You Cross My Path

During our not-so-frequent visits to the plot these days we find the occasional offering from fellow plotholders. They are most welcome and look at the WHOPPER we found today! A giant tromboncino courgette - Thankyou to whoever left it in our polytunnel. I’m thinking of making a courgette cake with some of it.Today it was grey, but not cold or wet so we tackled the strawberry bed. It’ll need a bit more work in the Spring, hopefully the runners I planted up recently will survive the Winter in their little pots.

Left to their own devices the plants rather took over, as you can see. And we didn’t get to eat any of the strawberries, but I’m sure the birds enjoyed them.

There, that’s a bit better. That’s the path that the title refers to, we knew it was there somewhere! We need to re-cover it with weed suppressing fabric.

There’s another path which was blocked by the enormous bramble that we’ve been fighting with. Its prickles are so sharp they pierce my gloves and tear at my skin through my trousers. 

We got rid of much of it but there’s still plenty more to clear. I’d like to cut back the ever-spreading sage, but it’s a haven for over-wintering wildlife. We uncovered lots of interesting creatures today, including this 22-spot ladybird and super-shiny blue shield bug. And the frog in the pond is tiny, only about 6cm, so not our usual frog. We think we have three different-sized visitors which is great.

So after a couple of hours work we returned home feeling that we’d achieved something. Oh, and also, our garlic has sprouted which is always good to see. I had the day off work on Friday. I needed it after last week which was far too busy, I was even dreaming about spreadsheets - not good! We had a long walk in Savernake Forest. Loads of interesting fungi, here are a few pics, and we could hear the male fallow deer calling (sounds like a long belch actually!) and saw a couple of deer flit across a path ahead of us. Aah, long weekends are such a welcome break.

The song title is provided by The Charlatans.

Purple Haze

 It’s been a hot weekend and we’ve had two busy afternoons on the plot.

We managed to do a lot of clearing and some proper digging - I do like digging, though my body’s aching after more activity than it’s used to these days! The ground is so dry, I don’t know when we last had any rain. Here’s the before...

And here’s the after, and Jamie dealt with the edges. That area has been limed for broad beans to be sown in a few weeks time.

We still have lots to do. The enormous, spiteful bramble got me a few times, but we’re getting it too! Slowly, but surely.

I retrieved and potted up some strawberry runners as the strawberry bed has grown wild this year.

We hoed and dug up some enormous weeds around the Raised bed, where the garlic will be planted as soon as it’s delivered. And I cleared around the pond and planted some iris into the ground; it’s been pot-bound for over a year so I hope it will appreciate the freedom.

We actually saw a big dragonfly today, but it didn’t fancy visiting our pond which is in need of some more water. The frog doesn’t mind though and we may get some rain this week. At least we have the polytunnel for shelter when the rain does finally arrive. And we’ve got the fleece tunnel ready to protect a couple of the Speedy french beans which are just about to produce some beans for us and may coincide with our first frost - doh!

The courgette plants are still providing for us and Neal gave me some beetroot today (thanks Neal) Also my sister is supplying tomatoes still (thanks Joanne) so I made these nice spicy tomato noodles for lunch this weekend. And we’ve got a big bag of potatoes to use. We had a dish made with mash, cheese, ‘This is not bacon’ (which, to me, tastes like kippers) and peas - mmmmmm, so delicious! (But I forgot a photo, shame because it looked nice too).

Please forgive another globe artichoke photo, but that colour! And the bees are loving it and really did appear to be in a purple haze at times! One of those bees was in there most of the afternoon.

Did you see what I did there? Thanks to Jimi Hendrix (obviously) for the title. (And the crowd at the end of this video is great 😀)

Wow

I took Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday off work, specifically because of the forecast heatwave and it was right. Phew, what a sweltering few days; over 30° in Hungerford and sunny. Lovely!

We spent some time at the allotment - it was so hot that there was only Jamie and me there much of the time. Us and the birds - just listen to that! What a joy to be back on the plot.

