Ant Music

I’ve been on leave and the weather was glorious at the beginning of last week but is now rather dull and rainy. On the better days we visited the plot and, although it’s not obvious, we have done some clearing and I sowed a row of cut & come again salad leaf and Jamie sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans.

We’ve harvested our first courgettes and we're pleased that some of our over-wintered onions didn’t flower, so we have some lovely whites and browns, but no reds. 

We were given some delicious runner beans and french beans by Jenny; Ivan gave us some Rooster potatoes and perpetual spinach and my sister gave us some multi-coloured tomatoes (as well as the multi-headed sunflower in the top photo).

The beans went into a separate meal, but Saturday night’s meal was all delicious fresh veg.

I'd pre-wilted the spinach for the bottom layer, then tomatoes, then potatoes & onions and finally pre-fried courgettes and a cheese topping.

This is something else we've been eating since Jamie pops into Waitrose every week or so at the moment. Ever since we gave up eating meat, about 30 years ago, I've fancied kippers (strange really, as a meat eater I hardly ever ate them!) but this 'not bacon' has satiated my craving - I definitely think it's more kipper-like than bacon but, whatever, it's delish!

On the sunny plot days I mostly just sat under my sun umbrella watching the wildlife. The robin has his young one with him and the magpie family keeps a close eye for us to move. I saw a cat pounce on a slow worm! I made chase but the cat kept a few steps ahead of me even though the slow worm was clearly wriggling too much and got away. Good to know there are (I presume there are more!) slow worms on site, we certainly have plenty of slugs and snails for them. I had meant to do the Big Butterfly count, but have until 9th August so hope the sun re-appears. There are so many peacocks this year and blues - but they're so hard to photograph as they flutter by. 

Our allotment friend, Alison, pointed out that much of the rhubarb on site has developed some sort of fungal infection. Our giant plant on Plot 7 has it, but the plant on Plot 3 seems to have escaped it so far. As long as people dispose of the infected leaves/stems carefully it should hopefully not cause too many problems and by next year the plants should be fine. It's a shame, we normally just leave the plant to die back naturally rather than cutting back the leaves/stalks before the first frost and they won't be able to go in the compost bin.

I've done a bit more embroidery this weekend. I bought a new coat for our Tenerife holiday in February and when I got home I found a hole in it, so I've mended it and added a bit of colour to the coat.

So the song, obviously, is by Adam and the Ants and refers to one of our compost bins which has been occupied by ants - rather impressive isn't it? Look what they've done to all that garden and kitchen waste, amazing!

So here's the song for you to bang your drum along to.

A Stitch in Time

I finished sewing Plot 7 (pun intended).

I found it very satisfying. I haven’t done any embroidery for decades so I needed to look up how to do new stitches every step of the way. Thank goodness for My sister’s book of stitches and Pinterest!

I like the little bees in the pic above and the blue hoops definitely make it look like an allotment :-) I had to un-pick and re-sow a few parts - the sunflowers looked rather like deep-sea divers for a while, so I re-did them.

I would have liked a frog in the pond, but that was beyond my beginner skills so I just beaded it for a water feature. And the bench is definitely a major feature of our plot which is missing!

So, that’s my Covid embroidery project complete. It doesn’t look anything like the embroidery that inspired me, but it does look a bit like Plot 7, with a bit of creative licence.

Here’s the quick creation from start to finish.

The song title is by Smashing Pumpkins.

All Kinds of Everything

Aah, we’ve had two visits to the allotment this weekend. It was so sunny and beautiful. Well, not our plots, but the site in general is looking stunning because people have been furloughed and have had more time on their hands. The insect life is abundant, particularly on all the flowers.

Lots of different visitors on the leek flowers.

I think the two photos below are of the same type of bee - I think it's a Mining Bee but will add a comment if my id is corrected.

And I know these are two different hoverflies. I think the top one is a Epistrophe eligans.

And this little one in the next photo is a Marmalade Fly - one of our most common.

And this I'm sure is a Honey Bee - I hope our leek flowers don’t ruin the flavour of someone’s honey!

