi to the roasting pan towards the end of cooking rather than cooking separately on the hob - it gives it a slightly different texture but still delicious and squeaky. That plateful has home-grown peppers, sweetcorn, garlic, basil and a few tomatoes (but mostly shop-bought). Perhaps we'll try growing our own onions again next year ...

We've had the last of the green beans, although I'm contemplating whether to save some of the runners for drying...

The beans in the polytunnel roof completely dried and they’re now in jars - I have a few left over for sharing. I know borlotti are delicious but the Yin Yang (aka Orca or Calypso bean) are so fabulous looking; I hope they taste good too!

We think we may have had the last of the courgettes, although there are a couple of new ones appearing - we've been eating them since June! The song is provided by Sigma with Paloma Faith.