So Here We Are

I had an early start on the plot this morning. The Sun arriving over the rooftop at 7am while Jamie slept on. It was a quite chilly 4° but ok once I started digging. There, that looks better. The 3 plants in the middle of that plot are salsify. I’ve left them to flower as Neal’s looked so good last year.

I’m tired now, but hopefully we’ll go up later as I want to pot on some seedlings. We ordered a couple of ‘basket collection’ packs of the tiniest plug plants and potted them on in the week; they grow so quickly and seemed like a bargain though I didn’t mean to order two packs 🤦‍♀️ There are petunia, lobelia, begonia and bacopa snowtopia.

We went for a lovely walk round Bowdown Woods (near Greenham Common) at the end of March. The wood anemones are so pretty carpeting the ground between the bare trees. Masses of bluebells are growing their leaves but no flowers yet.

It was certainly our longest walk for many months and possibly a bit too much for Jamie really, but it was such a beautiful day.

Many of the trees are coated in lichens, which I understood to be a sign of clean air - though I’m not sure how clean the air is around the old RAF Greenham Common Airbase 🧐

I’ve had some home-grown veg over the last couple of weeks. I’ve pulled some leeks and found an unexpected harvest of Brussels sprouts when I was chopping back the plants - they were delicious!

And I’ve had two harvests of our purple sprouting broccoli. It is worth the wait. This was tasty in a red pepper sauce with some fake bacon.

It’s felt like a good week, helped a lot by the warm sunny weather. The temperature was 23° when we visited the plot yesterday afternoon. Jamie’s feeling quite a lot better and sleeping is more comfortable some nights which helps with motivation. We drive to the plot for a quick visit most afternoons, even if we just sit down it’s a pleasure (if there’s no cold wind). Who wouldn’t want to sit under this beautiful blackthorn?

The polytunnel needs to be opened and closed each day because nights are very cold with sweltering days in there. Our seedlings seem to be enjoying it and they’ll be staying in for quite a while yet. I’ve got a lot more digging and clearing to do…

We planted the Red Sun shallots in the raised bed a week ago, there are 12 in there. No green shoots yet, but I’m sure their roots have already started moving down to find the well-rotted manure at the base of that bed and the soil must be pretty warm.

I sowed these flower seeds at home at the end of March; no sign of the cleome yet, but the tagetes minuta have germinated and have been moved into the polytunnel. We really need to start thinking about more veg seed sowing, but there are only so many hours in the day!

Our lives have changed so much since Jamie had his stroke 2 months ago. I was used to him doing all the shopping, washing up and most of the cooking. Well, it’s my turn now! Jamie had his fair share of caring when I was on dialysis. 17 years ago today I had my kidney transplant. I regularly thank the NHS for that life-saving opportunity and now we’re thanking them again for Jamie’s treatment and care. I know where we’d both be without the NHS and it’s a bleak picture. But we have a National Health Service and it may be struggling, it may not be ‘as good as it used to be’, it may let some people down but I am ever thankful for it and will always support it.

Title song is brought to us by Bloc Party - enjoy the fine weather if you can and make the most of where you are.

Good Riddance

What a fabulous few days! This post is brought to you by the colour red ♥️

Friday morning-ish celebratory breakfast consisted of a delicious red gooseberry topping on icecream and pancakes. Yum yum, it’s fun having a special day off.

We had a very late night on Thursday, enjoying watching the General Election results come in and the demise of the hopeless party with Labour making a welcome return to Government after 14 painful years.🌹 Even our constituency isn’t blue anymore which has only happened once before in my lifetime! We haven’t gone red - can’t see that happening - but still worthy of celebration.

Unfortunately the weather hasn’t played ball and we’ve had a lot of (cold) rain - 35mm of rain over Friday/Saturday. 

We got several drenchings over the long weekend and the slugs and snails emerged from their hiding places while we were thankful to have the polytunnel to hide in!

But there were some lovely warm sunny moments between the showers.

