Doolally Sunday

In an utter break from tradition (ie, I volunteered to do something requiring something silly) I was up at 3am on a Sunday, to go to work. A colleague and I lead/backmarked (aka generally ambled in the same direction of a group) a dawn chorus walk at one of my work sites! It is now 3:30pm and I am utterly delirious as I don’t nap as a rule. It was a nice walk – the hot water flask fell over in the car and soaked my outer layer of clothes and the bottom of my bag, so I had no windproof legs and ended the walk with a soggy bum, and then no one wanted hot drinks at the end anyway – but I saw and heard lots of birds and think I could actually now start to differentiate bird calls. I saw my first willow warbler! Ever!

Red light just above the trees in the centre is the BT Tower

Following a brief early-morning stint at work, I decided to take myself up on my deal to start working with clay again. I sorted out my boxes of polymer clay that I bought years ago, and last used years ago – seriously, I think I last used polymer clay about three years ago. I certainly haven’t used it since David and I have been together – I was hoping it would still be pliable, but after sitting on an unopened pack for an hour, and then spending another hour kneading and warming it up, it became apparent that it is not as good as it used to be. So I went online and ordered more!

I have read a few articles about helping to recondition old clay so I am going to give that a go, but I want to cash in on the clay modelling urge while it is here. Today with what little clay I softened I have made some moulds of genuine pyritised fossils that David and I collected at Charmouth earlier in the year. I will use them to make more mini clay ammonites, and when I can afford silver art clay (!) I shall try to make some silver ammonites.

Fossil finds from Charmouth

This picture is weird because the clay mould looks like it is sticking out and the actual fossil looks like it's going in and my head is hurting.

Momma and I went back to the allotment to try and repair the damage to the shed roof. This also required a trip to Wickes for timber and screws, and a trip to the shop for an iced cinnamon pastry. Pro-allotment tip y’all: NEVER rotavate where bindweed lives. I thought this was common knowledge but apparently not, and now it is springing up all over Plot 4 and Momma is going to have a helluva time pulling it up.

Pastry.

Before we left the allotment to come home I nipped round to Plot 31, by way of Momma driving me there, and I discovered that my first batch of radish were ready! So I pulled them. The first harvest of 2019 and the first harvest from my square foot / no dig bed! I was very excited, as I had been reading last week or before about roast radish – so I’m going to try it today with my parsnip and carrots. The other crops are looking good, so next weekend I will sow more seeds to plug the gaps. Exciting!

My social media free weekends are harder than I want them to be – I do like aimlessly scrolling but it adds nothing to my life so I am trying to stop it, hence clay modelling, crochet, allotment… I have even bought some books to get back into reading! 

1: Grow All You Can Eat In Three Square Feet

2: 21st Century Yokel

3: The Wild Remedy

Next weekend my big allotment project numbero uno will be finished, and then I can start numbero two-o. I am delirious I did warn you. Here’s a picture of Taffy-Cat.

Taaaaaaffffffffffffffff

Five Day Weekend: Day Five

The last day of my long Easter break (five whole days off work!!) was again spent partially up at Plot 31. I wanted to have a good bash at getting jobs done up there while the weather is favourable, as I know I don’t have much time to be up there now. My allotment time is mostly relegated to weekends for big jobs, and evenings for just pottering around and watering.

I elected to cut the grass underneath the fruit bushes to tidy them up and get rid of nettles, brambles and ivy. My shears are in need of a good sharpening (all three pairs!) so I ended up ripping the grass out by hand. I then laid down some old tarp and ripped hessian around the bottoms to act as a weed suppressing layer.

I then decided I was going to empty the shed and tidy it. I found a new rat hole in it last week, next to the previous, boarded up, rat hole. I had found evidence of rodents nesting in the pile of hessian (read about that in a previous blog post), so I knew there was some poop that needed cleaning up. I emptied the shed, swept it all out, and then Momma P appeared! So I set her to work, putting together a shelving unit. It is actually a seedling growing unit but for now it is a table.

Before.....

..... During.....

.... After!

The shed is now a lot tidier and you can actually get in it, and I know what is in there and where it all is – so another big job has been ticked off the list! It was a scorcher of a day so we retired to a shop to buy more gravel boards, then spent some time at home painting.

Next on the to-do list is to finish the compost bin overhaul (it looks AMAZING and it’s only a third done – I am SO excited and so happy that David likes to build stuff). I can then focus on building a brassica cage and getting the plants in.

Apple blossom

Dark Edged Bee-Fly. Bombylius major

I have also been busy making squares for my latest blanket. I need to go yarn shopping (oh no, what a shame) as I need more Parchment for doing the edging. 

Back to work for nine days before the next long bank holiday weekend...

Five Day Weekend: Day Four

Another day up… you guessed it – the allotment!

