To the Moon and Back

The year is moving swiftly on. March has passed and the clocks have moved forward; the lighter evenings are welcome especially when we had sunshine on a couple of warm, dry days.

I was very excited to spot this morel (probably Common) mushroom in one of the communal flower beds! We’ve never found one in the wild before. They’re a highly prized fungus though this one looked passed its best so I wasn’t tempted to sample it - they always look like they’d be rather gritty but I’m assured that they are delicious. It would be great if we could get them to cultivate somewhere on site but they’re renowned for being tricksy; this spore/mycelia must have been imported with the compost or wood chips.

The daffodils and tulips are still looking good and our little pear tree has some lovely white blossom - I wonder if we’ll harvest our first pears this year…

We’ve visited the plots most days and made some progress. All the seeds, apart from carrots, have begun to germinate in the polytunnel and the California Wonder peppers have germinated at home. I dug a big hole for the pumpkin on Plot3. It doesn’t look that impressive but the earth was very compacted and full of tree roots so it was really hard work. I was ready to give up a couple of times but Jamie was directing and I’m glad it was completed in one visit. We filled it with well-rotted manure, some chicken manure pellets and the compost from last year’s cucumber pot before piling the original earth, minus the roots, back on top.

First stage when I wanted to give up!

Plot3 has provided us with another harvest of purple sprouting broccoli - this lovely lot was delicious in a cheese sauce with Arley’s plant-based pancetta.

We also enjoyed a few sticks from our rhubarb - the plant has flowered so I chopped the two flowerheads off to stop the plant being weakened.

I spent a bit of time splitting and potting on Rudbeckia plants. I know where one is going but the others will probably be saved for a HAHA plant sale. I’ve also done some Vinca Minor (Periwinkle) cuttings at home - they’re in water at the moment so I’ll pot them up when they grow roots.

Most of the perennial plug plants are ok in the polytunnel though some have died - unfortunately the Sharpie labels were less waterproof than I expected … 🙄 so it’s all guesswork now!

The wildflowers (I’ll call them that as they’re not all growing on our plots) are providing for the masses of bees and ladybirds (mostly 7-spots so far) and I was pleased to see a blue butterfly flitting along the hedgerow on the warmest day.

Speedwell, viola, daisy, ground ivy, dandelion and purple & white dead nettle

I did a bit of tidying around the garlic and onions - the onions are a bit weak, but hopefully they’ll produce something. I need to add a little Epsom Salts to the garlic as the leaves are yellowing - the addition of magnesium and sulphur aid photosynthesis. Storm Dave chased us away from site yesterday - it was extremely windy and we’re nowhere near getting the full force of it. I hope it blew itself out completely overnight as we’re meant to be having a picnic later.

Yesterday marked the 18th anniversary of my kidney transplant - forever grateful to the donor family and the NHS 💜

The (beautiful) song is provided by Savage Garden. Thinking of the Artemis 2 crew on their mission around the Moon which will lead on to further space exploration, but also prospecting the Moon, which seems like a bad move especially with the wrong people in charge.

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.

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.

This Garden

Mmm, I made a floral focaccia again. And this time it was actually like focaccia rather than a big flat biscuit!

Reading back on when I made it before, I think it didn't have the right texture because I didn’t bake it in a high-sided tin so it just spread out - it was definitely more like a pizza base… This time, contrary to the instructions on the Tesco Focaccia mix, I proved it a second time after spreading it out in the tin. Here’s the pre-baked garden.

You can see that there is plenty of olive oil! Only chives and parsley from the plot. We had a little picnic on the plot in the Sun yesterday and had some red wine with this lovely snack. Mmm, the focaccia is so tasty dipped in that balsamic dressing. Perfecto!

I could have done with a lie down afterwards but we kept on with our weeding and tidying. The recent wet/dry weather has been ideal for the weeds. Ivan taught me how to use a hoe for the edging rather than a spade - aah so that’s how to do it.

