Heatwave

It's the 1st August today so I'll be logging back into work a little later after a gloriously relaxing break - and when it's hot and sunny in England who needs to travel further than their allotment? 😌

Most days were spent on the allotment, with morning and afternoon visits. It's been extremely hot, with temperatures hitting 30° at least a couple of days. We've enjoyed various picnics including hot dogs ..

And a Cornish cream tea...

We've spent some lovely time with friends popping by.

Our plots are slowly growing, but there's so much bare soil compared to previous years. I hope there's enough Summer left to produce something for us to eat..!

Harvests are sparse - we're still waiting for our first courgette - but there are plenty of salad leaves, radish and flowers to create colourful lunches.

I did the Butterfly Count on 30th July - the sunny weather has certainly increased the fluttering and buzzing:
2 x Meadow Browns
4 x Large Whites
1 x Marbled White
1 x Red Admiral
1 x Holly Blue
1 x Brimstone
Of course, most of them refused to pose, but here's a red admiral and a meadow brown - I would have seen more if I'd moved to the Wildlife Plot or the meadow at the top of site, but, well, I was on holiday 😉

We've greatly enjoyed watching the swallows darting across site practising their manoeuvres. They're gathering on the wires and when they all launch together it's fabulous - impossible for me to photograph.

Another entirely different enjoyment was the deafening roar of the B52 bomber which passed overhead on its way back from the Fairford Air Show - amazing. And the two F16 fighter jets that circled a couple of times - the noise was fantastic (in peacetime).

We did have one day trip - to see an established wetland reserve after our visit to Hungerford's planned site. We went to Jones's Mill in Pewsey to the Vera Jeans Nature Reserve. 

It wasn't a sunny day but no rain. Walking on the boardwalks we saw lizards and the giant horsetail was amazing to see - ours on the allotment is puny in comparison! It was a lovely place to walk and I look forward to having a similar site minutes away from our flat!

So now I had better get ready for work and it's just rained, perhaps we'll get a thunderstorm later.. The song is provided by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - singalong, the sun will be back later 🌞

HBDMF

Summer arrived - just for a day, but it was tremendously hot and sunny. So I started my holiday early by taking Friday afternoon off and we enjoyed a lovely barbecue on the plot. It was a good start to my 10-day break where hopefully more of the days are like this…

Than this!

Actually those heavy-looking clouds didn’t produce any rain. That’s fine, we’ve had plenty.. and every time it rains the molluscs turn up and eat our plants 😩 Look at this sad display!

Not a leaf left so now they’ve moved onto the flowers. A few things are getting away with less damage and we managed a tasty salad with a tasty peppery turnip.

And we had our first new potatoes Swift with it. They look good and tasted good but that was from a bag where two seed potatoes were planted so it’s a pathetic harvest - lucky there’s only two of us!!

I ventured beneath the netting on the root vegetable plot last weekend and, once I’d cleared the weeds, I found one (yes one!) parsnip, five salsify and a rather weak couple of rows of carrots - ugh, what a year! The garlic harvest was more successful and dried out in the sunshine. Some bulbs have little additional bulblets, I’m blaming the wet Spring for that.

Now, I must stop moaning! A few bees and butterflies arrived with the sunshine.

And the verbena bonariensis is looking stunning alongside the red of the crocosmia.

Also, our wildlife camera snapped a fox visiting the plot - hooray!

On Saturday a group of us plotholders were given a tour of the site for the Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve which is 40acres of ancient water meadow which we really hope will get planning permission in the next few weeks - it’s literally 5minutes walk from our front door and will be great for us, nature and the town. Exciting!

It’s been a great start to my holiday and yesterday we had a picnic, which included a birthday cake, too much wine and a lot of laughter.

Thanks to the Dropkick Murphys for the fabulous song, though I clearly don’t agree with the sentiment 🥳 it does make me laugh. Enjoy.

Good Riddance

What a fabulous few days! This post is brought to you by the colour red ♥️

Friday morning-ish celebratory breakfast consisted of a delicious red gooseberry topping on icecream and pancakes. Yum yum, it’s fun having a special day off.