Neal said that we could have some of his lettuce seedlings. I chose the two red varieties - the green ones (Lobjoits Green cos) have all been nibbled - looks like by pigeons - whereas the red appear to be untouched (it's not that obvious in the photo, but trust me!)

I also planted the squash plants that Liz gave us (a patty pan and a spaghetti squash, I think) plus a courgette plant from Ivan - to replace one of ours that the slugs decimated. Jamie cleared some weeds from Plot3 and trimmed the long grass round the edges of Plot7, in the hope that it’ll keep the slugs away from our few plants - we don’t have enough to share this year! Unlike Ivan who always needs a wheelbarrow for his huge harvests - that’s the last of his strawberries.

He gave us a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of redcurrants. They were a colourful addition to my breakfast.

And I cooked the remaining redcurrants with sugar - they weren't as tart as I'd expected and only needed a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

I sieved the sauce - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reckons you don't have to, but I wouldn't fancy eating all those seeds and skins.

It was delicious on ice cream and with scotch pancakes.

There were lots of butterflies on site, but they weren't in the mood for posing for photos unfortunately. I definitely saw some ringlets, tortoiseshells and peacocks among the usual whites. This Scarlet Tiger moth was easier to photograph as it came into our sitting room - dragging me away from my work :-)

As I write this we're in the middle of a hailstorm - the weather has changed: it's dazzling sunshine one moment then dark clouds covering the sky the next as the wind builds up - our poor plants, I wonder how they're doing. I hope to visit again during a lunchtime next week.

Jamie’s excited about my new project (NOT!). I saw this amazing embroidery of an allotment site (twitter.com/sewnbycollette) and was inspired, so immediately bought a selection of threads from Amazon.

Now, I haven’t embroidered for about 40 years, so mine is more, err, primitive, we’ll see how it goes... My sister kindly gave me some fabric and has lent me her old book. It’s our plot, as I’m sure you can see 😏 Well, I only started in yesterday {I wonder if it will ever be seen again on this blog :-D}

The ‘Wow’ of the title refers to various things from this week. I’m so glad that plot neighbour, Kate, told me about the stunning fields of white poppies which we could walk to from the allotment.

I didn’t expect to see so many fields of them - how beautiful! Having not walked far for weeks it was quite exhausting walking the slight incline, especially in the heat, but so worth it.

Shops and some restaurants are beginning to open up in England. Some people definitely seem to think that the time is right to get back to normal life, but I'm happy with just the occasional trip out and am not missing (non-internet) shopping one bit! Even the Government isn't suggesting a return to work for the likes of me yet - thank goodness! Great song from Kate Bush, obviously - sing along, or maybe just do the moves ;-)

Eighties

Look at that! We had some proper rain yesterday!

Jamie was particularly happy as it meant he didn't need to go to the allotment to water. He sowed some of my favourite Gigantes beans and Ivan gave him several runner bean plants too. He also managed to dig some holes ready and waiting for our courgettes and tomato plant. The tomato has little fruits already, so it's begging to go out.
I actually went out again last week - in the daytime, it was on the last sunny day. We walked to a field that overlooks the town.

We walked down through to the town. There were a few more people than I've seen in weeks, but we didn't have to do much swerving to avoid other pedestrians - though, I must admit, I found it rather novel seeing the avoidance manoeuvres people make!

Apart from that walk, I've just been working. I bought a new gamer’s mousepad - makes my 'workstation' look cool :-)

Jamie pulled one of our garlic - they’re all small like this because they didn’t get enough water when the bulbs were forming, nice flavour though.

Neal brought over some more broad beans. We had them with two meals including this halloumi and grilled asparagus (You can tell when I've cooked because I like to make it look fancy)

And there were some left so I made hummus - I had to add some frozen peas, (there weren’t quite enough beans once they were podded and shelled) which add to the GREEN! It was very tasty, we had it with the roasted peppers, along with other tapas, on Friday evening.

The rhubarb is still providing and we’re still loving the mix with strawberries, so delicious and so easy:
Equal measures of rhubarb and strawberries;
1/4 measure of water;
1/2-3/4 measure of sugar;
2 tbsp of lemon juice.

