Love is in the Air

I had a lovely week off and Sunday was a perfect Summer’s day ending with wine and snacks as the Sun disappeared over the hedge.

Those neat poles are plot-neighbour, Neal’s, in the evening sunshine. House martins were swooping low over them but they were too quick for me and my camera. I'm pleased to say that our plots are looking a bit tidier and active now that seeds have been sown under various protective covers. This area has carrots (Purple Dragon and Autumn King), coriander, Gladiator parsnips and Mammoth salsify.

Jamie’s earthed-up the potatoes (everyone thinks he’s buried someone under there!) and I’ve sown another row of beetroot as the first row didn’t appear or the seedlings were chomped by slugs as soon as they emerged. Yin Yang and Borlotti beans are sown at home and the Scarlet Empire runner beans and Blue Lake french beans will be planted out next weekend.

I wish slugs and snails would concentrate on weeds rather than preferring our plants of choice! This mullein caterpillar is more welcome - looking amazing and choosing to eat a figwort, as no mullein is available. The square stem of the figwort is pretty amazing too isn't it?

The raised bed is weed-free at last and yesterday I sowed rows of lettuce, spicey salad leaves, asparagus pea and nasturtiums - I think they may end up as snail-food, but thought I’d risk it - otherwise we’ll definitely not have anything growing. I've also planted some thyme at the herb end - just need to get a parsley plant to grow in there again as last year's went to seed.

It’s all rather brown at the moment so here’s a spot of colour - beautiful self-seeded snap dragons which have formed a large clump. Bumble bees love going in through the trap door.

And the bees and hoverflies are loving the Nigella and valerian flowers.

These two hoverflies were loving each other(!) in Linda’s shoe(!!) while we were picnicking - the male was flapping his wings as if in flight and there was very loud buzzing. I discovered later that they are Narcissus Bulb hoverflies and the female will go on to lay her eggs in soil so the larva can destroy a flower bulb 🙄 Tut, oh well it was interesting to see..

The hedgerow is full of robins feeding their young at the moment. It’s the first year that we’ve seen males actually sharing rather than fighting for territory/food. We’ve had to add an additional piece of netting after a sparrow hawk (probably) dive-bombed the feeding post in a lightning attack just a couple of metres from where Jamie was sitting. We think the robin managed to avoid being taken - phew!

The whole packet of Musselborough leeks have been sown into 3 short rows on Plot3. We'll transplant them where the broad beans are currently - that'll be in another couple of months.

We've had some broad beans already and are including them in a few meals this week. The beans closer to the ground are falling foul of slugs and I think the pheasants are enjoying a few pecks too... And we've so far only eaten one strawberry as everytime they go red something eats the delicious fruit before we get there... it is most likely the fat little vole we saw bouncing away from that area yesterday 😕 Hmm, it's been a trying year so far!

But, I'll try not to complain too much. We've had a lovely week with some warm sunny weather and earlier in the week we attended the wedding of the new Mr & Mrs Smith (our niece). A lovely and entertaining wedding with this beautiful young family. Such fun. And we're looking forward to another wedding in a couple of weeks too!

So, now I need to start work, rather a lot of emails to catch up on I'm sure! Enjoy the song by John Paul Young (which I was sad to see has been used in a MacDonalds advert).

Northern Lights

Ohhh, it’s been a busy time at work so I haven’t posted since the early May and now the end of May is almost upon us! 

The good news is that I’m off work for over a week; the bad news is that the weather forecast looks like this…

We have had some lovely early morning plot visits to water seedlings. It’s a lovely start to a working day, but all the slugs and snails are still making their way to their daytime haunts and they are EVERYWHERE 😖.

Turnips have germinated in the ground under that netting, but I think most of the beetroot became slug food, so will need re-sowing. The mangetout is rather thin on the ground too, so that may just be a frame for ipomoea. We’re feeling very slow this year but areas of the plot are gradually being cleared to make way for plantings quite soon…

This plot with our over-Wintered broad beans, will have sweetcorn and a Festival squash. The Lark sweetcorn have started to germinate (several days after sowing in modules at home) and the squash is growing on in the Polytunnel along with several other squashes and courgettes.

You can see that May has provided some beautiful warm blue sky days as well as torrential rain showers. Sunny late Sunday afternoons have been spent enjoying a wine tasting and picnics with Ivan, Linda and other plot friends who have come to join us. 

The birds seem particularly abundant this year, partly because the Merlin app has made us aware of them. We have at least 4 robins vying for the mealworms we take up each visit and I’ve enjoyed hearing cuckoos and song thrushes among many other birds.

I’ve had two lovely meals with dried Borlotti and Yin Yang beans stored from last year. This one with mascarpone and orzo pasta with tomatoes and spinach.

And this one with harissa pesto mixed into the mascarpone and spaghetti with the remaining spinach - so delicious 🤤 

So, you can see it’s been a good month all-in-all! And, how about the song title? How exciting that the northern lights were visible from Hungerford!! And, of course I was aware of them because Jamie had told me and AuroraWatch was flashing red - just one problem… we were tucked up in bed fast asleep so missed the show 🙄 Luckily plot-chum, Kerry, stayed up and got these shots (Thanks Kerry!).

