Fine Time

We’ve just got home after a lovely 3-night break at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre, we managed to book ‘Chiffchaff’, the same shepherd’s hut where we stayed mid-heatwave in July. It’s such a cosy retreat. 

There’s Jamie in one of 13 hides available across the site. It was rather fun and because it was a rainy day we had a lot of the hides to ourselves. We like watching and listening to birds but aren’t very good at recognising them so tend to refer to most of them as ‘gull’, ‘goose’ or ‘duck’ - often just ‘bird’ which isn’t very helpful really! Here are a few photos ( I’ve added names mostly based on Google Lens so feel free to correct.)

Spoonbills

Northern Lapwing

I’d recognise a lapwing as my junior school’s playing field used to be covered in them - sad to think they’re now on the ‘red list’.

Pied Avocets

Tufted Duck

There wasn’t a lot of colour on show because it’s not mating season - I expect that’s why the tufted duck looks so grumpy 🤭

Here’s a bit of colour to cheer the page up. Flamingoes are odd-looking things but the colours are fabulous.

There are 6 different species at Slimbridge and can live to be 60 years old. This Lesser Flamingo is the smallest at less than 1metre tall and I really like the pale pink colouring.

Flamingo

But the cutest resident award goes to little Tilly, the otter. So sweet. She was quickly on the scene when her keeper arrived though initially had to be tempted into the water with food. Later we saw her happily playing on her own flipping a pebble around in her paws. Look at her lovely thick coat. I hope we see Hungerford’s wild otters one day.

We were very glad we took our Winter coats which we hadn’t needed on the first day. This is me in one of the hides. I opened the window and that’s the wind blasting in pushing my hair back. Brrr. 

We went up the Estuary Tower Hide which was really cold and the wet weather didn’t provide for great views over the Severn, but I like this view from one of the lower level hides.

We saw so many birds and heard even more. The Common Cranes were especially loud to wake up to each morning - they’re a success story for re-colonising in Britain. At 1.2m tall they’d be impressive to see in flight. I love the rhythmic sound of swans flying overhead and there were many, but this photo is Canada Geese, I think.

The early mornings and evenings sitting outside our shepherd’s hut were great for watching birds (note the generic term) fly overhead and using the Merlin app to try to identify some of the crazy pips, squawks, tweets and whistles coming from all directions! I miss those unusual sounds now we’re back home.

It was a cold and clear night after the wet day so we had an evening of star-gazing and yesterday morning there was the thinnest sliver of moon before sunrise. Beautiful.

We had a little trip out to the Sharpness Dockyard, Severn View Point to eat a pizza one evening. We went for the Sunset but enjoyed seeing two big ships manoeuvring to their moorings. This one (Misje Kandy) was ~90metres long. I was interested to see it’s a hybrid vessel built this year, you can look up all kinds of ship details through this link.

It was such a lovely break. I look forward to Hungerford’s Wetland scheme progressing over the next year. I want to suggest they follow the Slimbridge example for benches - aren’t these great?

The song title is courtesy of Cast, because we did have a mighty fine time ☺️

Morning Glory

Yes, it’s filtered, I had to because it was a bit blurry and then Photoshop offered me this and how could I refuse?! It was quite a nice photo with a distant hot air balloon.

Anyway, that was Saturday as the Sun was just slipping down behind the treeline. Jamie and I enjoyed a barbecue on site and had a couple of games of pétanque in the warm weather. The Sun is setting at 6:30 now and is rising at about 7:30 - this was the lovely sunrise sky on Saturday morning (no filter required).

They may only be short days now that we’re in October but what a lovely sunny Sunday we had. The flowers are still making the most of it on the plot. Our morning glory took a long time to flower, but look how beautiful they are now.

And my one dahlia has finally developed a flower, after the amazing dahlia year everyone else seems to have had! Oh well, it’s still pretty.

And finally a melon Mangomel had matured enough for us to eat for breakfast - it was tiny, barely a mouthful but super-sweet.

The bees, hoverflies and butterflies are really making the most of the fine weather and on Saturday we were so pleased to see a Hummingbird Hawkmoth enjoying the verbena bonariensis. The antirrhinum have got to be one of the best self-seeded flowers. So many different colours; they’ve been flowering for months and the bumblebees love them.

I planted 2 garlic bulbs, which provided 20 cloves, (Caulk White) on Friday and I’ve now planted up all the flower bulbs I ordered. I’ve put some in pots and some in the ground: various alliums, daffodils and anemones. I hope they don’t get wiped out by mice like they did last year… we’ll see what appears next Spring. A few have gone into the flower bed where I’ve cleared masses of Nigella seedlings, but never fear… they’ll be back!.

And here’s a before-and-after weeding photo at the front of Plot8. I’ve put some bulbs in front of the irises and amongst the grape hyacinths. As you can see, the irises have been trimmed back to 15cm for over-Wintering.

HAHA has a seed swap container in our communal shed, so I’ve packed up a few of our collected seeds this weekend too. Lots of beans and flowers - if plotholders don’t want them we’ll find somewhere else to share them.

Yesterday I had a meal of Yin Yang beans, curly kale (thanks to Nia), tomatoes and onion flavoured with a bit of garlic, oregano, soy, tomato puree with a little finely grated cheese on top - delish and so easy to make!

