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.

Start the Healing

After losing February - details here - we’re ready to start now. Looking on the bright side, at least we were out of action through a dreadfully wet month so we probably didn’t miss that much plot-time. It’s been great to have a few short visits to the plot during this warm start to March.

These anemones are the only colour on the plot so far. We were pleasantly surprised that the weeds haven’t grown too wild in our absence. The leeks haven’t grown either, which is rather disappointing, so we’ll probably pull them quite soon but there may be a few worth harvesting.

There are a few signs of Spring in the hedge, but it’s still early. The new growth on the sedum is appearing at the base of last year’s stems. I’ll chop the old stems off at our next visit. A little bit of weeding needed in that pot too - maybe Jamie can do that to help his rehabilitation (I’m not sure I’ll get away with that suggestion too often 😉)

Yesterday (8th March) we sowed the following and they’re under the grow-light in the hallway:

5 x Redcurrant Tomatoes (several seeds per pot)

20 x Lark Sweetcorn (in root trainers)

1x All Green Bush courgette

Hoping for better germination of the sweetcorn than we had last year, but we’ve started early just in case. If everything grows well we’ll move it to the polytunnel and can offer some additional frost protection if needed. It is feeling very Springlike, with lovely misty mornings and the birds are very active.

The weather is meant to go cold again, but this lovely gift parcel from Cousin Jen includes fingerless mittens which will be most useful and the seeds for scattering should provide a bitof extra colour to our flower bed. What a lovely treat to find when we returned home from an exhausting A&E day, when we discovered Jamie has a chest infection 🙁  Lucky I have a few more days of leave already booked.

Korn provide the song title.

Paranoid

I’ve just enjoyed a lunch of celeriac soup. Very tasty with rose harissa and tarragon for additional flavour. 

I used my new hand blender and wish I’d grown the ingredients, but only the garlic was home-grown. We’ve grown celeriac before but never a giant like this! It’s a bit tricky to grow and to be honest I think I’ll stick to buying the occasional one rather than trying again. This giant has made 4 days lunch and a quarter was also included in a root vegetable stew which covered two days meals. I think I’ve had enough celeriac for a while!

I did have some tarragon growing on the plot, but am not sure if it’s still there. It has a slightly aniseed flavour which I love, so I’m seeing if I can root some of the fresh stuff I bought - I only thought to do this after it had been in the fridge for a few days … so it may not work…

You can see the grey sky in that photo - it’s been dull, cold and grey like that for a few days now so we’ve stayed inside. I’ve been working on the planting plan - it’s bound to change and needs a bit more work.

The climbing beans are going to grow up wigwams this year and I’m going to very carefully label them after last year’s mix-up between climbers and dwarf plants 🙄

The squashes are going to provide a squash tunnel again. I’ve bought some Sharks Fin Melon Fig-Leaved Gourd seeds. They sound interesting don’t they, they’re a courgette rather than Winter squash. We’ll probably grow two kinds of climbing Winter squash and two other types of bush courgette.

I wonder if the weather will be more conducive to growth this year….time will tell…

Talking of weather, we had a bit more snow a week ago.

We visited the plot the next day, to drop off some compost and see how things are faring. The garlic and leeks are looking rather sad, but hopefully they’ll recover. And we were sorry to see some of the broad beans have been frosted - should have fleeced them - but they are pretty resilient (usually).

The ground was solid and the snow was covering the hills. We didn’t hang around!

We didn’t visit site for 10 days. Work has started the year busier than 2024 ended so I’m back staring at my screen for 8hours most days. I don’t mind as long as I have my hot water bottle, blanket and the curtains pulled 🤭 And I have my celestial mug (thanks George) and space-themed desk cover to keep my mind on why I’m creating spreadsheets!

We popped to the allotment on Friday and were shocked to see what appeared to be Round-Up (weed killer) footprints leading from the top of site directly to our plot. We don’t think we have any enemies, but the footprints literally tracked around plot 7, onto plot 8 and down to plot 3 stopping at our compost bin!

The worst thoughts enter your head when you think you’ve been sabotaged so I emailed Nia, our chair. She pointed out that it could be frost damage if someone had walked that way when there was frost/snow on the ground. Ah… that would be us then! 🤪 No wonder the route was so targeted!! A perfect opportunity for Black Sabbath to provide the title song. Look at Ozzy Osbourne!

Party’s Over

Tonight is the twelfth night; the decorations are now down and our living room looks rather bare. Yesterday evening we got snow, so that was good timing as a few Christmas lights were still up.

We had to go for a walk in it as we weren’t expecting it to stay long.

We only walked a mile through the snowy streets.

And there weren’t many people out.

All the snow has gone now as we’ve returned to rain, but it made a nice change (some parts of Britain are expecting substantially more than us).

Before the snow arrived we’ve had some very cold and frosty days. Friday afternoon the Moon and Venus were shining really bright in the freezing clear sky (photo clearly doesn’t do it justice!).

On Thursday morning, before I returned to working, we popped up the frosty plot to pick sprouts. 

Brrrr, -4° so we didn’t hang around.

Jamie made bubble and squeak to eat with a nut loaf I’d made - thanks to Janet, my hairdresser, for the recipe which included cashews, walnuts and chestnuts, with a splosh of red wine. Delish!

So there’s a nice start to the new year. I wonder what else it has to offer - all good things, I hope.

Now, where are those seed catalogues?! 

Song title provided by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man.