And the soil and flowers are looking much happier after the last couple of weeks with no rainfall.

I managed to plant up some marigolds and zinnia today as well as sowing a row of Speedy dwarf French beans. The climbing French and runner beans are being very slow. This is the only flowers produced so far - not quite the flush of scarlet we like to see…

We decided to work through the rain today, mostly, and chopped back the broad beans which have provided us with so many lovely meals this year.

We cut them, rather than pulling, to let the nitrogen nodules on the roots remain in the soil - the leeks will be planted there in a few weeks. We had the judging for Hungerford in Bloom this weekend but our plots are definitely not winning any prizes!

But hopefully July and August will encourage everything to catch up, as it usually does…

We just need a little positive thinking…

And we have even more reasons to celebrate and be positive as England made it through to the Euros semi-finals yesterday! ♥️

Green Day provide the perfect song title (ok, maybe not so positive) as we move into a new era, after all surely things can only get better (😉See what I did there 🤭).

Give Me Just a Little More Time

Mmm, look at those little jewels against the blue sky - beautiful! Uh-oh, I see a snail got in the picture to confirm it’s 2024! Jamie made a sauce with the redcurrants from Ivan’s communal fruit cage.

Luckily Ivan is a regular visitor to maintain the fruit bushes as the HAHA ‘community’ element hasn’t gone quite as well as we’d hoped. Perhaps we’ll have a more time later in the year to manage it a bit better. With the weather, work and even our social life slowing our progress we are just about now catching up with things. Not that work and socials have been unwelcome! We enjoyed our second wedding of the year last weekend in the beautiful Shropshire countryside.

What a fun event, interesting slant on the traditional with guests including Darth Vader and Robocop 😀. Our night in the Shepherd’s hut was cosy as the rain poured down but the Sun shone when it needed to on the day, although it was very cold - pity the poor Cypriots who had come over for a Summer wedding and the campers! Great food, company and entertainment kept us cheerful though 🙂

Since being home we’re still enjoying broad beans and strawberries and I’ve included garlic scapes in a couple of meals as a tasty mild garlic addition.

We’ve planted out our beans to grow up both sides of the tunnel frame again: runner beans, French beans and the two borlotti that actually germinated. That’s the valerian in the background, still producing a lovely scent.

The Lark sweetcorn are planted out too - they’re so small we’re leaving their little protective cloches on for a while. And we have two Festival squashes planted in that section to clamber and provide some tasty Winter squash hopefully. The Halloween Orange peppers are planted in the polytunnel and the mini cucumbers are planted in pots on Plot3. So things are progressing at last.

Signs of things to come on the yellow courgette that’s growing in a pot, but not much movement on the ones planted into the ground. We have leek, carrots and beetroot seedlings but I’ll have to get a magnifying glass to see any evidence of salsify or parsnips 😖

We’re mostly doing pre-work visits for watering but last Thursday was the start of a ‘heatwave’ so we enjoyed our lunch sitting in the sunshine for a while. So beautiful as the bare earth is beginning to show signs of planned growth all around. I finally started clearing the unplanned growth on the last quarter on Plot7 today but the earth is like concrete. I cleared the front of weeds and sowed a row of chard and a row of radish, with the intention that some will go to seed to produce the peppery pods.

I was attempting to clear some other weedy areas on Plot8, but there are so many, with bindweed being the worst by far. These two varieties (double or single-flowered) of feverfew arrived naturally and put on a great show each year.

These pretty flowers are spreading on the wildlife plot, they’re so bright and cheerful plus they have a great name ‘Fox and Cubs’ aka Pilosella aurantiaca.

The teasels have almost taken over (we were warned) but they are so impressive and the bees love the flowers then the birds love the seeds.

One more week of June - all going a bit fast, isn’t it?! Leading me to the title song by Chairmen of the Board.

Spread Your Wings

My 10 days off work started well, with some lovely, albeit windy, weather. Jamie and I lazed under the blue sky and had a barbecue on Friday.