Jamie and I did enjoy looking at the Sunspots through Solar Eclipse glasses, but that wouldn’t photograph so here’s another of Kerry’s great shots.

I wonder when I’ll get another opportunity to use this blast from the past by Renaissance! Enjoy!

Bank Holiday

What a lovely start to the working week - an early morning walk around the wet allotment, enjoying the warm morning sunshine and the birds chattering around us.

We've just had a traditionally rainy bank holiday weekend but we managed a few hours on the plot all three days and it was pretty warm. I picked these chive flowers to make chive flower vinegar, but I need more than that so will have to see if the plants produce enough when they re-bloom.

Finally I cleared this area of weeds so I could direct sow mangetout. It’s usually one of the first harvests but the weather has slowed us down this year.

Things are definitely looking up though as seeds are beginning to germinate (PSB and sprouts were up within a week) and we managed plenty of sowing this weekend too. Jamie’s sown squash, sunflowers, calendula and marigolds. I’ve sown zinnia, ipomoea and echinacea. These are all in the window sills and under the growlight at home, we’ll move them up to the polytunnel as soon as they emerge - plenty more to sow!

We've potted up one of the tomatoes and a courgette in the polytunnel. That was a muddy job in the rain with a sodden bag of potting compost!

There's a lot of lush greenery on the site but unfortunately most of it is weeds that need pulling and the grass edges are harbouring masses of slugs and snails. There are a few other ‘pests’ hidden in the undergrowth too…This is one of a pair of female pheasants and there happen to be two males too - uh-oh! They do eat insects, but not slugs and actually I think they prefer fresh new seedlings...

There are points of lovely colour too. Just this one iris so far but what a beauty.

We've re-thought our plan for the year - quite late, I know but it'll be fine.. it all catches up eventually...

This is Plot 7. There are more spaces left over than the plan shows. I'm hoping to fill them with more flowers and I usually gain a few additional vegetable plants from the Freebies shelf or as gifts.

This is the 'other half' of Plot 8. I've got three varieties of carrots which I really need to start sowing, but that part of the plot definitely needs better digging so that I get some straight carrots/parsnips/salsify.

We're bound to wander from the plan, but that covers most of our needs. Of course Plot 3 is where our other brassicas, cucumbers, beans and garlic will grow. I'm thinking that I should also grow celeriac as it seems to be threatening to be a wet year...

So that's how we passed our bank holiday weekend and here's a bit of Blur to hum along to - hope you had a good one too and now it's back to work A-G-A-I-N!

You Need Hands

Look at all that fresh new growth. That was last weekend, a nice sunny day but a freezing wind and there’s fleece protecting our strawberry plants because there was frost in the week. I weeded the flowerbed by hand. Perennials are emerging and I’ve bought lots of flower seeds, mostly annuals, for sowing quite soon. I pulled quite a lot of the Nigella which does rather take over, but they are pretty flowers and seedheads.

What you may not have noticed in the photo is this broomrape (Orobanche) just emerging, there’s another one popping up too. They’re parasitic plants which get their nutrients from the roots of their host plants. If it’s Common Broomrape, which is likely, it has multiple rather than one preferred host plant - it should be more obvious when it grows more.

And here are a few of the tadpoles in our tiny pond. They stay low when the weather is cold but you can see movement when they’re eating the duckweed and they’re enjoying the algae growing on the sides of the pond. They’ll move on to eating meat quite soon so they can eat snails and flies that fall in the water. I really hope they get a taste for snails, there are so many everywhere!

At last there’s a bit of sowing and planting underway. These are shop-bought; a Blight Buster tomato, Money Maker tomato and a Summer Ball yellow courgette which we’ll grow in the polytunnel until (if) Summer arrives. Jamie has sown some Claret purple sprouting broccoli and Brechin Brussels sprouts seeds on another windowsill and we planted the potatoes yesterday! Yay!

Four Desiree into the ground on Plot7, two Wilja and four Rocket into bags on Plot8. 

I do like a close-up of potato chits! Such interesting features.

It was actually quite a pleasant day yesterday. Though rain threatened it didn’t arrive till later so we had a nice few hours on the plot and I got a bit more weeding done where I want to sow my mangetout. Last weekend I weeded ‘The Orchard’ - ok, so just 3 tiny twigs at the moment, but look!

Our first blossom! One day that may be a cherry 😄

Aah, look at that gorgeous blue sky and fresh leaves on the trees. This was last week, so beautiful and the birds are really active. On the advice of plotholder Linda we’ve downloaded the Merlin app and it’s great for recognising bird song, perhaps we’ll even learn from it. There are plenty of robins, blue tits, goldfinches and wrens around as well as gathering numbers of swallows. Also, lots of magpies, crows, jackdaws and 11 red kites circling overhead!