Shaheen’s recipe for rhubarb and rose petal butter gave me the idea of soaking rhubarb in some rose liqueur and cooked that up a couple of days later with some sugar and a bit more rhubarb. I do love flowery flavours.

I harvested the first of the ‘micro greens’. They are nice and peppery, but basically just cress!

Today’s song is provided by Killing Joke, I saw them at the Elephant Fayre (in 1985 apparently) - I don’t remember them like they appear in this video. The country rather feels like it’s returning to those times - apart from coronavirus which is taking a bit of a backseat in the media, but it continues to kill over 1500 a week in Britain so please continue to stay safe x

It Doesnt Make it Alright

We had another delivery from our allotment - thanks again Neal!

As well as our first broad beans and strawberries there was another huge supply of rhubarb - our mammoth plant just keeps on giving! (Photo from last year).

The top photo in this post is the marvellous combination of strawberries and rhubarb to make a most delicious sauce, using this recipe (even I probably didn't really need a recipe for this!)

The sauce has provided us with a tasty filling for breakfast pancakes, a topping for ice cream and even as a jam for scones. What a great combination of fruits which happen to harvest at the same time.

There's been a lot of growing activity in the flat this week. The micro-greens have shot up.

The 2 courgettes both germinated quickly.

And the peppers and tomato plants have flowers. Hopefully we'll get some of the rain that is threatened tomorrow, then Jamie may be able to get a spade into the ground!

Lockdown has been reduced somewhat, even for the 'clinically extremely vulnerable'. I'm not going to change my behaviour much, but may not feel guilty by getting a bit of sunshine outside now. The NHS website suggests adding vitamin D to the drugs regime - We already started doing that a couple of weeks ago.

The Specials provide the song. I love the Two-Tone message of the eighties. Sadly racism is as rife as ever with the shocking news from America where racist police were literally dismissed for murder, rather than being arrested - now corrected, but no wonder people are raging. And in our country, this Government delaying the results of the review into why BAME (black and minority ethnics) appear to be more critically affected by Covid-19.

Sorry about this rant, but I read something recently that was really upsetting and want to show my support against racism. Black lives matter; all life matters.

September

I see that my last post mentioned the arrival of some "welcome rain". We've had rather more than that over the last week, with some torrential downpours. I decided to do a bit of clearing indoors, but didn't get farther than looking up some recipes - for someone who rarely cooks I have quite a lot of recipe books!

We've been eating the Kestrel potatoes over the last week - very good for mash and also spicy potato wedges (which I'm preparing to have cold as I write this - olive oil, paprika, turmeric, chilli powder, chives, salt & pepper all mixed up in a bag before emptying onto the roasting tray) and tonight we're having them baked.

I made some more of the smokey marinade for the Gigantes beans which lasted a couple of weekday lunches - so tasty.

The weather has been sunshine and showers all week so we've been treated to some beautiful rainbows (this was from my window at work - the photo doesn't do it justice).

Today we got another soaking on the plot. This is the view from the polytunnel where we had to shelter - it's not obvious from the photo exactly how heavy the rain was. And it seems that next week is also going to be wet with some stronger winds thrown into the mix - hope those polytunnels and sweetcorn are still standing by next weekend! And I hope it's not too wet for the Food Festival next Sunday :-{
Luckily I had my fancy new boots on - a gift (thanks Alfie!) I certainly wouldn't pay that much for wellies, but they are lovely and comfy as well as looking great.

We only went up today to get rid of some kitchen waste to the compost bin and to pick more sweetcorn and beans.

Mmm, cooked sweetcorn with butter - nothing better, but you can see here that not all of the kernels formed on one of the cobs - we clearly should have done a bit more hand-pollination on these. We think the cobs on the other side of the block will have got more of the pollen because the wind more often blows that direction.

Here's something you don't normally expect to find at the end of September - the birds are certainly enjoying this unexpected treat!

My next post will be in October so I thought this song finishes off the month nicely, by Earth, Wind and Fire (don't even try not to sing-along).