Ring Out Solstice Bells

Work is over for the year (for me) so I went into town yesterday morning and enjoyed wishing everyone I bumped into a Happy Christmas.

After posting a couple of cards to friends houses we walked up to the allotment. The weather wasn’t too cold and the Sun appeared a few times but the site is very soggy as we’ve had so much rain since the arctic blast moved on. This is the data from our plot thermometer which we left outside the polytunnel, in the shade. You can see we had two nights where temperatures dropped below -10° And then rose to about 7° in the day.

Unfortunately my remaining squashes in the polytunnel don’t look to have survived that extreme temperature - I should have protected them more 😔 But we’re pleased and surprised to see that the broad beans, which were flattened by the frost, have managed to recover. They can stay in their little cloches for now.

We were even more pleased to see a ‘charm’ of goldfinches on the teasels - that was our main aim for growing them on the HAHA Wildlife Plot. I hope to get a photo at some point. There were lots of other birds around including what I think were redwings. I really wish I’d taken my big camera so I could have zoomed in.

We’ll need to visit again before Christmas to pick some sprouts, otherwise I’m not intending to move very much. Good news re our allotment tools that were stolen - it seems the site insurance will cover the cost of replacement! That was rather unexpected but most welcome from HAHA’s NFU Insurance.

Here’s a photo of some Christmassy pea & garlic soup I made with Christmas Tree toast … well, everything is Christmassy now isn’t it. 😊

So, that’s the shortest day celebrated with a bit of Jethro Tull. It’s all up from here… MERRY CHRISTMAS, I hope your Christmas is a happy and healthy one.

In the Cold, Cold Night

Frosted Geum

Coo, that’s chilly! I’ve never seen such spiky frost. Apparently it’s called Rime Ice and the freezing fog will have helped cause it, along with the arctic blast. It’s rather stunning, I hope you agree as here are a few more examples.

Frosted (not barbed) wire

All the wire on site was significantly thicker than usual.

And netting looked hairy.

The teasels were extra spiny.

Especially the stems!

The coreopsis flower was still just about recognisable.

And the chard… well!

Even the brassicas didn’t seem too happy, it may have been a bit too icy - even though they’re meant to taste even better after a frost (hmm, I wonder if the whitefly survived).

Cavolo Nero (top) & purple sprouting broccoli 

We enjoyed a few bubbles whilst on site.

You can see the bubble just beginning to freeze in this photo. Looks like craqueleur.

This beautiful one stayed stuck to the pot for ages.

Meanwhile Robbie enjoyed a few mealworms. Aww, poor little chap had to puff up his feathers to keep warm.

Anyway, that was quite enough playing in the cold - look at the thickness of the ice!

We’ve had a long day. We got up extra early to enjoy the Hungerford Christmas lights in a proper frosty, foggy Winter Wonderland at 4:30 this morning (4:30!). Only to find they switch the lights off at some point in the night - doh! But the super-frosted spiders webs everywhere were amazing, so it wasn’t too disappointing.

And a few lights were left on for us to enjoy.

So that was today, as the temperatures slip down again overnight….bbrrr. No snow so far, but maybe in the coming week. The White Stripes provide this perfect song title.

December will be Magic Again

It’s December and the countdown to Christmas has begun! The weather has turned from a drenching November to a cold start to the month; not frosty, just grey.

That isn't egg nog - it's carrot and chestnut soup, flavoured with garlic, turmeric and cayenne pepper. I just had to have a taster before storing it to be my lunch for the next few days. It's very tasty. I picked the carrots when we visited the plot yesterday - so c-c-c-cold and we're not used to it. Our carrots have been mostly small this year, but there are plenty of them.

Also whilst on the plot, apart from chatting to a handful of other brave souls (well, we've had a manure delivery which is always a draw), Jamie emptied the final potato bag. They were meant to be Nicola potatoes but something must have gone wrong with the labelling - there shouldn't be any pink ones in there! Anyway, a nice haul of muli-coloured little spuds whatever variety they are.

We picked the last pepper and a few remaining tomatoes as the temperature is due to drop below freezing this week. I added the cavolo nero to a tofu curry last night. It such a good flavour, shame about all the whitefly. They're pretty dormant on site at the moment but as soon as they warm up indoors they start flying about 😬 so the leaves need a lot of shaking outside and a thorough wash.

I've been having porridge for breakfast and have been using the rosehip jelly that I made in the Autumn - it did set and melts nicely into the hot porridge. (Not convinced that it tastes any different from sugar though!)

We decided to put the Christmas Tree up, as all the lights are up in town and across the road - if I'm brave enough to go out before the sun is up or after it's gone down I'll get some photos. Our tree looks like it has for the last 30-odd years but it is so pretty with so many little trinkets that we've gathered over the years.

And I received a gift through the post - well, it was a prize actually! I came 2nd for my Christmas card photo for the National Allotment Society competition. Here's my prize - that nice book which has recipes as well as growing hints and a bundle of seeds 😊

And this is the photo I entered - from a snowy day in March 2018.

