These Days

There’s a spot of colour from when we had some welcome sunshine on Saturday afternoon. That little robin is full of song at the moment. Perhaps like us he was relieved that the rain had stopped! October has continued the extremely wet theme of this Autumn. The ground doesn’t get a chance to dry out between torrential rain or drizzle so it’s difficult to do any clearing.

We’ve also had a couple of frosty nights with temperatures dipping below freezing but some flowers are surviving. My little hazel tree’s leaves are changing colour and there are some buds - Ooh, I wonder if it’ll produce catkins this year 🤞

Our sunflowers are looking less happy and sadly the seedheads have gone mouldy so maybe not ideal for birds to eat.

The birds have been enjoying the teasels though they’ve missed a few seeds on this one - I had to remind myself of what the word for this is - VIVIPARY.

The Wildlife Plot is looking extremely overgrown and, until the most recent frost, it was literally buzzing with activity. There were loads of bees and other insects and Jamie saw a little vole in one of the woodpiles. 

This daddy long legs had found a nice soft new teasel head to warm up on. The grass was full of these crane flies last week; reminded me of filling my desk up with them at primary school - I’m not sure why I did that 🤨

I’ve had fleece protecting my butternut squash but yesterday I decided to pick them now that the foliage has died back. I’m glad the slugs and snails all picked on just the one fruit!

And left the others untouched - they’re very small but just right for individual meals.

We’re still picking tomatoes if they show any coloured blush and they soon ripen at home. The peppers we pick as we need them because they’re in the polytunnel which we’ve been zipping up on the cold nights.

The Halloween peppers are tasty and orange ones were part of this halloumi meal, along with our last sweetcorn, potatoes and some parsley.

We were pleased to see that our garlic didn’t drown and a few green shoots have appeared - that’s about 3 weeks since the cloves were planted. And we’ve spotted some fungi appearing on the plot -  I’m not sure of the type; it may be there because of the manured soil.

I’m pleased to say it hasn’t rained yet today (Sunday) but these days our bodies are moving much slower than the clock so it’ll be an afternoon plot visit. The song title is provided by Nico.

Something got me Started

It's been a very blustery couple of weeks - with another named storm (Kathleen) passing by but the strong winds helped to dry off the land a bit to make weeding a bit more feasible. There's still a lot to do though!

Other plots are looking a lot more ready than ours but we'll get there - in fact, the site was looking rather lovely as the Sun was slipping away yesterday. We have just one empty plot left at the moment - a bit different from this time 8years ago where I recorded that we have 50poles empty! We're celebrating 15years of the site this month.

Other celebrations have been going on in Hungerford over the last two weeks too. Hocktide celebrations included decorated trees with flags and ribbons in the town. Here's our HAHA tree (a pollarded tree is quite hard to decorate!); the man who lives nearby came out while we were decorating it and said he was looking forward to having a stew 😀 But the veg was still there last time I looked!

And this weekend the 'Constable's Parade' was held. HAHA opted for a less-traditional participation which caused much amusement. Drawing attention to the allotment in an unusual way but also interest was gathered for the Horticultural Show planned for later in the year.

We had a celebration of our own when Ivan brought some wine and we had a little picnic though it did get rather cold so we made good use of the fleece before wrapping up the strawberries 😆

And while we were sitting there we saw the first two swallows of the year on the site! So we decided that two swallows must make it Summer, but it really didn't feel like it. Hoping the fleece will save these little flowers from the frost risk this week - it would be nice if they could survive to become our first strawberry treat of the year!

Last weekend we thoroughly weeded the strawberry bed but the bindweed has started re-appearing already.

Saturday was warmer than Sunday, especially when I was clearing out the polytunnel so we now have our inner greenhouse up for the seeds to start off. There were so many bees, flies and ladybirds in there but also snails on nearly everything I moved and so many ants nests! It was a good weekend for insect spotting with several orange tip, brimstones and peacock butterflies flitting by and I added an Ashy Mining Bee update to my Wildlife blog. Also the little froggie in our pond even stayed above water for long enough to be photographed. He's definitely sharing the space with a few tadpoles.

Oh, and exciting news! Our new tiny cherry tree has it's first blossom and the pear and apple have leaves appearing. Talking of trees, here's our hazel sapling which I planted up after a squirrel had left a hazelnut in the ground at least 3 years ago.

All-in-all the weather has been decidedly April-y and we've had a fun start. And this morning Jamie has sowed our first seed - a Zucchini courgette to grow in a pot, initially in the polytunnel and then to be moved outside. Simply Red provide the song for getting started - yay! Go on, have a little dance, it's Springtime.

Home

I'm on my final lunchbreak of 2023 - breaking up for Christmas in a couple of hours! 

It's not like it used to be - no driving home for Christmas (no, not that song) because I'm already home.

