A Little Time

There's always something watching; normally it's magpies ..This time it's a VOLE.

I know! Enemy of the broad bean grower, but really! How cute is that? Rustling around in the neighbour's strawberry bed while Jamie was digging. I think he did well to get this photo before the little chap scurried off (the vole, not Jamie).

As long as he stays on the neighbour's plot and doesn't find my mangetout growing in the greenhouse I don't mind :-)

It's Easter holidays, so Jamie planted some of our potatoes on Thursday (13th April). We have two short rows with 4 spuds in each: 1 x Burgundy Red, 1 x Orla, 2 x Kestrel and the other row is 4 x Desiree. Our other potatoes are going into bags, which we'll try to do in the next week or so.

Sowing the chard in modules means that I can be selective for which colours I plant out on the plot. Plenty to choose from there. We're having a plant sale in June so none of these will be wasted - I only need about 3 plants but like to have one of each colour.

Music provided by The Beautiful South,  as I have a little more time before going back to work.

Sunny

Wow! What a beautiful weekend that was. It's now Monday and the temperature has dropped, but I don't mind as I'm at work (on lunch break I hasten to add!).

It was a bit too hot for digging, but I did some and Jamie finished off the patch where a compost bin was and where we are growing some sweetcorn this year on Plot 3. The plants on the left are the valerian, which has grown like crazy - it should have some nice white flowers that smell of vanilla.

I found the new packet of leek seeds that I had lost, so we now have another potful sowed - they are called Toledo. Raspberry plants are looking fresh with the buds looking promising - I never did get round to tidying up the bed as intended.

My Tigerella tomato seedlings at work are looking less than happy - our office is just too hot for them, I think. There should be at least a couple which can be transplanted in a week or so, but their stems are so weak they may not survive the move. Luckily our grafted tomato plants should be delivered soon.

We left the site last night after a lovely few hours, with armfuls of rhubarb from plotholder, Lesley - ours isn't quite ready for picking yet.
Today's song is 'Sunny' sung by Marvin Gaye, but now it's back-to-work time...

Go!

The shelves in the greenhouse are filling up. Today I sowed Duchess mixed aster and French Honeycomb marigolds in seed trays. And a pot of Oarsman leeks are there too, along with a drainpipe sown with mangetout - I found the drainpipe on a vacant plot - it's meant to make it easier to transplant the seedlings without damaging the roots.

The beetroot, salad and chard are all germinating, so the temperature must be just right for them - it was just right for me too today - hot sunshine and blue skies - delightful!

The broad beans have left the greenhouse and are now in Plot 3 - one  row looks very healthy, the other row is not so good so I've added cloches to help them through their early days... They may need replacing with a new bean popped into the ground in a couple of weeks time, we'll see...

The onions are beginning to sprout so we're keeping them watered while they develop. Today I sowed some salad onions (Apache and White Lisbon) and some Pompei silverskin-type onions into a small raised bed.

It's been very dry over the last week although there have been some frosty mornings and this morning we had a thick fog before the sun burned it off.

Aah, it felt like a Summer's day. It was nice doing lots of smaller jobs with very little digging, that may be easier if we get some rain in the week - but not when I'm on leave I hope!

Moby provides the title track...

How to Save a Life

Another year has passed. Nine years of real, enjoyable life as a result of another family's kindness. This is my annual post when my transplanted kidney is at the forefront of my mind.

A few of my daily dose

Kidney transplantation is a cheaper treatment for kidney failure than dialysis. Although most people have one more kidney than they need there are never enough kidneys for the people on the waiting list. France has recently introduced the opt-out donor system which means there is 'presumed consent' to donate. In the UK we still opt-in, by signing the register and carrying a donor card. In both systems family-members can over-ride the wishes of the deceased when the time comes. I'm not religious; I think that people should donate their body parts after death, but appreciate that the death-bed is a hard time to be making such a decision and I'm not entirely convinced that the Government should make the decision on behalf of the dead.

Make sure your family know your wishes

Please sign the organ donation register TODAY

I'm grateful to the NHS and the fact that it still (just) has enough funding to cover the dialysis costs for everyone who needs it, unlike some other countries. Of course, our poor NHS needs assistance from charity more and more as less 'real time' money is put into the system that we're so proud of. I hope my donated kidney lasts longer than the rest of my body so that I won't need to return to dialysis in the future. Having said that, the improvements to dialysis systems are huge and hopefully they'll make it to the UK from the US - wearable dialysis machines? Really!

Thank you to all of you who have already chosen to save at least one life after you've moved on...

Here are The Fray singing along to this post:

Mr Blue Sky

Aah, blue skies, warm sunshine, lots of plotholders and digging - what a lovely Sunday afternoon. That calls for a timelapse...

It's a mirror image of the actual site

Jamie was finishing off preparation of the potato plot and the little raised bed for our silverskin pickling onions - we've trying Pompei this year, hope the slugs don't demolish them like last year...

Meanwhile I was digging the plot for flowers, courgette and mangetout. I didn't get to the end of my patch - too much hard work with all the weeds and grass, but another couple of hours should get it sorted... Oh, ok, I did stop for a few chats too I guess you spotted those in the video - it was HAHA committee talk - honest :-)

I also did a bit of clearing where our herbs grow and found where some of the snails have been hiding.