I was going to use the Smashing Pumpkins Christmastime song, which I love but it seems that I used that in last Christmas's post, so here's a great song instead by Kate Bush. Enjoy.

Happy Together

I learnt a new word today after spotting this teasel amongst the dried flower heads.

Vivipary- when seeds germinate whilst still on the parent plant. Viviparous germination isn’t uncommon, particularly when it’s been rainy and warm. I have noticed it before on Nigella and calendula but it’s a bit more obvious on a teasel. We still haven’t seen any birds enjoying the seeds - we were particularly hoping to see the classic goldfinch shot - and they clearly missed a few on this seed head!

It was a HAHA workday yesterday and there was a friendly group of volunteers cutting back the hedgerow, particularly the bits growing through the fence, and clearing rotting wood from around the site including, sadly, the Wildlife Plot bench that the vandals smashed up - it was beyond repair. 

The spikiest prunings (blackthorn and hawthorn) were used to plug gaps in the hedge in the hope of spiking any would-be intruders! The rest of the clippings were added to the marvellous bonfire.

Some of the wood was spared from the fire because it had interesting life forms so we added that to the wildlife plot wood instead. Like this fascinating fungus - Candle Snuff fungus. It’s common in the UK, but I don’t recall seeing it before. It’s also known as Stag’s horn fungus for obvious reasons.

Another fungus, that looks more interesting up close is this resupinate polypore. New word of the week #2, resupinate = upside-down. This fungus manoeuvres it’s gills to point to the ground for quick spore dispersion. Up close it looks a bit crumpet-y to me and rather pleasing.

Apart from fungi, one particular piece of rotten wood was home to many insects including millipedes, wood lice and centipedes. And something that does tiny rectangular poops…

And a handy hint regarding garden critters: Fast moving insects tend to be good for gardens, as they’re often predators of the slow moving insects which are more likely to be pests due to being herbivores. It isn’t always the case and not all herbivores are slow (being a herbivore myself, I find that insulting 😄). We also found a few snails where they are probably preparing to hibernate. These lucky ones were found by Kate so were put back somewhere cosy rather than being slung over the hedge 🤭

These and other interesting subjects such as the dredging of the canal which is currently ongoing, birds over the marsh, otters, the vandalism, obviously, and so much more were discussed during snack time after the work was completed.

And the fire kept going until we left after sundown - 4pm…. The weather was dull all day and we were very lucky that the rain arrived later to dampen down the pile of ash.

It was a fun and productive day, we won’t let the haters get us down too much. The song title is brought to us by The Turtles.

Cousins

This was the lovely clear view of a very skinny moon early this morning. And the next photo shows the sky looking towards the sunrise, beautiful (my camera made the sky look a bit darker than it really was but the stripes really were that bright). The clear night on Friday slipped the temperature down to 0.4° but there’s not much left growing to be affected by low temperatures now.

In the week Jamie cleared all the remaining tomatoes and the peppers, which still refused to go red. So there is a lot of green pepper added to meals at the moment and these two yellow ones were delicious stuffed with shop-bought veggie fritters for a quick and easy meal. I added cheese for the final 15minutes in the oven, I should have taken a photo as they browned really well and tasted so good.

We had a lovely sunny day on the plot on Saturday. The temperature only reached 6°, but you wouldn’t have known it while in the sunshine. Jamie weeded the potato plot and I did some weeding around the chard and pulled all the remaining beets which all had slug damage.

I wore my hearing aids and was amazed by all the birdsong. Not unusual apparently but I’ve not been using my aids, just turning the sound up on my work laptop and TV - I forgot what I’d been missing! It was mostly robins and great tits but the gulls over the canal were very vocal too. And this huge crow was cawing in the big tree.

The magpies and blackbirds got excited when ‘Ginge’ was around, but he was more interested in compost bins on Saturday. He has been seen taking a magpie from the air though!

The Newbury Weekly News covered both of our unhappy news items last week. 

Good that they covered them, but we’d rather have more positive news stories than these 😞

Look at our lovely site, even in Winter. How could anyone even consider building on it?! Idiots 😡

I pulled carrots and parsnips for this evening’s meal. I was really pleased with the parsnips… well, I should say… I was really pleased with the first parsnip I pulled - they got progressively worse, but there was plenty to eat, no matter what the shape of them.

The parsnips and carrots became this gratin meal, roughly based on this recipe. Mmm, tasty and enough leftovers for a lunch. I meant to add the tomatoes to the sauce but forgot, so stuck them on top instead 🙄

I posted a photo of spindleberries the other week, but this is when they look their best; with a beautiful blue sky backdrop.

We didn’t go to the allotment today as it was a bit grey, a bit sunny and a bit rainy. Every time the Sun shone We wished we’d gone up, but it did seem a bit chilly. The ground is so wet, but it made it easy to pull weeds yesterday.

The song title is courtesy of Vampire Weekend, in appreciation of my cousins Paula, Jen and Steve for very kindly buying me that replacement fork after thieves stole all our digging tools - THANKYOU SO MUCH xxx