Plot3 is looking much better now the PSB has been removed, chopped and composted. The Spring onions and lettuce (Dark Roden) seeds have germinated after 1 week -  the cage is having a year off from brassica this year - and the lettuces will be planted out when they’re big enough. It looks like most of the pre-germinated parsnip seeds have sprouted; the other row hasn’t yet.

We're having a bit of trouble germinating our courgettes but we'll give them another week. Other seedlings continue to appear in the inner polytunnel, including florence fennel, but none are large enough to transplant yet. Some of the annual flowers will eventually be part of the flower patch in front of our bench which has expanded a bit on last year.

The flower patch has more perennials this year, including Geum, Jacobs Ladder, Leucanthemum and Scabiosa plus a few verbascum which Ivan gave us today and this lovely delphinium that Aimee gave us last year when she gave up her plot.

The HAHA Wildlife plot is fit to bursting with so much growth but is still mostly green at the moment, apart from some pretty Red Campion. I pulled some of the plantain and dandelions to make way for less invasive plants and whilst rummaging found lots of shield bugs and other insects.

We feel a bit in limbo with the waiting, waiting … but cold nights are threatened this week so it’s definitely worth waiting a bit longer - or at least having the fleece on standby… The Levellers provide this excellent song title.

Walk on the Wild Side

British Summer Time is here - the weather doesn’t realise and it’s been mostly dull and windy plus we’ve had a lot of rain; 35mm in the last week.

That sounds a bit moany considering we had a pleasant few hours on the plot on Sunday afternoon and lots more flowers have bloomed in the last week providing such welcome spots of colour. Those cowslips in the above photo are putting on a lovely show on the HAHA Wildlife plot and there are 'common' daisies popping up in the grass paths.

Plenty of pollen for emerging insects but I only saw one bumblebee. The grape hyacinths are appearing in various places where we thinned out the bulbs from our plot and planted them around the site. And we have lots in pots where other bulbs are also growing. I wonder if the succession planting will actually work for once..!

The blackthorn blossom has now opened in the hedge. Such a pretty little flower.

Along with 2 robins singing their tuneful ditty trying to drown out the church bells, there were several tiny birds flitting about in the hedge. It was difficult to see what they were but Jamie managed to get this shot - thanks Sue for the tip to use ‘photo burst’ on our camera. Lovely to see a tiny goldcrest!

In the path alongside the hedge we have a lot of violets growing - white ones, and they don’t smell so must be common dog violets. 

A little tint of colour on the petals to direct the insects in.

And here’s another common plant alongside the hedge which flowers at this time of year. Creeping Charlie or ground ivy. The flowers are tiny but bees love them. The leaves have a lovely minty scent and can, apparently, be used for various ailments and as a herbal tea (though I expect it tastes nasty like most herbal teas 😏). Apparently it has been used in cheese-making as an alternative to animal rennet!

It seems to be treated as an invasive pest, but perhaps that's for people who want grass lawns - I prefer to see a mix of plants personally.

Apart from scrambling around the ground taking macro shots of tiny flowers, I did get up-close (down-close) and personal to the writhing mass of tadpoles in the HAHA Wildlife plot - as you can see, they have their external gills. They do form quickly, these have grown in 12 days, although there are some which are still little dots or commas in their spawn bubbles. 

Including the ones in our little pond. The spawn sunk when I added it to our pond and the spawn is still only at comma stage from what I could see in the murky depths. Quite interesting that you can see where they're eating their way out of their bubbles.

We did actually do a little work on the allotment too - our broad beans have been weeded, but left under their protective covers. The chocolate spot on the leaves is annoying but hopefully won't spread too far into the plant. It's probably caused by being under the covers but that offers protection from pigeons and heavy rain/snow.

Some of the plants which were sown at the end of October have flowers on, but many didn't survive the really cold spell. The plants are better where we popped a bean into the empty spaces more recently (was it before Christmas? Can't remember!)

And finally, at last, some purple sprouting brocolli to harvest! Nearly 12 months on from sowing! Mmm, it is lovely though so worth the wait. This mostly wild blog post has the song provided by Lou Reed - do...do..doo...do..di.di...doo