In the Gloaming

Two very cold afternoons on the allotment this weekend. We’ve actually started to do a bit of clearing. I say ‘we’, it was mostly Jamie working while I took photos of the impressive clouds, but I did a bit.

We were having such a pleasant time, even though it was really cold. We chatted with several plotholders who we haven’t seen in months. We’re sad to be losing a few plotholders this year who we’ve really enjoyed getting to know over the last few years; I really hope we can have some socials in the not-too-distant future so that we can meet up again.

On Saturday we saw a sparrow hawk flying along the hedgerow with, what appeared to be, a bloody pigeon in its talons. We aren’t positive on the id, but both noticed the greyness of its back and wings. We also saw the bullfinches (heard the call first) and long-tailed tits. I should have done my RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch then, rather than yesterday…. Here’s my tally, (which wasn’t worth sitting still and freezing for!):

1 wren

2 blue tits

2 magpies

2 robins (nice to see they’ve paired up)

1 great tit

2 wood pigeons

Once I’d finished with that Ivan gave me some roots of Rosebay willowherb (Chamaenerion angustifolium) to plant up in the HAHA Wildlife plot. I cleared an area of the plantain (Plantago lanceolata) which is good for some wildlife (apparently) but rather boring to look at - we need a plot which generates interest and wildlife as well as curtailing the spread of marestail (which it seems to be doing).

Back on Plot7 many of the leeks don’t look too healthy although they look happier than the broad bean plants, but we’ve seen them recover before so fingers crossed. I’m pleased that we planted the leeks deeper last year, so once pulled there’s a good amount of leek for eating.

We pulled a couple of carrots and five of the best leeks on Saturday and had some with cheesy pasta. And yesterday morning I made chunky soup with leek, carrot and honeyboat squash (note to self: raw honeyboat squash can be easily peeled with a potato peeler). I added rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper and veggie stock as flavouring.

I made soup with roasted honeyboat squash last weekend and used rose harissa to flavour. It has a really good spicy flavour and two big teaspoons didn’t add too much heat - I couldn’t taste the rose petals, but I’m glad it lasts for months in the fridge.

I’m getting through my squash supply now and last week I had a stuffed festival squash with ‘Brazilian Smokey beans’. I must say that the beans weren’t as flavoursome as when I make Smokey beans with my home-dried ones.

Last night I wanted to use the purple sprouting broccoli that I picked so I used a packet of Merchant Gourmet grains and rice with a couple of slices of ‘fake bacon’ which needed eating. The PSB was the best part of the meal 😊

Our spuds are now chitting in the hallway: Nicola, Sarpo Mira, Desiree (just one) and I couldn’t resist buying three Salad blues as the colour looks so good.

The post title is derived from speaking to Min’s sister as we were saying goodbye to Min in the gloaming (twilight - I’d never heard the word before). The Sun is arriving earlier and is still reasonably light at 5:00pm - a welcome sign of things to come.

Song provided by Trentemøller.

What a Waste

January has sped by which is unusual for this long cold month. The weather has been mostly grey with the occasional frost and some very welcome blue skies but we've only managed a few brief visits to the plot. I was very pleased earlier in the month when I made this sausage and bean casserole with the dried Gigantes, Edamame and Soya beans, using Shaheen's recipe.

Just one problem.... I forgot to actually cook the beans, after I'd soaked them overnight, so it was all wasted - boohoo, it looked so delicious and was going to serve me for two meals! Hence the blogpost song-title.

On Sunday we spent over an hour on the plot, but only to do our bit for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. What a wet and miserable day! But I like this little slow motion video of one of our over-flowing buckets.

Most of the birds, sensibly, had decided to stay under cover, but these pigeons were enjoying the berries on the ivy.

So this was our, rather weak, count:
  1 x robin
  6 x wood pigeons
  4 x magpies
  1 x blue tit

Our cover was somewhat lacking... the polytunnel has a new sunroof...

Jamie ventured a bit further from the 'comfort' of the polytunnel - look at that weedy plot! Well, it'll have to wait a bit as it's so soggy and we've got a holiday to go on before we deal with that :-)

The wellie-boot remover that I retrieved from my Mum's house has been well-used so far this year.

I'm pleased that the sempervivum (houseleek) which I potted on last Autumn seem happy enough in the wet weather - I do love them.

