Last Nite

Petrichor - that's the word of the day after we eventually had some rainfall last night. Aah, the smell of earth after rain - it really is a feel-good smell. And rain is so much better at watering than we are - having said that, the watering regime has certainly helped me keep my steps up this month so far!

This photo was taken at the HAHA Plant Swap & Picnic on Saturday. Not many people turned up as it was extremely hot and clashed with various other events in town. Having said that, those of us who stayed for the picnic were over the moon to be drinking Ivan's wine - there, on the table in the demijohn. Made from grapes from his Marsh Lane grapevine - it is delicious and rare to have a red grape wine made in England. It was a lot of fun but the walk home was quite a struggle!

The Plant Swap was more of a success, even if people didn't stay for the picnic. I couldn't resist taking a pink jasmine climber (probably Jasminum beesianum), which I've planted at the end of the polytunnel; a couple of Heavenly Blue morning glory, which I have seen on other plots before and it's so beautiful, some spinach and two aubergine plants. I spent Sunday planting out the flowers and also planting the Nicotiana and Verbena Bonariensis that I've grown from seed. Hoping the flower bed will burst into colour quite soon...at the moment it's still looking rather bare..Slightly concerned that the rain will have brought out the slugs and snails to polish off my seedlings.

The HAHA Wildlife plot is looking much more flowery with lots of these huge daisies, which bugs really like.

I'm pleased that my mangetout have finally developed some flowers. We've all debated it and are convinced that the cold nights have been the cause of slow growth this year - but they're on their way now. And this week we're working out different ways to enjoy broad beans. I do have quite a few recipes that I know we've enjoyed before and I love them cold in salads.

I've transplanted some lettuces from their grow tray into the ground and we've started eating our radishes - I wanted them to get big enough to roast them, but I may need to wait for the Chinese Dragon radishes for that meal. You can see that the pollen beetles are making a mess of the leaves as usual.

On my final day of annual leave last week we had an engineer come to sort out the site's composting toilet - what a relief (hoho) that it wasn't as big a fault as we thought. Kate and I dug out and prepared a proper soakaway so that the blockage doesn't repeat itself. Jamie and I were wandering the site searching for suitable stones - that's a first :-)

On Saturday, thunder was rumbling around, the sky went quite dark but we only felt about 10 drops of rain but last night (Sunday) we got the rain although the thunder & lightning was mostly further north and east of Hungerford - more may be expected today.

So, back to work now, looking out at the sunshine and wishing I was on the plot - but we'll have a lunchtime visit today to see how much rain actually fell. Here are The Strokes not singing about last night's rain!

Who's That Girl?

Look who we found on the site. 

Interesting isn't she, made of terracotta. She was dirty so must have been buried for a while.

Is she from a previous plot holder or from canal dredging before the Allotments were here? If anyone knows anything about her please let me know. I couldn’t find anything similar on the internet. And, of course, if you want her back because you lost her! Intriguing, it has the makings of a creepy novel ...

Last Saturday was a lovely sunny day after the rain the day before. I sowed various salad crops in the large raised beds (radish, salad onions, perpetual spinach and other leafy crops). I planned on doing more but another plotholder was having a bbq and brought me over a glass of wine and that was the end of my work for the day! Wine, sun, allotment - Marvellous :-)

On Sunday we sowed a couple of pumpkins (New England Pie) and courgettes (All Green Bush) at home under the grow light. They had germinated within a week. So they're growing on in the polytunnel now - the temperature is meant to warm up for a while. In the polytunnel yesterday, hiding from the wind and rain, Jamie turned to hand pollinating the strawberry flowers, because there haven’t been many insect pollinators in the poly recently. I hope it’s done the job. We’ll know soon, as the petals should drop as the fruit starts to form.

We stayed chatting for a while on site, but it was too wet to achieve anything. We were looking at the masses of tiny seedlings appearing on the wildlife plot. Talking of wildlife, I had to put netting round my mangetout in the week because the pigeons have seriously nibbled the little plants - the twiggy sticks were quite a good deterrent until they blew away in last weeks storm!

The Eurythmics provide the song title.