The site is full of butterflies, I saw lots of peacocks, tortoiseshells and skippers. This comma butterfly looks a bit the worse for wear, happily sharing the flower with a wasp.

It was such a rare pleasure to just be sitting out surrounded by nature and lovely to catch up with a few of our plotholder friends again. We actually managed to clear some rubbish from around the polytunnel, but you wouldn’t notice. This is what Plot 8 looks like at the moment :-(

I potted on the buddleia cuttings which I took from my sister’s beautiful butterfly bush last Summer. 

They've developed some great roots over the last 11 months and I now have 7 plants to find positions for around the site.

And I found this hazelnut sapling so potted it on.

There’s a plan for a Covid-19 memorial ‘Lockdown wood’ nearby - it's being organised by Newbury Friends of the Earth. Any tree seedlings we find should be saved for planting, I think it’s a lovely idea and there are hopefully going to be two sites so I hope one is close to Hungerford.

This is our main growing space this year - not many plants are there?! The Lizzano tomato looks ok, but the peppers look a bit sad, not surprisingly after the start they had and being planted out in the big wide World rather than a cosy greenhouse.

Ah well, we had a most enjoyable weekend. And I have another full week of working from home before I have a 10-day holiday - I’m hoping for lots of sunshine and some plot time, obviously!

The soppy song (originally by Dana, but not quite so gushy here by Sinead O'Connor and Terry Hall) is referring to all the different stripey insects we saw on site this weekend.

Something to Talk About

We had a visit to the plot at lunchtime today - to see if the windy weekend had done any damage. There isn't much to be damaged and it appeared to be ok. I spotted this excellent Mullein moth caterpillar - one of my favourites, they're just so photogenic!

I didn't do a blogpost at the weekend, last week was very dull. Even I couldn't think of something that was worth writing down, with just one meal that looked quite pretty - a lovely broad bean and roasted pepper salad.

Well, I have been concentrating on my embroidery. I won't do updates every week, but I thought I'd drop this photo in as I'm rather proud of my sweetcorn - they took me about 20minutes to sow each cob <it's so tricky> I don't think I'll embroider too many of them!

I'm finding myself noticing textures more and when I saw the flowers on our leeks (which have well and truly, and rather beautifully, gone to seed) I found that I was thinking 'I could sew those, with french knots and a bit of back-stitch' - Oh I've changed!

I was very pleased to see flowers on our runner beans and they're climbing now.

Not climbing quite so well are the Gigantes that Jamie sowed for me, but I think they'll latch on quite soon - if the windy weather stops blowing them away from the canes. I think only 3 of the plants will survive, but hopefully that'll produce enough beans for a few tasty meals.

A couple of the squash plants look happy, but the other two are being eaten by slugs so we'll see whether they survive... Ivan gave us a punnet of whitecurrants today - not as pretty as the red ones but they seem to taste a little sweeter - they're rather insect egg-like aren't they (and I'm pretty sure I could embroider that punnet) 😏.

Here's a picture of the frog - I'm sure there are two in our pond, this is the bigger one. That duckweed is a pain to get rid of but he doesn't mind, as it offers protection from the heat.

So, I've managed a blogpost and the title song is provided by Badly Drawn Boy.

Wow

I took Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday off work, specifically because of the forecast heatwave and it was right. Phew, what a sweltering few days; over 30° in Hungerford and sunny. Lovely!

We spent some time at the allotment - it was so hot that there was only Jamie and me there much of the time. Us and the birds - just listen to that! What a joy to be back on the plot.

Neal said that we could have some of his lettuce seedlings. I chose the two red varieties - the green ones (Lobjoits Green cos) have all been nibbled - looks like by pigeons - whereas the red appear to be untouched (it's not that obvious in the photo, but trust me!)

I also planted the squash plants that Liz gave us (a patty pan and a spaghetti squash, I think) plus a courgette plant from Ivan - to replace one of ours that the slugs decimated. Jamie cleared some weeds from Plot3 and trimmed the long grass round the edges of Plot7, in the hope that it’ll keep the slugs away from our few plants - we don’t have enough to share this year! Unlike Ivan who always needs a wheelbarrow for his huge harvests - that’s the last of his strawberries.