Jamie and I enjoyed a fun weekend with two celebrations to hijack and make our own - first was Burns Night on Saturday. It's a good excuse for eating our favourite Stahly veggie Haggis with neeps & tatties washed down with a few tasters of whiskey (not my favourite drink). Followed by a Scottish film called Restless Natives from 1986.

And then on Sunday evening we celebrated the Chinese New Year - of the Rat. We had more of a pan-Asian feel to our evening with miso soup, Japanse saki and various oriental items to decorate the room and then watched CJ7 a Chinese film that I've been wanting to see since 2008, it was good.

So this blogpost is brought to you by the colour red - for luck, joy, and happiness over the next year and just a few rats, I'm sure! The song is provided by Ian Dury and The Blockheads.

Magpie

Last weekend was the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. It was a wet day on Saturday, so we didn't visit the plot but Sunday I was showing a new plotholder around so I got to the site at about 12:30.

It was an extremely windy day, but the sun was shining much of the time. I sat in the doorway of the polytunnel, with my flask of hot coffee and big camera, so that I could zoom in on any birds who decided to show up.

The numbers weren't huge, but this is what I saw:
4 x Robins
2 x Dunnocks
2 x Magpies
1 x Wren
2 x Wood Pigeon
1 x Chaffinch
1 x Great Tit
1 x Fieldfare (very exciting that he turned up!)

This is the Fieldfare - they're the same size as a thrush (in the same family). Unfortunately it stayed amongst the branches which blocked my view rather - but I could see enough for identification purposes (we initially thought it was a Redwing).

The magpies and pigeons weren't unexpected!

And we like to see the dunnocks.

I couldn't get any more photos. I showed our newest plotholder around and once he'd selected his plot I returned home to make carrot and leek soup (added a bit too much chilli powder, cough cough!). Very tasty though.

This photo is mostly to show off my funky new cutlery

I picked more leeks than intended because they look a bit ropey at the root end. I'm not sure whether I put the fork through them or if it's bug damage - but there was plenty left after I chopped that off. The HoneyBoat squash is for dinner this week.

I know I like the Honeyboat but I think the Crown Prince was probably the most tasty squash I've had this year. I had two delicious lunchtime salads with cold roasted squash and Peppadew sweet peppers.

I struggled to find a song for today's post, but opted for this one by Beth Orton (no-one's written a song called Fieldfare, unfortunately!)

The Three Bells

Another dull day, but this time no rain so it was slightly less awful. The temperature was reasonably mild too, but a little sunshine would have made a world of difference. I put a filter on this photo of the ash tree - to make it a bit more interesting.

Today I was counting birds for the the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. I thought they were going to be a no-show, but although numbers were low there were quite a few different species (even the robin wasn't keen on posing though).

For an hour from 3:15 we counted:
 2 x Robin (annoying as we've seen 5 together (fighting) recently)
 1 x Great tit
 3 x Long-tailed tit (we've seen 6 or 7 of these together before)
 1 x Pheasant
 1 x Wren
 1 x Blue Tit
 1 x Blackbird
So, not great but not too bad either. I didn't count the two swans which flew over; I heard the lovely noise their wings make but couldn't get to my camera in time. On the walk to the site we spotted this little squirrel in the churchyard - I know some people don't like grey squirrels, but I do.

We spent the rest of the time doing more tidying and filled the fourth dalek compost bin mostly with old stalks of sweetcorn - chopped and mashed up a bit to break down easier/quicker. Jamie packed a load of stones in around the compost bins - perhaps it will help keep the rodents out. By the time we were ready to leave it was getting dark, so we had one more cuppa and picked our veg (leeks and the giant swede) and walked home.

The church (St Lawrence) was all lit up and the bells were ringing so it earns a photo for looking so pretty.

I think it is a Swede - Best of All (from Kings Seeds)

I was fully expecting the swede to have brown heart (caused by boron deficiency) as a couple of our roots have had traces of it, but it was perfect all the way through and weighed over 1kg! It's currently being made into swede & leek soup with the addition of smoked paprika as on first tasting it was a little bland - now I understand why 'swede soup' always includes lots of other veggies!

Jamie's using the other leeks tonight in a sausage and leek dish and is making leek and potato cakes tomorrow. Still plenty more to go though...