I just need to pack away my laptop and sit back down. With 3 days to go I must admit that I'm not feeling very Christmassy. Maybe it's the weather - it's been a very damp December so far and it's rather warm and windy today.

We've had a few December visits to the allotment - it's not very inviting, but we've pulled some great parsnips and we bought 3 tiny fruit trees - here's the Thompson & Morgan photo.

And here's the real thing 😆 I'm sure they'll be fine in a few months! They have buds already but they're waiting in the polytunnel.

The broad beans and garlic have sprouted which are welcome signs for next year. Yesterday marked the Winter Solstice so we're on our way to Spring now 😏

At each plot visit recently we've seen flocks of (probably) redwings - a regular Winter migrant. They don't stay still for long and have proved tricky to photograph.

Anyway, back to work (I think everyone else has already gone!). Have a Happy Christmas!

This jolly song is brought to you by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros!

Gaudete

The Lockdown Wood was planted up in Hungerford last weekend - more than 850 saplings. Another year. I would have joined in, but I’ll stay away from gatherings for a few months more... Our hazel tree needs to grow at least 3 times taller than this before it can join the wood, but I was pleased to see it looks happy with new buds just appearing.

We only visited the plot to add waste to the compost bin and to store our new honeysuckle in the polytunnel until we’re ready to plant at home. We got it free from Thompson & Morgan because they’ve published a couple of entries from this blog into their Favourite Bloggers articles recently, which is always nice to see 😊

While we were there I collected up all the Gigantes beans, which have been drying out in the polytunnel. I’ll pod them for storing in a few days.

And here’s one of the tasty meals I had using last year’s stored beans and some of the veg my sister brought over (swede, carrots, fennel, peppers). I made enough to cover three meals and added gravy to make it more like a stew for one of them.

Work continues to keep me far too busy, but we’re hoping it’ll wind down a bit as we get closer to Christmas. I’ve never had such a Christmassy office setting though 🤩

For the next few lunchtimes I have this scrummy chestnut and sage soup. Mmm, I could easily eat it all in one sitting, but I’m not getting any exercise so had better not! I used the River Cottage recipe because I didn’t want to add cream, but I did sauté the onion and sage in butter.

It's Gaudete Sunday today - the third Sunday of advent apparently. I'm sure this is the only time I'd manage to crowbar this song title on the blog :-) I chose Erasure’s version.

April Skies

Day 41 of lockdown - these weeks seem be whizzing by. I guess because they're rather samey... thank goodness I can fill my days with work though it's not as good as being at the lab when the days are more varied.

I was inspired by Shaheen to make this colourful pasta salad. I thought the animation that Google produced was rather funny - it looks like a fly is landing in it, but it wasn't. This one included raw chard leaves from the allotment - lovely!

Nothing home-grown, but pretty and tasty. I was glad that Jamie is managing to buy peppers, celery and tomatoes. We bought these two packs of rice fusilli last month, from a health store. At that time, my last shopping trip, there was no pasta left on supermarket shelves.

I don't think it tastes any different from normal pasta. Although, last week I decided to cook the pasta for lunch before I started my first Zoom meeting of the working day.

Look how colourful it is pre-cooked

Then, at lunchtime I remembered it had been simmering for more than 2 hours!! It smelled like rice pudding and I had to throw it away. 🙁 My next batch was fine I'm pleased to say!

We received another vegbox from our plot, thanks to Neal, hence the chard.

He's cleared another quarter of our plot for us! So pleased, it won't be such a horrible mess when we finally get back there!

Having just passed the dreadful UK milestone of 20,000 deaths, with over 800 dying in hospital yesterday, I am surprised that some people are thinking of reducing lockdown. It seems far too soon. Having said that, Thames Valley Police have confirmed that it's ok for people to drive to our allotment so we (HAHA) have lifted the 'no driving to site' restriction. I hope people take the sensible precautions to protect others, as well as themselves, and continue to stay home.

 

Besides working from home, I've been looking out of the window a lot - seeing the rapid changes in nature and getting my vitamin D top-up :-)

Look at the flowers on the horse chestnut tree!

This is the closest I can zoom to with my camera, they really are pretty flowers up close.

And I saw my first swallows and house martins this week. I didn't manage to get their photo - just blue, blue sky. I still have to check the shape of what I'm seeing.

We were also looking to the sky in the evening. I counted 33 of the SpaceX Starlink satellites. I thought it was very exciting as one after the other they came into view. We didn't attempt a viewing of the Lyrids meteor shower - it's difficult enough to spot a meteor with a full-sky-view!

I did actually step outside the front door this week - only on to the doorstep because I spotted this one lone bluebell in our front 'garden' - it's not a garden, it's just dirt as our neighbours have a plan for it and we told them that we don't mind what they do as we're always up the allotment - that was true when we said it more than a year ago!

This great song is by The Jesus and Mary Chain.