He gave us a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of redcurrants. They were a colourful addition to my breakfast.

And I cooked the remaining redcurrants with sugar - they weren't as tart as I'd expected and only needed a couple of teaspoons of sugar.

I sieved the sauce - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reckons you don't have to, but I wouldn't fancy eating all those seeds and skins.

It was delicious on ice cream and with scotch pancakes.

There were lots of butterflies on site, but they weren't in the mood for posing for photos unfortunately. I definitely saw some ringlets, tortoiseshells and peacocks among the usual whites. This Scarlet Tiger moth was easier to photograph as it came into our sitting room - dragging me away from my work :-)

As I write this we're in the middle of a hailstorm - the weather has changed: it's dazzling sunshine one moment then dark clouds covering the sky the next as the wind builds up - our poor plants, I wonder how they're doing. I hope to visit again during a lunchtime next week.

Jamie’s excited about my new project (NOT!). I saw this amazing embroidery of an allotment site (twitter.com/sewnbycollette) and was inspired, so immediately bought a selection of threads from Amazon.

Now, I haven’t embroidered for about 40 years, so mine is more, err, primitive, we’ll see how it goes... My sister kindly gave me some fabric and has lent me her old book. It’s our plot, as I’m sure you can see 😏 Well, I only started in yesterday {I wonder if it will ever be seen again on this blog :-D}

The ‘Wow’ of the title refers to various things from this week. I’m so glad that plot neighbour, Kate, told me about the stunning fields of white poppies which we could walk to from the allotment.

I didn’t expect to see so many fields of them - how beautiful! Having not walked far for weeks it was quite exhausting walking the slight incline, especially in the heat, but so worth it.

Shops and some restaurants are beginning to open up in England. Some people definitely seem to think that the time is right to get back to normal life, but I'm happy with just the occasional trip out and am not missing (non-internet) shopping one bit! Even the Government isn't suggesting a return to work for the likes of me yet - thank goodness! Great song from Kate Bush, obviously - sing along, or maybe just do the moves ;-)

The Chamber

This post is about my work, as the allotment barely had a look-in last week. I’ve mentioned before that I work for RALSpace, it’s a great place to work and over the last few years I've been supporting a very exciting new project, for the provision of a 'one-stop testing facility' for the space industry.

Literally heavy traffic on the A34

During the lockdown our site has been closed but some work had to continue, including the delivery of our huge Large Scale Test Chamber which was manufactured in Italy and shipped just as Covid-19 was beginning to affect our lives.

The A34

'Street furniture' had to be cleared in advance for the route from Southampton to Oxfordshire. As it happened lockdown was an unexpected benefit as it meant the huge convoy could do the journey in one phase, because it wasn't competing with much other road traffic at the beginning of April!

From lockdown, I was disappointed that I couldn't be taking photos from one of the bridges en-route but my colleague Isabel did such an amazing job with these shots. It must have been very exciting to see, with all the police vehicles escorting.

Once at RAL the 6 sections of chamber were stored on our empty car park for a while before the builders and engineers were ready for it to be put into its final spot in our enormous new building. It was interesting to watch over the webcam while I was working from home a few weeks ago.

There's the first section being manoeuvred into position and to start putting the 16m x 18m vacuum chamber back together...

..piece...

So shiny and beautiful

by...piece..

And voila!

Paul, Isabel and Vishal

There it is - the finished article, after so many months of preparation.

From the inside

And now the building can finish being built around it! There's a lot more work to do yet...before testing can start in 2022. I'm so pleased for the technical team that it all went so well. And special thanks to Vishal Francis and Isabel Martinez for the photos.

BBC Article, if you're interested

I only visited the allotment once last week - a quick lunchtime visit. I mostly sat in the sun and said hello to people, while Jamie planted out the courgette plants. We also put a bit of protection around the Gigantes  beans which have now germinated (hooray!). The peppers and tomato plants are also in the ground - good timing as we had some torrential rain after they were planted out. And on another visit Jamie saw our frog is still around; Can you spot him? He is in there :-)

This song is provided by The Last Shadow Puppets, I hadn't heard them before, it's the chap from the Arctic Monkeys.