We're pleased to see that all the snails seem to have increased our thrush population though and they were standing by waiting for us to leave in the evening.

A bit of ELO to provide the music for our enjoyable, tiring afternoon. You'll be humming it all day now, whether you like it or not :-)

April Come She Will

And bring showers she will (ok, enough Yoda-speak!). The threatening sky was so dramatic much of the afternoon and eventually we did get some raindrops. We didn't stay very long, we only had hot water to drink - we forgot to take the coffee sachets!

Most of the time Jamie was clearing the patch for potatoes and I was doing a bit of sowing in the greenhouse. We now have Rainbow chard, Boltardy beetroot and some salad leaf on the shelving alongside the broad beans and sweetpeas.

I also sowed a short row of radish in the garlic raised bed. I'll, yet again, try to sow successive pickings, but so often lose the plot within a month or so...

Jamie planted 50 (yes, 50!) onion sets during the week. They're netted to prevent the birds pecking them out. We're growing Santero onions again, which we've been pleased with before; they're mould resistant.

Simon and Garfunkle sing us into the new month - I like April, things really start happening in April, but we still have a lot to tidy up and dig :-)

Clocks

The clocks changed this weekend - we're now on British Summer Time. An hour less in bed but, lighter evenings mean plot-time after work -Yay!

Tortoiseshell

It really was a lovely warm and sunny weekend. The butterflies emerged for the sunshine: tortoiseshells, peacocks and brimstones. And the birdsong! Such a pleasure to sit, watch and listen with the sun on your face, in between weeding/tidying/digging of course.

The only clouds were contrails left by high-flying planes

I showed a newcomer to his new 'mini-plot', which we'd just finished the paths on. We're leaving them under weed suppressant for grass-sowing in the Autumn. Our other newcomers were enjoying seeing so many plotholders on the site - probably the busiest weekend of the year so far - certainly the warmest...

Even I was down to my tee-shirt

We spent about 10 hours on the plot over both days - no wonder my arms and legs are aching so much today (and I'm writing this blogpost on Monday lunchtime rather than Sunday evening).

We were pleased to see some of the broad beans and sweet peas have germinated. My tomato seedlings at work still look like straggly cress - I wonder whether they'll ever become plants. Coldplay provide the music for the clocks springing forward to BST.

Daydream in Blue

So close to Spring, but it wasn't feeling like it this weekend. I've been reading blogs from warmer climates - Ki Si in Spain with such amazing blue skies and hot temperatures which mean she's harvesting already and Endah in Indonesia with her interesting fruits and beautiful flowers.

Not that we don't have beautiful flowers and our fruit and veg will grow eventually... it's just so tempting to wish the months away...

But there are many signs now that Spring is on its way and not just in all the UK blogposts.

It's a good job time isn't moving too quickly though we have managed to do more preparation on Plot 7 this weekend, in the cool breeze with grey skies.

Jamie's dug most of the quarter where the onions are going, they're due to be delivered any day now - I wouldn't let him dig up the last of the carrots as I want to use them in cooking during the week.

I cleared out one of the strawberry beds - there were so many snails and spiders hiding in there! That should make the plants happier, along with the plant food we watered them with afterwards.

So there was time for daydreaming, but time for working too. I Monster provide the music..

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

Look what we had for tea last night...

Believe me, we haven't returned to our carnivorous past.

I know, it looks just like bacon (more than salmon to me) but it's an amazing marinaded carrot recipe, which Shaheen shared on A2K on her lovely veggie food blog and she found it on Olives for Dinner, another veggie food blog.

There, see, CARROTS

It involves liquid smoke - that's interesting enough in its own right. Most things I cook will now have a vaguely smokey flavour. Probably could have added a bit more to the marinade we made for the carrot bagels and I doubt we'd use this much salt in future, but I guess that's what makes it fishy-similar(?)

It's even made me less afraid of using the mandolin.

So, yum yum, nom nom and mmm mmm mmm mmm provided by Crash Test Dummies.

What Ive Done

On Thursday I sowed some Tigerella tomato seeds in a tray - they're on my windowsill at work because it's such a light window without full sun. And, as an aside, that lovely orchid has been in flower since the Christmas holidays!

Yesterday we spent 6 hours on the plot - exhausting work, but great to have cleared and dug such a large area of Plot3. This is how it looked initially...

And, after Jamie dug a huge trench and we added three of last years spent tomato bags plus 3 bags of lovely home-made compost...

We could then rake it over and it now it looks like this.

And to stop the annoying weeds returning before we've even planted the broad and runner beans, we've covered the whole lot in weed fabric.

Today I sowed 25 sweet peas in the greenhouse - protected by 'giant crumpet' packages, which happen to be a perfect fit for those pots!

Surprisingly we managed to miss any rain all weekend - though today certainly threatened.

Another thing I missed (pretty much) was the steam train that went past while we were working yesterday...

Today's song is by Linkin Park - such a great song and video. It should be 'what we've done' of course!