It’s a Beautiful Thing

It’s been rather rainy and feeling rather Autumnal, but I have a few days off work for the Bank Holiday so that’s a bonus!

I’ve been a bit poorly so didn’t make it to the Horticultural Show - I only had a few photos and a ‘longest runner bean’, which wasn’t record-breaking, so I decided to have a slob day instead. The Sun eventually came out in the late afternoon so we went up the plot to feed everything after they’d had a good drenching.

If you you look at my Wildlife on the Allotment blog, you'll see that we've recently been watching what goes on when we're not on the plot - we aimed the wildlife camera towards the water bowl. The hedgehog(s) are a regular visitor, the fox has been seen a couple of times as has a mouse, along with the big fluffy black cat and Marmalade/Major/Orlando - just 3 of the names the ginger cat has! The magpies are ever-present and looking a bit bedraggled at the moment - assuming this is one of the parents.

The female pheasant still has 2 chicks left and it's usually a shock to see her when wandering past an overgrown plot. One of the not-so-little ones is more adventurous than the other. 

The squirrel is also a regular visitor. It doesn't usually venture as far as Plot7 when we're there, but we've seen it under the trees by Plot3 and in the hedgerow. In one of the captures it was bundling up moss so appeared to be collecting nesting materials and it's certainly enjoying burying things for Winter.

We put the wildlife camera in the polytunnel for a couple of nights. Apart from a mouse and the hedgehog trundling by the only other thing we captured was birds - enjoying an early morning dust-bath! We think they're wrens.

We've had a few plot visits, to pick a few things - mostly cucumbers and that one tomato (we have had a few more than that!) from the outside plant.

And Jamie pulled a Desiree potato - some whoppers in there and, dare I say it, no slug damage!

Here's another calendula with raindrops - such a beautiful flower. I can remember them being my favourite when I was little.

And another trug. Although our runner bean and french bean plants were pretty decimated by slugs early in the year, they are producing plenty of tasty beans. The stripey courgette looks good and ... have I mentioned the cucumbers..!

So, with 3 days left of my bank holiday break, I'm feeling in the mood for a picnic so looking forward to that later this afternoon and if we're lucky we may get a bit of star-gazing in too. Enjoy the Bank Holiday and here's a song to start the day...Ocean Colour Scene - beautiful 🎶

This is the Life

The photo makes it look like a tree; it's not, but this plant in a pot is providing us with some lovely courgettes at last! And we've had some beautiful blue sky and hot days during August. We're having a bit of rain now, which is quite welcome as long as we see Sun again at the weekend.

Look at those pretty multi-coloured chard leaves. I like chard. The taste is a bit too earthy for some, but I enjoyed it steamed and served with a tofu chinese curry and it's such a colourful addition to a meal or salad.

And the plot is looking a bit more colourful too as the zinnia are finally flowering - just one at a time at the moment but they're getting there...

That trug contains one each of our two types of courgette. The yellow ones are a bit firmer than the stripey ones. Our third courgette plant is meant to be a Zucchini but no fruits on there yet. The carrots are all tiny and multi-legged but taste carroty so that's fine! And every harvest includes at least one not-so-mini cucumber.

The courgettes were stuffed with shallots & garlic, fried in oak-smoked oil, grated carrots and peanuts with a teaspoon of marmite and topped with cheese - so delicious! And the cavolo nero was chopped up small and steamed with butter and pepper added on the plate. Yum Yum!

That is our first showing of a butternut.. it's not really been a good year for them as they like a long growing season... I wonder if it will make it. I'll probably cut off all the other growth to give it a fighting chance when it reaches a stage when it looks like it could survive.. we'll see.
Unfortunately I had to pull up one of the cavolo nero plants - I think it had downy mildew as the leaves were yellowing and there was definitely some sort of grey fluffy mess in the growing centre. It seems strange that the other two plants appear to be entirely unaffected - let's hope it stays that way...

These are our Halloween peppers. They are meant to go orange, but can be eaten black. We tried one, it was green inside and wasn't ripe enough so we'll let them mature a bit before trying another. They look good though and are sweet peppers, not chillis.

That not-so-wee beastie is an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar. Jamie spotted it walking up a pathway so I moved it to the butterfly bush on the wildlife plot where there is a lot of willowherb which it eats. Fabulous to see. And another good spot by Jamie was this Orange Swift Moth which had just emerged and was in the process of pumping its wings up. Both were worthy of updated entries on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

The swift moth was spotted during our latest Sunday picnic, which ended as a star-gazing event as it was during the Perseid meteor shower. The moon slipped over the horizon and it was a beautiful dark sky. We saw plenty of shooting stars and were quite shocked to see how many satellites were moving about up there - not the International Space Station as they weren't bright enough. They were mostly GPS satellites. It was a beautiful evening after a glorious hot afternoon.

So, a final few trug photos and then I need to nip up the allotment for more beans (and a cucumber probably!) before work. The cucumbers in hte bottom photo should be star-shaped and heart-shaped for our next picnic I think!

Aahh, this is the life! Thanks to Amy Macdonald.

Late in the Evening

At last we have more variety in our harvests. That was our second potato bag with a better haul of (Rocket?) spuds. The Cavolo Nero was used as crispy seaweed in a Chinese meal.  The warm and showery weather over the last couple of weeks has made the plot and this plotholder a lot happier as our beds are finally filling up a bit.

The climbing beans tunnel looks quite sparse but is producing a surprising amount of beans and lots more flowers too.

They were part of this early morning, pre-work harvest along with our first courgette (the plant has been sitting in a pot for months with the weather refusing to let its fruits mature!) and our first cucumber. Mmm, home-grown mini-cucumbers are so delicious.

The larger turnips were past their best so went to the compost, but the little ones were tasty roasted with potatoes.

And this trug has our first harvest of tomatoes (well, the first that have gone home), radishes, stripey courgette and some leggy carrots (purple and orange).

We had a tasty salad with 7 home-grown ingredients. The imperfect carrots in mayo made an excellent tasty coleslaw.

These ipomoea were from seeds from my Cousin Jen. Such beautiful colours and they’re beginning to climb the frame now. Related to the dreaded bindweed, which I’m still fighting on our plot. We had a HAHA workday this weekend where we cleared a plot which has been given up. It was completely covered in white-flowering bindweed. We’re not fooling ourselves into thinking the problem is gone but now it’s covered in a plastic sheet for a while it’s at least contained. It’s been a particularly good year for bindweed 😖

The female pheasant, with her remaining two chicks likes the un-loved plots, but they’re less popular with the neighbours! The pheasant herself also has her fans and her haters!

It was breezy and unexpectedly misty and perfect for a bit of digging, so I cleared the area on our plot where the broad beans were and the leeks will soon be planted.

You can see that the soil is actually bone dry as soon as the Sun appeared.

My brother gave me these bees for my birthday, thanks Tim, they look great on the toilet which we can see from our plot and the communal area.

At our Sunday picnic last week we made use of the donated Chiminea when the Sun had gone. It was lovely and we enjoyed seeing bats zipping about around us, such fun.

Which gives me the opportunity to use Paul Simon’s great song title - dance-along now!

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.