 

That was 2024

Well 2024 passed by in a whirl - a rather wet & windy whirl... I’m pleased to say we enjoyed two weddings, no funerals, a Euros football final, a happy general election plus a lot of working, gardening, reading and picnics. Here’s a quick-ish summary, with my reading list at the end.

January

We had a few frosty days, with temperatures down to -9° but mostly just wet. Oh dear it was very wet, with severe floods in nearby towns and rivers bursting their banks. The allotment was very soggy so not workable but we managed to harvest leeks and parsnips.

February

Another wet, grey and windy month but we got some digging done and planted our ‘orchard’ - 3 tiny fruit trees. And we had a HAHA workday. Plotholders happy to actually get outside to do something constructive - clearing Ivan’s communal fruitcage.

Nice to see the return of old friends 😉

March

Rain persisted but there was some sunshine. The ground was still too wet to achieve much so we hand-weeded to avoid compacting the soil. Hard work but always satisfying to see ground ready and waiting.

April

At last, some clear skies and sunshine! That’s what we like to see; fresh new growth and there were tadpoles in our little pond plus our first blossom on the cherry tree.

Brrr, it was really cold though. There had been a couple of frosts so we kept the fleece on hand to protect the strawberry flowers and anything else that didn’t appreciate the biting wind!

May

Days began to feel a bit warmer. Broad beans were being harvested and sowing and planting was well underway. The frequent torrential downpours kept the slugs and snails happy and they were the bane of many a plotholder; seedlings disappeared soon after emerging or being planted out. But what joy to enjoy some warmer Sunday picnics,  though we still had to wrap up warm as soon as the Sun disappeared.

And May provided our first wedding of the year - and an overnight change of scene. What a fabulously fun wedding it was! Congratulations to Sarah and Dan 😘

June

Our second wedding of the year and another night away, in a shepherd’s hut in torrential rain. This wedding was tremendous fun too - another non-traditional excellent event. Congratulations to Joe and Soulla 😍

Initially still cold enough for fleece protection we did manage to enjoy a mini-heatwave in the middle of the month.  Harvests were beginning to get interesting and some plants were very slowly beginning to grow, but the soaking soil soon solidified under the sweltering Sun causing more problem growing conditions. (6 months in, you can see it was a rather trying year!)

Flowers were finally showing themselves but everything was a bit sluggish - hoho, see what I did there🐌

July

Fabulous sunshine, torrential rain - that should have been great growing weather but sorry to say that molluscs seemed to eat faster than the plants could grow.

Having cleared all the broad beans there was mostly only salad leaf and turnips in the trug. There were some great times in July: England were in the Euros Final (just beaten by Spain), the general election (an end to 14 years of tories), Sunday picnics and the verbena bonariensis began to put on a beautiful display for months providing much needed nectar to the bees, butterflies and other insects.

And we were very excited to catch sight of the visiting fox on the wildlife camera! There had been evidence and we think he was after the pheasants that had bred on the site.

The last few days of July provided a few 30° days which were extremely welcome.

August

Summer stayed for a while. We even appreciated the rain when it arrived. 

Picnics were plenty and harvests were more varied: courgettes, cucumbers, potatoes, beans, tomatoes and better salads. The zinnia eventually began to flower, but not quite the show I was hoping for. And the night camera showed we had a regular hedgehog visitor as well as a group of sparrows enjoying dust baths in the polytunnel.

September

Our first sweetcorn were picked - they were slow to arrive, short-stemmed and germination was poor but what we had was worth waiting for.

It was a thundery month with occasional flashes of lightning in more torrential rainstorms. And to add to the climate chaos we had our first frost - on the 15th September, not a welcome record after the slow start to the growing season 😒

But when the crazy weather wasn’t being thrown at us there was some lovely sunshine and excellent harvests of beans, carrots, peppers, courgette, garlic, Cavolo Nero and tomatoes.

October

Another very wet month but we had some lovely picnics by the warmth of the chimenea, watching bats and enjoying the wonders of the nightsky including satellites and a fab Super moon.

I stepped down from the HAHA committee after 14 years and I think it was good timing. It should give us more time to look after our own plots and still enjoy the friendly, social aspects of our lovely site.

We had a delivery of Apsley Farms mulch to slow some of the weed growth. Further frosts and sub-zero temperatures prevented any plans for digging and clearing. I’d protected my few squashes with fleece over the last two months, but picked them all in October. The festival squash was tastier than the butternut at this stage, but a bit of storage time increased the sugars in the butternut over time.

November

The phrase ‘cyclonic gloom’ entered our vocabulary - weeks of dull cloud-covered nothing. Probably the driest stretch of the year, but no chance for the squelching ground to recover as Storm Bert arrived. However at least one mild Sunday gave us the opportunity for another picnic. The cat joined us and provided a dead rat for entertainment…

Later we had some proper frosts and even a brief snow flurry - temperatures dipped to -4° so that was the end of the any remaining non-hardy plants.

December

So here we are with more wind, rain and frosts but not so unexpected in this month. I ate the last of the stored butternuts.

Christmas has been, and continues to be full of relaxation and fun. We only made it to the allotment once so far to pick some sprouts.

We’ve got signs of life for the year ahead with broad beans, garlic and leeks. Still hopeful that the PSB will provide some tasty heads in the next couple of months and I really do want some roasted sprouts.

2024 Books

I’ve read a lot this year, 28 books, probably because the weather made us stay inside more. These have been my favourites - see GoodReads.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hoping 2025 brings a bit more warmth and sunshine, a bit less wind and rain but just as many HAPPY TIMES. 

 Happy New Year!