Everybodys Talkin

It's been organ donation week in the UK. There have been lots of positive news stories showing how lives are changed by the gift of organ donation.

As a person who has lived with kidney problems since birth, leading to the need for dialysis at the age of 38, I can certainly agree that a shorter wait for a donor kidney is very welcome if not life-saving. I was lucky, I only had a four year wait.

The gift of a kidney literally gives the recipient a new lease of life. A chance to remember how it is to have free time, enjoy food, have the energy to do something active and feel like yourself again.

Thankyou to my donor's family. Thankyou to my donor. And thankyou to anyone who reads this post and talks about it to their family, so that, should the worst happen, the terrible decision may be slightly less terrible.

Nilsson provides the beautiful track...

Things that make you go hmm

We had to walk up to the allotment to collect our car after yesterday's barbecue. Unfortunately it's a drenching and chilly day so we didn't stay long. This post is a bit random, hopefully you'll find a few 'hmmm' moments....

Fabulous looking Tigerella tomato

We picked three of the Tigerella tomatoes which are lovely and ripe - we're having a mozerella and tomato salad tonight. I've got more Aviditas and Redcurrant tomatoes for lunches - blight has struck most of the site so we need to get through them before it reaches our plot/greenhouse.

Unfortunately the sunflower head which I was attempting to dry in the greenhouse isn't looking so good - this is how it looked when I picked it. Quite beautiful isn't it?

I saw a recipe the other day for a sliced courgette which reminded me of Hasselback potatoes, so I made this for my dinner - so delicious and looks so interesting! I baked everything, sprinkled with chilli oil and then added cheese for the final 20 minutes.

Our Glass Gem sweetcorn are very tall and have quite a few flowers and a few cobs now. Some of the cobs have red tassles to match their red male flowers - I hope they survive to produce full cobs. The magpies have been spotted tucking into our Lark sweetcorn on the other plot :-(

Significantly taller than most sweetcorn

And the last picture of wonder is from the I Love My Allotment Facebook group. Never has one of my posts ever caused so much interest. But then, the moulded cucumbers really are cool!

So, did you go hmm at all? C&C Music Factory come up with some alternative reasons to do so :-)

Come Together

We were so pleased that we had a hot sunny day for the plotholders' barbecue yesterday.

 I was cooking the veggie burgers, which didn't keep me too busy so I had plenty of time for socialising.

So lovely to spend some proper social time with our allotment friends.

People brought along dishes made from their allotment harvests.

Our moulded cucumbers are there along with some lovely potato salad and courgette muffins.

A couple of the plotholders brought their home-made wines along: Walnut wine - amazing, dark and licoricy; Apple wine - sweet and delicious; Apple and Blackberry wine - my favourite and such a great colour. It was such a beautiful afternoon we stayed long after all the burgers had been eaten.

So now we're planning our next gathering - a bonfire party is appealing and another skittles night. Plus, does a dartboard on an allotment sound like a good idea? I think so!
The Arctic Monkeys' Olympic ceremony version of The Beatles song fits this post perfectly.

Little Fluffy Clouds

A second day of blistering heat - how welcome that blue sky is after being such a grey month initially.

Jamie was very busy: weeding and the digging over the area where the potato bags were - that's where our strawbrries are going in, once the runners have formed healthy roots.

I was busy too, sort of. I chopped all the potato haulms off - they've either succumbed to blight or just reached the end of their life. The potatoes will be fine left in the ground for a few more weeks - we've still got plenty to eat at home.

I gave all the plants (tomatoes, squashes and cucumbers) their weekly feed of Tomorite. It's hard work going back and forth from the troughs to the plots with watering cans, but on a lovely sunny day surrounded by nature who could complain?! We have to walk past this empty plot which we (the committee) have left to nature (I want a pond there if the site ever becomes permanent). At least 2 poles are covered in borage and lavender - amazing!

 

The squashes on Plot46A aren't climbing that well, I hope to go with the idea earlier next year and with a bit more planning (and knowledge of what we're planting!).

They're certainly growing well though - especially the Tromboncini. There are masses of new squashes growing but they won't all mature now. I'm hoping the plants will know which ones aren't worth saving - you may be able to see that the little one in this photo is going brown so I removed it.

The Jumbo Pink Banana is steadily getting bigger and two more little ones have started forming...

And the Mini Munch cucumbers are running rampant. I'm in the process of moulding them into star and heart shapes - so hopefully we'll have some interesting salad for the bbq. 