We had a very late night on Thursday, enjoying watching the General Election results come in and the demise of the hopeless party with Labour making a welcome return to Government after 14 painful years.🌹 Even our constituency isn’t blue anymore which has only happened once before in my lifetime! We haven’t gone red - can’t see that happening - but still worthy of celebration.

Unfortunately the weather hasn’t played ball and we’ve had a lot of (cold) rain - 35mm of rain over Friday/Saturday. 

We got several drenchings over the long weekend and the slugs and snails emerged from their hiding places while we were thankful to have the polytunnel to hide in!

But there were some lovely warm sunny moments between the showers.

And the soil and flowers are looking much happier after the last couple of weeks with no rainfall.

I managed to plant up some marigolds and zinnia today as well as sowing a row of Speedy dwarf French beans. The climbing French and runner beans are being very slow. This is the only flowers produced so far - not quite the flush of scarlet we like to see…

We decided to work through the rain today, mostly, and chopped back the broad beans which have provided us with so many lovely meals this year.

We cut them, rather than pulling, to let the nitrogen nodules on the roots remain in the soil - the leeks will be planted there in a few weeks. We had the judging for Hungerford in Bloom this weekend but our plots are definitely not winning any prizes!

But hopefully July and August will encourage everything to catch up, as it usually does…

We just need a little positive thinking…

And we have even more reasons to celebrate and be positive as England made it through to the Euros semi-finals yesterday! ♥️

Green Day provide the perfect song title (ok, maybe not so positive) as we move into a new era, after all surely things can only get better (😉See what I did there 🤭).

Convoy

Ohh I do love a wispy cloud - especially when the sky is that blue! No enhancement necessary, beautiful! That was Saturday - a perfect day for Hungerford's D-Day commemoration events. I walked up the High Street and enjoyed seeing all the visitors sitting by the canal and lining the road, which was bedecked with flags and ribbons.

I came back to our less-crowded end of town for the 60-vehicle convoy to pass by. It was a bit late as it got stuck behind a steam engine which was also heading for Hungerford - haha, it's happened to us all! But standing waiting in the sunshine was no chore.

This old 1930s fire engine is driving past Hungerford's old fire station 😊 It was fun watching all the vehicles pass by waving and honking their horns. Oh, here's another cloud photo.

Following that interesting interlude we went back to the allotment. Such a beautiful day to sit, watch and chat but we also had a lot of work to do this weekend. I finally managed to clear the final quarter of Plot7 - almost impossible to dig, but luckily Cavolo Nero doesn't need a soft base. Fellow plotholder Mari responded to my plea for plants (thanks Mari!) so now I have 3 planted. I've put a net over them for now but it will need to be higher than that when they start growing - I'm hoping that the enviromesh will prevent whitefly which kale is so prone to.

The radish and chard that I sowed last weekend have germinated and I've sowed a row of Yin Yang beans alongside the one plant that germinated at home. I think I'll direct-sow some dwarf french beans too as the french beans on the frame on Plot3 are a bit sluggish.

We've planted our brassica into the cage on Plot3: 4 brussels sprouts and 5 purple sprouting brocolli. The ground there was rock solid too but they should appreciate that...

There are 3 sunflowers (multi-headed) planted out in the sweetcorn patch along with the 2 Festival squash and some zinnia. I'm hoping this is the 'Before' photo and quite soon that will be a lovely lush-looking plot full of flowers and foliage.... We're expecting to finish the last of the broad beans this week - they've been excellent this year - and they'll make way for the leeks in a few weeks time.

The verbena bonariensis is looking good - prettier in real life, but the lower level of the flower bed is looking rather bare. I'm sure the zinnia, marigolds and snapdragons will pretty that up quite soon, if they get a chance to fill out - although, look! It's July already 😯 Looking at last years photo we seem to be about 2 weeks behind at the moment, really hoping we get an extension to the end of the growing season.

I'm sure it'll be fine - just like the England football team who put the fans through hell last night but went on to nick the match in the final minutes! Yay- come on England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

And there's a pretty potato flower - Desiree.
Now, enjoy the song by CW McCall - oh those seventies movies!

And don't forget to VOTE - unless you're voting for the wrong choice in which case don't bother! 😁

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.