 And, just one last thing - look at this potato! Is it the veggie version of ham-fisted? 😊

The song title is provided by Oasis. What a song, haven't heard that in a while but can't believe it was released 28years ago!

Its Going to Happen

We had a lovely couple.of hours on the plot yesterday, in warm sunshine. The crocuses have opened up because of the extra warmth and we saw several (or possibly one) Brimstone butterflies flitting up and down alongside the hedge. There were also plenty of bees - bumblebees and other types.

It was lovely though we couldn't stay long. However, we managed to plant our shallots: 23 Red Sun. Each surrounded with a sprinkling of 6x. And then we covered them with some netting. Hoping that will keep the birds and mice away from them until they've grown enough roots to secure them to the ground.

Jamie hoed lime into this year's future brassica plot. The rest of the time we were on site we spent chatting with other plotholders and having some coffee and biscuits. There was plenty of gardening going on around us. We (the HAHA committee) have some plans for an area of the site near the toilet and one of the 'mares tail plots'. We have a work day in a couple of weeks so more on that in March... In the meantime, here is another photo of one of our crocus pots. (with a bumblebee who's just taken off)

Crocus are so pretty and there isn't much else of interest to photograph on site at the moment. However, Jamie did uncover these and I haven't identified them yet... I wonder if they're good guys or bad guys.. Suggestions are welcome!

Today we didn't make it to the allotment but we did drive to nearby Charlton Park Garden Centre to pick out a few additional seed potatoes. Such a great selection - but we don't need many as we always end up not using them.

We already have some Nicola and Kestrel. We bought a handful of individual tubers. I selected Dido, which we've not heard of before, because my Dad was an engineer at Harwell on the Dido reactor and the others are chosen because of their various attributes as shown below..

It was a shame we missed out on a second sunny February day on the allotment, but at least we have all our potatoes now. And I have two days off work so will hopefully catch up with a bit of plot-work then...maybe. We decided to go for a walk along the canal just as the sun was going down and were glad we did.

And the title is courtesy of The Undertones because Spring is surely on it's way...

Since Yesterday

We've had a few hours on the allotment this weekend. It wasn't raining or snowing and in fact we saw a little sunshine which was very welcome and decidedly Spring-like.

Jamie cleared an area of weeds on Plot3 during the week - our shallots are desperate to be planted and that's where they'll go. Then yesterday we cleared a bit more..

The grass that self-seeds is really annoying, so it's a hands-and-knees job with a hand trowel initially, which is laborious but worth it. And a friendly robin cleared up the grubs as we uncovered them.

So since yesterday (hence the song title) we've dug through more than half of Plot3 - that was a good start, though we're extremely achey. Actually I was aching so much that I forgot to take the final 'after' photo - you know how it is when you've been working on the plot for the first time in months!

Jamie added some quality home-produced compost, with a sprinkling of 6X, around the small rhubarb plant that didn't achieve much last year. We're hoping this is its year, though it is competing with a lot of tree roots in its current location.

We left as the Sun dipped behind the tree-line - how lovely to still be light(ish) until 5:30 these days. I'm glad February is a short month and it'll soon be March. And in the meantime I hope I buy a new camera as you may have noticed the splodge that's appeared on all my photos :-{

Strawberry Switchblade provided the song.

In the Night Garden

It was my birthday yesterday - such a beautiful hot, sunny day, just how I remember most of my birthdays. I love being a July baby!

We had a late night on the allotment to watch bats, stars and enjoy a bottle of wine. The swifts and swallows entertained us for an hour or so before sunset at 9:20. They were swooping so low over the bean poles.

The pigeons and a distant peacock(!) were the last birds to go to sleep and then the moths and bats came out. Our bat detector provided the evidence that there were more bats around than we actually saw, probably mostly the common pipistrelle.

It's nice taking night photos - you don't notice the bugs till you get home!

The stars and planets were shining brightly in the clear sky. Jupiter was, as usual, the first to be visible. The star app on my phone showed that it's just below the Leo constellation - I prefer to have Leo as my star sign, though I am on the cusp of Cancer - I'd rather be a lion than a crab :-)  Mars and Saturn were really visible as part of a triangle to the South of the allotments.

The night-scented stock provided us with a highly fragranced evening and the moths were enjoying them as much as we were. 

There's a moth on the photo above ...

  We walked home to the sound of hooting owls. Aah, I love Summer!

Macrame by my sister

Booooiiinnnggg!

It's officially Spring!

And the sun came out for the Northern hemisphere's Spring equinox, as days become longer than nights (even though that's been the case for a couple of days actually. I guess it's some sort of astronomical licence).

We enjoyed listening to the birds who were singing sweetly in the sunshine while we struggled with roots, weeds, strawberry canes and stones. But Hooray! We managed to finish the section on Plot3. We're hoping to plant some potatoes here but there are a lot of roots to contend with...

A few plotholders and neighbouring gardens had fires today. We started one but the couch grass and raspberry twigs were still a bit too wet still so we left it for another day. Shame, I do love a bonfire.

We left with the moon to our East...

 and the sun to the West. I look forward to more of this Spring weather!