So, today's song is... not very related to this post, but there are bells in it and it explains why I did what I did to the tree photo (the singers are The Browns). Also I love this song, though the male singer is a little bit creepy :-)

Counting Birds and Planting Garlic (again)

The temperature over the last week has been a bit up and down, but the coldest of the very frosty nights sank to -5°. It felt chillier than the reported 7° today, especially when the wind blew, but we spent a couple of hours on the plot. I wanted to get the counting done for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch and started counting for an hour from about 1:10 with the following results:

(Robson)

 

• 2 x Robins
• 1 x Blackbird (Mrs B)
• 2 x Long-tailed tits (such pretty little birds!)
• 6 x Terns (they were flying around from across the canal)
• 2 x Pigeons (surprisingly low numbers)
• 1 x Blue Tit
• 2 x Mallard Ducks (flying across from the canal)
• 2 x Chaffinch
• 2 x Magpies
• 3 x Crows
• 1 x Pheasant (just the one female showed herself today)

Of course, at about 2:30, when the sun shone for about 20 minutes a whole host of birds arrived - several long-tailed tits, a pair of blue tits, a great tit and at least one wren.

I tried to photograph a lot of the birds but didn't do too well. 

 

So, apart from Mrs B and Robson I only managed to snap the blue tit - they are very nippy and rather shy of us at the moment, so didn't pose or let me get close enough for a good shot.

Jamie dug an area to put some broad beans in - we didn't get any last year as the pheasants took a fancy to them. This year we'll protect them with a surround of sturdy mesh. We're hoping to warm the ground a bit before the beans go in - in early February.

Apart from counting and chasing birds with my camera I put some more garlic in. The cloves I planted haven't sprouted and I only found the remains of one when I furtled around in the raised bed.
I bought a packet of 2 Germidour bulbs from Wilkos - I've seen contradictory reports of how good their veg is, but the packet only cost £2 so figure it is worth a go... I planted the cloves quite close together. It's a softneck variety.

Then Jamie found this in last year's garlic bed! A clove had grown into a bulb and now each clove on that has sprouted! I stuck that in the raised bed - as a clump, so will see what happens to that - it's meant to produce smaller bulbs quickly. We'll see...

Here come the chives! They're on their way - roll on Springtime :-)

Now we're going to have a haggis (vegetarian of course) for dinner - first time ever - with a few carrots and shop-bought tatties. We're going Scottish for Burn's Night...

Leeks and not much else

Just a quick visit to the plot for me this afternoon. Another sunny day today compared to yesterday's rainy one. There were a few plotholders about, doing a bit of tidying, planning and, great to see, people are still harvesting.

Our leeks are looking ok but we want them to get a bit bigger before pulling any more. There should be a bit of cabbage and more sprouts too but there may be too much wildlife involved for Jamie and me to risk eating! The other vegetable that's still in the ground is my salsify. It looks like it's grown pretty well. Need to give that a try in a week or so...
 

There wasn't much to photograph. All the birds seemed to be in hiding, even though it was warm. Hope they're back for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend (25/26 Jan).
So, just another cloud photo I'm afraid! Both these pics are taken with my new camera.

British Weather and British Birds

The sun was shining and it was considerably warmer than it has been for more than a week (about 8°) so we were really pleased to go to the allotment to do the RSPB Birdwatch.

These are our figures:

•   Robin: 1
•   Magpie: 1
•   Pigeon: 3
•   Rook: 10
•   Chaffinch: 3
•   Blue Tit: 1
•   Great Tit: 1

I was disappointed that there wasn't much birdlife around ... the blackbirds didn't show up and we sometimes have a whole flock of long-tailed tits in the hedge but they were a no-show too.

We did a bit of digging and tidying while we were there. Jamie dug the parsnip plot and dug up the rotten parsnips - which were all we had to show of the ones we sowed last year. He then added a bit of the 6X compost and dug it in - this is where the peas/mangetout are going this year.

I cleared weeds from the plot where purple Congo potatoes had re-grown. I found some reasonable tubers which I brought home. We're a bit concerned that it may not be too obvious whether they're blighty (because of their dark colour), but will take a look.
It's still too wet for proper digging - can't step on the soil without taking more home than we leave behind!

We decided to pick our leeks and sprouts just as it started to spot with rain. Two minutes later there was torrential rain, hail and strong winds so we had to run to the container for cover! On returning to the plot to return the leek cage to its proper place we found this...

...a broken leek cage and a broken sprout cage! Well, it was very strong wind!!
We covered them as best we could and went home wet, cold and a little bit more miserable than we had been 15 minutes earlier!

NB. Wildlife blog also has an update