Of course there are squashes on Plot 3 and Plot 7 too - I'm leaving the Jaune de Vert to use as Winter squash and for the Hungerford Food Festival display.

So, can you guess what we had for dinner? Yep, it had to include a squash, well a spiralized courgette and I couldn't resist doing a little video.

With garlic, tomatoes, dwarf beans and potatoes from the plot and a couple of Quorn Chipotle sausages - delish.

Today's title track is from The Orb - you don't just see little  fluffy clouds in the desert...

Sweetest Thing

It's the last Bank Holiday weekend of the year and today was sunny and warm. We spent the afternoon on the allotment after having a little lunch.

I had marinaded the Speedy Dwarf beans and Redcurrant tomatoes in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, chilli olive oil and liquid smoke overnight. They were nicely flavoured without hiding the lovely natural french bean flavour. I had them with Burgundy Red potato salad.

The Redcurrant tomatoes have done better outside than in the greenhouse. They're so sweet, tiny and delicious.

Still the sweetest tomatoes are the Aviditas plum tomatoes from the greenhouse. We've had some cooked, but mostly just raw as a snack.

At last the Tigerella are colouring up - what a great looking tomato! These are the only 3 which are turning so far, but hopefully the rest will follow on quite soon...

This is the first male flower that's appeared on the Glass Gem sweetcorn - unexpectedly red, but we hope that's a sign of good colouration of the cobs, if they have enough time to form.

The plants are about 8 foot tall but now that the flowers are appearing perhaps they've reached their maximum height. And talking of maximum heights...

That's our tallest Russian Giant sunflower - about 9 foot I reckon. The flower heads have all developed quite differently and at different times so some are already providing seeds for the birds while others are only just bursting out of bud.

The asters are looking good now - just a week late for the Horticultural show. We particularly like the white flower with pinky tinges on the petals - sorry, you can't see it in this photo :-}

We spent most of the time weeding, strimming, dead-heading and composting. There are tall weeds everywhere - that's what happens when you start thinking about other things, like Horticultural Shows! Jamie also potted on some lavender plants, viola and 6 strawberry runners from the strawberries we inherited on Plot46A - our plants were poor this year.

We're keenly waiting for our Lark sweetcorn to ripen, the cobs are bulking up nicely - I hope they'll be ready for our plotholders barbecue next weekend.

So the song title is by U2 - so far this year it refers to the Aviditas tomatoes. Can they really be improved upon??

You Showed Me

It was our Horticultural and Handicraft Show yesterday. The Royal British Legion do most of the work, but HAHA are joint hosts and are responsible for the horticulture and floral sections.

Our 5 veg selection - I liked the unusual colours of each item, but it seems the judge didn't :-)
Burgundy potato, white radish, purple carrot, yellow stripey courgette, purple bean

It was a good show again with 310 exhibits from the 23 contributors. Not as many entrants as last year as some familiar faces were absent, but it was great to see some of our newest plotholders came along.

Along with some of us who come back each year now we know it's such fun.

On Friday afternoon Jamie and I retrieved our (reasonably) dry onions from the greenhouse and managed to find 3 that almost looked similar - it's amazing how 50 onions can all look so different! We didn't win a prize for them (they're the little ones next to the lovely red ones in the photo below), but got 3rd prize for our largest onion which was 35cm circumference.

Early Saturday morning was when we picked the rest of our exhibits. So many beans and carrots to find a few matching ones! We had an hour to do all the cleaning up and trimming before we went to the British Legion and set up and then I had to dash off and pick up our judge from Newbury.

I sat outside in the sunshine while the judging was going on and Jamie came to join me with a cake to relieve the boredom.

We didn't enter any pickles but did bag a couple of jars in the auction afterwards

I intended to enter some flowers, but my asters have been slow to bloom
and sweetpeas have pretty much gone over

Here are some of our produce that got first place.

And we got some 3rd places too:

I think a couple of the photos got placed but we were completely out-stripped by fellow-plotholder Kerry's amazing shots.

These are the photos we selected to show - one for each category

Still we managed to win second place in the Horticultural & Floral Section, so we were pleased with that! And we left with a lovely prize-winning cottage loaf to go with the pickle plus a prize from the raffle.

Loved this insect in the needlecraft section!

Such a fun, social event, with a spurious link to The Lightning Seeds song..