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!

Raining Again

This was such an amazing rainbow! It was so bright and huge, much more impressive than this photo shows but it’s the best I could get. So beautiful, I stood and stared for a while.

Sunshine and showers definitely sums up the weather over the last couple of weeks/months. I’ve got a few days off for Easter, but the hoped-for plot-days haven’t worked out yet…

We’ve had plot visits and have even done a bit of weeding but it’s hard work having to do it by hand because the ground is too wet to walk on let alone to dig.

Well, that’s the leeks patch cleared to make way for root crops. It’ll need better digging than that to grow some straight carrots!

The leeks were good this year. It’s worth planting them nice and deep to get plenty of white stalk.

The blackthorn has flowered in the hedge but the lovely flowers didn’t last long. The wind, rain, hail didn’t help, but hopefully they were pollinated.

We’ve seen bees enjoying the dandelions, dead nettle and grape hyacinths as well as the other Spring bulbs that are popping up here and there.

I was pleased to see some tadpoles in our little pond although I haven’t seen them since. I have seen a couple of frogs recently though and there’s some frogspawn appeared in the pond on the HAHA wildlife plot.

The teasels on the wildlife plot in a rainstorm yesterday (Good Friday). The sky went black but no thunder like we had on Thursday when the hail was apocalyptic.

Here’s Jamie fighting against the wind and rain while we were trying to secure a honeysuckle trellis which had collapsed on the wildlife plot.

We have achieved some tasks in the last couple of weeks. I’ve managed to weed and feed the garlic bed and Jamie’s cleared the bean tunnel.

And we’ve collected some of the manure for future use - it’s in a compost bin for now. £1.50 a barrow-load from HAHA - what a bargain 😊

Talking of HAHA. We have a fully tenanted site again - it’s great to see the newcomers joining us old-timers 👨‍🌾 And on the sunny breaks it has been a lovely busy site with lots of chat and catching up with plot-buddies. Aah, we do love our allotment and we really should get out there while the Sun is shining because it looks like today may be dry…. with just a small threat of showers… Moby provides the song title.

Woman

I’m not sure how it’s the 10th of March already, but that’s what life is like these days!

A frosted daffodil

So far March has brought frost, fog and rain, but thank goodness a bit of sunshine too!

I’ve enjoyed seeing the various poems in shop windows up the High Street for the Hungerford Poetry Festival - what a good idea! I haven’t had an opportunity to pop into the library yet to see all the locally written ones but here’s my offering - a Marsh Lane one, obviously 😊

We had a very pleasant allotment day yesterday, doing various bits of tidying and clearing - mostly not on our plots, but Jamie did finish the potato patch with a sprinkling of sulphur and a final dig through.

I dug and planted up some of Ivan’s irises - it’s a lucky dip for what colours we may get. There are 4 different plants there so hopefully a good mix - lots of plotholders have been taking them before the plots are re-leased to newcomers. 

Lots of us studying last year’s photos to try and work out which plants to go for ☺️ Here’s a reminder of last year’s fabulous display; we will miss it, but it’ll be nice seeing the colours spread around the site. And we’ve bought ‘Ivan’s Bench’ with donations that plotholders have given for the plants - for Ivan and others to sit and rest awhile.

Last weekend it was very wet but I managed to dig three holes and planted our mini-orchard - very mini! One Conference pear, one cherry and one golden apple. The pear and cherry are in bud but the apple is still dormant. I don’t know anything about fruit trees so it’ll be a bit of a learning experience.

After a nice plot day yesterday it has returned to grey skies today and overnight rain, so I’ve been mostly cooking. A curried parsnip soup made with three decent parsnips from the plot and plenty of delicious spices - that will cover a few lunchtimes this week.

Last week I used some of my dried Yin Yang beans with leeks and parsnip for a very tasty stew, made with passata. We also used a few leeks with a cheesy pasta, leek and Quorn lardons bake - so more-ish but we did manage to make it cover two meals.

As well as the soup today, I’ve been making a focaccia, using Waitrose garlic focaccia mix. It’s been very time-consuming with so much resting and turning but it certainly bubbled and expanded!

I thought I’d gone wrong a few times - the dough was so sloppy, but it looks ok now it’s out of the oven. As you can see, I decorated it with chives, peppers, tomatoes and onion - Some of those pre-roasted peppers look a bit too charred ☺️ And, it isn’t meant to be a Union Jack!!

The song is a reference to International Women’s Day last week and, well, it’s a great song by Neneh Cherry - enjoy (though the video is rather depressing)!