It really was too hot to work - not that we were intending to do any. Instead, we were delighted to watch the great tits fledge. Jamie noticed that the chirping had changed. We saw a parent fly to the nesting site with a green caterpillar which it ate rather than taking it to the nest. Then we watched as four chicks flew out in turn - rather wobbly flying, but not bad for the first trip out. Then one of the parents returned to the nest site, chirped a bit and flew off. Finally, the last of the brood made its way to the edge of the crate and flew over us to join its siblings and parents in the hedge. Such a pleasure to watch and perfect timing for us!

The rest of the afternoon I mostly looked up at the beautiful blue sky and sweltered.

Aah, blue sky! How happy it makes me!

Saturday was still mostly sunny and warm so we managed to do some digging on plot3. Jamie’s dug and manured the hole for the melon, which is growing on in the polytunnel for the timebeing. I’ve dug the first trench for one side of the squash tunnel and filled it with manure. I’ve sowed the seeds in pots at home under the grow-light: Honeyboat, Festival, Winter Celebration and Sunshine. 

Talking of seeds, I’ve got some parsnips Sabre (hopefully) germinating on some paper towel so I can plant out if the seed proves viable… perhaps I’ll manage to grow more than 8!

I showed some newcomers around site yesterday - such a pleasure to show the site off when it’s looking so beautiful. Of course, they were enamoured with Ivan’s irises, so I can’t resist sharing some of the fabulous blooms here again. Just stunning.

And HAHA has its first iris in the bog garden on the wildlife plot. There are plenty more buds to follow that one.

And the foxgloves have flowered. Loads of evening primrose is growing, so that will be good for moths, which will in turn be good for bats. We’ll have to have a Summer night visit with the bat detector.

Our Cleor pepper has arrived so is growing on a bit at home, along with the tomatoes. The temperature dipped to 3° In the polytunnel the other night, so we're still playing it safe and not planting everything out yet. The song title, provided by Queen, is dedicated to those five little great tits. Out in the wide world for the first time, how frightening and a frost is threatened for tonight 😖 They should go back to their cosy nest, poor little things.

Scatman

The robin that visits the wildlife plot is so friendly. He eats from a lid in my hand but isn't willing to stand on it; just takes a mealworm hummingbird-style and eats it on the fence. 

We've had two afternoons on the plot. There was a stiff breeze but the sun shone occasionally so it was pleasant. I showed a new couple round yesterday and leased another empty plot this afternoon. It's a good time for new plotholders when there are lots of people on site in the sunshine. 

Jamie sowed some seeds in seed compost that's he's made up from coir, 25% vermiculite and perlite. He's sown some calendula, tagetes and 3 Brussels sprouts into modules. Hopefully they'll be OK to germinate in the polytunnel.

I retrieved some frogspawn from a puddle on an empty plot on 3rd March. Those frogs really should have gone to a pond.

I’m pleased to say that the foetus have developed and they now look quite tadpole-y. I’ve tried to clear the duckweed from our little pond and have put a mesh over the top.

A couple of other people took some of the spawn away to their ponds today.

I’ve been attempting to clear our mammoth sage plant. 

I was going to remove the sage completely but I found a frog so have left some of it. We want to move our seating there this year so we can plant some of Ivan’s iris at the other end of the plot where they should get more sunshine.

Unfortunately the area has couch grass, stinging nettles and raspberry so it was a bit hard going, but it's getting there. I’m hoping to grow Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus Caudatus) next to the bench. The long red tassels looked amazing on another person’s plot last year and the birds apparently love the seed. 

Someone else’s plot last July

I may add some to the wildlife plot, which is a segue to share a photo of some poop that we discovered in the straw-filled compost bin on the wildlife plot. 

It appears to be weasel scat. We have seen one on site before, several years ago. We would welcome them on site, though the birds and voles will be less pleased to share their space with them 😒

On that note, the song title is provided by Scatman John 🥳