Say Hello Wave Goodbye

This is the obligatory look back over the year - a year that certainly didn’t follow any plan and I don’t suppose there are many who aren’t happy to see the back of 2020 with high hopes for 2021. Even though the year has obviously been dominated by COVID-19, horrible statistics, social distancing, lockdown tiers and face masks this post is only covering my highlights. 

I read more books than usual and I think I’ll continue to do so, rather than just reading on holiday which is how our year started (little did we realise how lucky we were with our timing). 

Aah, those costumes and fabulous drummers! Carnivalesque - Such a fabulous time to visit Tenerife. 

Shielding and lockdown kept me indoors for more than 70 days, working from home was enough to drive anyone stir crazy... my hair bore the brunt of the boredom.

My first trip outside was at 4am in June to see the sun rise over Freeman’s Marsh. It was worth getting up so early.

The poppy fields just up the road were well worth another walk outside and the weather was beautiful.

It seems that 2020 was a good year for flowers in and around Hungerford.

Birthday trip to Chalk Hill

I was inspired to do some embroidery - the first time in decades. Loved doing it and love my sewn Plot7 but it seems that isn’t a hobby I’m going to keep doing.

Feeling creative I also did some decorative baking (after seeing it on the Veg Hog’s blog) - focaccia will definitely be made again.

I made a foraged blackberry and apple crumble. (Bear with me, I don’t cook much)

And even baked a cake, with a tromboncino squash donated by a fellow plotholder.

We did get to the allotment and enjoyed some lovely hot days, or lunch hours, up there. We even did a bit of clearing, but didn’t get much planted. Our generous allotment friends and my sister made sure we got fresh fruit and veg though.

Our sad overgrown plot

The allotments got a flurry of new plotholders and a substantial waiting list, as recognised by the local paper. (That’s our plot in the photo 😊)

2020 was also a good year for wildlife, particularly when the traffic was so reduced in the Spring and with the reduced air pollution because so few planes were flying. On the allotment we saw these great caterpillars - I was so pleased to find my first hawk moth and then found a second one!

Elephant hawk moth

Elephant hawk moth

Pale tussock moth

So, my blog was much more of a lifestyle blog, I hope it features much more of the allotment next year. This morning, for the last time this year, I hung around by the canal while Jamie went shopping. It was cold and frosty with just a couple of men working on their narrow boats and a family feeding the ducks.

So it’s goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021, song title provided by Soft Cell.

Thankyou for visiting and we wish you all a Happy New Year 🥳 

Next

 Halfway through the Christmas break and what a lovely relaxing time we’ve had so far.

Snow was threatened yesterday and we walked up the High Street through slushy ice. We saw some cars with white roofs but we didn’t see any snowfall, just cold, sleety rain.

We received some lovely presents - there’s my fabulous crocheted cardigan from my sister, which I’m living in because it’s so cosy and such beautiful colours.

We’ve eaten lots of food. We had our Christmas roast on the night of Christmas Eve, so Christmas Day’s lunch was a delicious buffet... mmm, so many tasty morsels!

It’s so great having the freedom to do nothing for a week! We watched the extended editions of Lord of the Rings across three evenings (over 10 hours! It didn’t feel like a marathon as it’s just so beautiful). 

Jamie stocked our crackers with Lego figures this year, so Santa has some friends (you’re never too old for Lego, surely 😄). I made this puff pastry tart-thing, with sprouts, tomatoes, Quorn ham and cheese - so delicious.

We visited the allotment to cover the broad beans, to prevent them getting squashed under the forecast snow. It’s so soggy but it was nice to be out of the flat, we’re only wearing the masks for effect, we had the site to ourselves most of the time. We saw two egrets fly along the canal as well as long-tailed tits and the usual robins and magpies on site. The weeds are still growing well 😒

So, now I’m wondering what day it is and what can I eat next.... hmm, here’s a rather dubious song by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band... er, it’s not exactly Christmassy so don’t listen too closely!

Just the Two of Us

Now we’re being watched - we’d better not be naughty! This amazing new addition to our festive flat was designed and created by my incredibly creative Cousin Jen. I texted to ask if she had an elf to go on our shelf and within a day this little chap was made and in the post - isn’t he fabulous?!

We are feeling festive. I had Friday off work and feel like I’ve stopped for Christmas, but actually it’s the first year for ages that I’m having to work on Christmas Eve - I hope it’s not busy! Friday evening we saw A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic Theatre - live streaming via Zoom, of course... 

It was great; a really good adaptation with some worthy lessons, sadly, for modern Britain. We were drawn to it because of Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) but there weren’t any zombies in it.

Yesterday I podded the Gigantes beans. Some hadn’t dried out enough, so aren’t suitable for storing. They’re so smooth and white when they’re properly dried in their pods like this.

But this lot, from 4 plants, will serve me well over the next year.

From today we have moved into the new COVID tier 4 which has been specially created for Christmas in the South-East of England, which we just fall within. It’s going to upset a lot of people’s plans, though our Christmas is always enjoyed in isolation. 

It would have been better to have made the decision before everyone finalised their arrangements, but with hospitalisation and deaths increasing rapidly the main concern has to be stopping the virus from spreading/mutating and trying as hard as possible to make 2020 the only year that’s spoilt for so many 😔 So, here’s the beautiful Bill Withers providing the title track. I hope you can enjoy Christmas and look forward to a better new year x

Gaudete

The Lockdown Wood was planted up in Hungerford last weekend - more than 850 saplings. Another year. I would have joined in, but I’ll stay away from gatherings for a few months more... Our hazel tree needs to grow at least 3 times taller than this before it can join the wood, but I was pleased to see it looks happy with new buds just appearing.