I’ve been watching this jackdaw and its mate from our window. See the two sticks poking up from the chimney pot - he’s been having a lot of trouble with them! I bored Jamie for hours with updates the other day 🤭 The jackdaw had selected a stick that was far too long to manoeuvre and he kept dropping it, I think he gave up in the end. And that’s why I decided on the song title - Malcolm McLaren’s version from the Great Rock & Roll Swindle rather than Max Bygraves.

Something got me Started

It's been a very blustery couple of weeks - with another named storm (Kathleen) passing by but the strong winds helped to dry off the land a bit to make weeding a bit more feasible. There's still a lot to do though!

Other plots are looking a lot more ready than ours but we'll get there - in fact, the site was looking rather lovely as the Sun was slipping away yesterday. We have just one empty plot left at the moment - a bit different from this time 8years ago where I recorded that we have 50poles empty! We're celebrating 15years of the site this month.

Other celebrations have been going on in Hungerford over the last two weeks too. Hocktide celebrations included decorated trees with flags and ribbons in the town. Here's our HAHA tree (a pollarded tree is quite hard to decorate!); the man who lives nearby came out while we were decorating it and said he was looking forward to having a stew 😀 But the veg was still there last time I looked!

And this weekend the 'Constable's Parade' was held. HAHA opted for a less-traditional participation which caused much amusement. Drawing attention to the allotment in an unusual way but also interest was gathered for the Horticultural Show planned for later in the year.

We had a celebration of our own when Ivan brought some wine and we had a little picnic though it did get rather cold so we made good use of the fleece before wrapping up the strawberries 😆

And while we were sitting there we saw the first two swallows of the year on the site! So we decided that two swallows must make it Summer, but it really didn't feel like it. Hoping the fleece will save these little flowers from the frost risk this week - it would be nice if they could survive to become our first strawberry treat of the year!

Last weekend we thoroughly weeded the strawberry bed but the bindweed has started re-appearing already.

Saturday was warmer than Sunday, especially when I was clearing out the polytunnel so we now have our inner greenhouse up for the seeds to start off. There were so many bees, flies and ladybirds in there but also snails on nearly everything I moved and so many ants nests! It was a good weekend for insect spotting with several orange tip, brimstones and peacock butterflies flitting by and I added an Ashy Mining Bee update to my Wildlife blog. Also the little froggie in our pond even stayed above water for long enough to be photographed. He's definitely sharing the space with a few tadpoles.

Oh, and exciting news! Our new tiny cherry tree has it's first blossom and the pear and apple have leaves appearing. Talking of trees, here's our hazel sapling which I planted up after a squirrel had left a hazelnut in the ground at least 3 years ago.

All-in-all the weather has been decidedly April-y and we've had a fun start. And this morning Jamie has sowed our first seed - a Zucchini courgette to grow in a pot, initially in the polytunnel and then to be moved outside. Simply Red provide the song for getting started - yay! Go on, have a little dance, it's Springtime.

Lucky You

This week I’m celebrating the first 16 years of my kidney transplant and enjoying the life it’s given me. I may still be mostly sheltering, due to Covid, but it’s so much better than if I was still on haemodialysis so I’m not complaining (well, most of the time anyway!).

I always celebrate our NHS and give thanks for a lifetime of treatment and care. All down to being born in the right place at the right time.

The lifespan of a non-live donated kidney is on average 15-20 years, but this average keeps increasing thanks to improvements to drugs and the after-care of transplant patients. Technological improvements continue to work towards an artificial kidney which will reduce the risks inherent in the dialysis or transplant treatments of kidney failure, meanwhile robot-assisted transplants are reducing risk during and post-surgery. AI is everywhere but we need human involvement too.

I have to pay for my immunosuppressant and other life-saving drugs, but my annual bill is significantly lower than the actual cost and I’m lucky that I can currently afford the charges. Poverty due to ill-health is a very poor reflection on society. Private healthcare in some countries limits post-transplant care based on available insurance - ugh, that’s not something I want to be worrying about as my transplant ages.

I hope one day our health and social care services won’t need the back-up of charity, but I fear we’re a long way from that world. Over the years I’ve celebrated my transplant anniversary and raised funds in different ways. Saving the 10ps for my 10th anniversary was most memorable. It was pre-Covid so I was at work and people were still using coins - I’ll have to think differently for my 20th anniversary, times have changed!

Talking of changing times, I’ve been playing with AI recently at work and using the fun Microsoft AI image generator. You should have a go, if you haven’t already. It doesn’t always get it right… I asked for ‘humanoid robot painting number 16 on a wall’ 🤭 As I said, we’re not quite ready to trust AI entirely!

I’m on leave and the weather’s not great for allotmenting, so here are a few more 16th ‘kidneyversary’ AI creations, using various descriptive prompts. Pretty aren’t they?

The song title is provided by the Lightning Seeds - we never know what this life is going to throw at us, but try to make the best of it, appreciate what we have and don’t blow it!