We only visited the plot to add waste to the compost bin and to store our new honeysuckle in the polytunnel until we’re ready to plant at home. We got it free from Thompson & Morgan because they’ve published a couple of entries from this blog into their Favourite Bloggers articles recently, which is always nice to see 😊

While we were there I collected up all the Gigantes beans, which have been drying out in the polytunnel. I’ll pod them for storing in a few days.

And here’s one of the tasty meals I had using last year’s stored beans and some of the veg my sister brought over (swede, carrots, fennel, peppers). I made enough to cover three meals and added gravy to make it more like a stew for one of them.

Work continues to keep me far too busy, but we’re hoping it’ll wind down a bit as we get closer to Christmas. I’ve never had such a Christmassy office setting though 🤩

For the next few lunchtimes I have this scrummy chestnut and sage soup. Mmm, I could easily eat it all in one sitting, but I’m not getting any exercise so had better not! I used the River Cottage recipe because I didn’t want to add cream, but I did sauté the onion and sage in butter.

It's Gaudete Sunday today - the third Sunday of advent apparently. I'm sure this is the only time I'd manage to crowbar this song title on the blog :-) I chose Erasure’s version.

Christmas Lights

 We just had a little walk up the High Street to see the Christmas lights and post some cards.

It’s so pretty, I do love to see it all lit up. I had to manipulate the photos a bit which has made the sky look interesting, it just looked black in the real world.

Our flat has also been lit up and is looking very much like Santa’s grotto.

My sister shared some lovely veg with me today. Also some peppers and potatoes. 

I’m looking forward to a bit of cooking this week and decided to include a few of last year’s stored home-grown beans into the mix, so they’re soaking at the moment. Look how wrinkly they’ve gone, but they’re sure to be delicious eventually.

So, a final photo of the High Street and hopefully marking it as 2020 (and only 2020 please!) one of the COVID-19 signs.

As you can see I’m feeling rather Christmassy, so Coldplay provide the song title.

Just a Little Bit Longer

We don't need to move to have a lovely new view from our window for a few weeks and the weather has been so dreary that it’s been a welcome spot of brightness even during the day.

Hmm, what else has happened over the last week... well, I had a day off and went to a shop... it was self-service so I didn’t really feel the COVID-shopping experience. I did get to cook the one and only spaghetti squash that we grew this year - it didn’t get looked after as much as it normally would, which I guess is why it only produced the one fruit, but it was quite a big one. I had two meals of it as Jamie doesn’t like it. It was so delicious with Spanish spicy beans and topped with cheese.

Halved and cooked cut-side down for 45 minutes at 180°, then filled and put back in the oven for 15 minutes was just right for keeping the ‘spaghetti’ firm. For the last 15minutes I pricked the skin to let the juices escape.

I also made some thick and tasty chilli, carrot and coriander soup. I’m missing our usual supply of home-grown carrots and squash, we’re so used to eating loads at this time of year, so I put a shopping order in with Jamie 😊 (He's looking forward to me getting the corona virus vaccine before him so that I have to do the shopping!)

We had a couple of hours on the allotment yesterday. It wasn’t foggy, like Saturday, but it was very dull. I cleared the bean poles away and put all the runner bean stalks into the compost bins. Look at that root! I’ve never seen them grown thick like that before and it had a really strong smell of runner beans.

We were watching the birds while we sat having a cup of choca-mocha in the polytunnel. 

The robin was enjoying finding grubs where I’d moved a large pot and these goldfinches were chirping away in the trees in the hedge.

And now a question for you growers. I saw this on Facebook: 

Is my globe artichoke actually a cardoon? I hope someone can tell me! Or maybe I just need to chop off some of those stems to taste them  - what do you think?

We’ve just watched the Hungerford Virtual lights switch on video. Fun to see so many plotholders who are involved in other town groups. Our HAHA Happy Christmas is around 14mins 20secs if you can’t sit through the lot 😁 And the beautiful Hungerford Christmas lights are on - yay, we can see a couple from the flat but I think we'll have to take a wander up the high street one evening next week.

So, Jackson Browne provides the song title with a little poetic licence, just a little bit longer in Lockdown#2, a little bit longer till Christmas and a little bit longer till the vaccine is available to us - hooray, lots to look forward to!

Lost Weekend

In the last two weeks I’ve literally only been outside twice - it’s just too easy to stay indoors when it’s November! But thank goodness for the allotment which is motivation to move, at least at the weekend. And the sun came out so the canal was looking lovely with lots of moored boats and the flowers on the bridge.

Walking through town was pretty quiet, with most of the shops shut, but quite a few plotholders were busying themselves at the allotment when we got there. The ground is too wet to do any serious work so we just enjoyed the fresh air for an hour or so. We weren’t sure the sun was going to make it out at this point.

The birds were very active. We saw redwings, blue tits, wrens, robins and dunnocks in the hedge. And crows and gulls were calling from the Marsh. We think this was a kestrel, though it looked very large sitting on the overhead wires - as you can see, it flew off!

When the sun emerged it was lovely and warm. We could hear the booming from military exercises on Salisbury Plain, which is about 30miles away, but mostly we could just hear birds - aah, lovely. Better than last weekend when we had to sit in the polytunnel because it was so rainy. I don’t know why my phone decided to make this video of Jamie in the rain last weekend. I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually do that nifty footwork 😃

So back home I finished off the last of my home-made spicy parsnip soup, with some Higgidy veggie cheese & pickle rolls. Yum.

Well, that’s another week gone. If they keep speeding by like this then we’ll soon have all been vaccinated and can move on with our lives again...Yay!

The song is for last weekend, which was too wet and dull to care about. It’s by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.