Momma P and I tried to beat the heat today without much success. Momma mowed a bit and I dug a bit and then we went home. I have finally decided what to do with an abandoned bed – I dug it over, weeded, and then planted a Japanese Wineberry in it. This should spread and take over the bed, and I am going to get some new raspberry canes to plant in it too. This will give me two raspberry beds. There was a large raspberry in this bed before but I chopped it all the way down last year. I wasn’t sure that it’d survive such a brutal hacking, but it is springing back to life, so all is not lost.

Japanese Wineberry 

My brutal hack-job on the raspberry

A little while ago I bought a comically undersized shopping basket from The Range, mainly because I like silly things and this amused me more than it ever should. I have finally (!) decided to use it for allotment things, alongside my two trug baskets. The CUB (comically undersized basket) has been used to bring back a mix of salad leaves and herbs, and has the benefit of being holey which means we can wash produce in the basket and hang it to drip dry before we use the harvest. Good, eh? Every allotment should have some CUBs.

In all of the excitement of my carrot seeds growing and now putting out their first set of true leaves, and possibly due to yesterdays pizza, I split my shorts on the thigh. With my new air vent I proceeded to do some weeding - I was planning on cutting down and removing last years sprouts as they have bolted – but then I heard a bee. And I looked. And I saw a bee. Then another. Then I realised that they were female hairy footed flower bees!

It has been a good weekend for solitary bees and I am happy

Back home I have started my second six-month temperature blanket. Already after five days it has more colour variation than the whole of my first six-month blanket! Momma P has fixed my shorts but I think when I have demolished the droppings from the Easter Bunny (I did quite well this year), I shall be going on a diet!

Five Day Weekend: Day Three

We ate a lot today. Before we ate a lot, I went to my monthly Tree Nerd Gathering™ - I am part of a Tree Warden scheme and we meet once a month for training. I like attending as I learn little tidbits about trees which is just reinforcing my general knowledge about Stuff. As a group we often have a laugh, and I am slowly getting used to going somewhere without David.

Flowers at the park where we have Tree Training

After the session, David and I took his youngest son out, and as we couldn’t decide where to go for food, we ended up in Pizza Hut. Again. I do love pizza and could eat it every day, but boy did I feel fat afterwards.

Momma P and I went up to water the plots again in the evening. My mason bee has capped off the first tube – this is the giveaway that it is a mason bee!

First tube capped off with wet mud

My tulips are also starting to open, and are looking lovely in the sunshine. Must get more bulbs this autumn and plant them everywhere.

Five Day Weekend: Day Two

… And a foray up to Highgate Common in the sunshine!

David has had a stonking headcold and was sent home / elected to not stay in work on Friday so we went for a brisk walk in the fresh air to try and clear his head. It didn’t really work as he fatigued quite quickly, but while we were walking we saw bees!

I saw my first ever ashy mining bee, my first ever blood bee, and loads of nomad bees. We also saw a buzzard flying low through the trees. We didn’t stay for long as David was hacking his lungs up and needed a lie down. Too much excitement for one day!

Ashy Mining Bee

Blood Bee

Nomad Bee

Momma P and I went up to water Plots 4 and 31 as we had been planting things and didn’t want them to die. These high temperatures are weird, unseasonal, and both welcome and not wanted! We cannot work in the heat of the day – despite living in Saudi Arabia for seven years, neither of us can cope with the heat (though I pretend I can because I love being outside). We tend to nip up in the evenings to do the watering. After we did Plot 31 I was having a look at my new bee house that santa bought for me – and a bee arrived!

Bee butt.

This little lady is a mason bee, possibly a red mason bee. She makes an egg laying cell by using mud she has collected, lays an egg and deposits pollen, then seals off the cell with more mud. She will keep doing this until the tube is full of five or six cells, and then move onto the next tube. The front two cells are usually destined to become boy bees, they emerge first so that they are ready to mate with the new females next spring.

In all of my excitement about the bee, I very nearly missed another exciting thing – a great spotted woodpecker came down and briefly landed on a fat ball feeder in the plum tree!! I often see and hear them over the back of the plot but I haven’t seen one on the plots for a good couple of years now.

I have been putting cat fur gathered from the brush in a suet feeder, hung in the plum tree, along with some yarn ends and bits of jute twine. This is for the birds to take as nesting material – the cat fur is by far the most popular, as I can put it in first thing in the morning and it is all gone by the evening. The yarn ends aren’t so popular; I guess the birds can tell between natural and acrylic fibres!

Cat hair in the morning

Same day, a few hours later!

Five Day Weekend: Day One.

I feel like I haven’t done anything particularly interesting or blog-worthy for a while, hence the silence. I have been to the allotment a fair bit as things are kicking off for the growing season, and David and I have been busy building stuff up there. 2019 is the year of the allotment overhaul and I am very excited!

Long tailed tits

In a brief moment of brilliance, I booked a day off as leave which has given me a five-day weekend break for Easter. I have no grand plans for this time off, and I’m not going away, but I have been up to the allotment (surprise, surprise) and my first seedlings are poking through – I have peas, carrots, spring onion, leek, radish, swede, lettuce, chard, possibly a beetroot, and the apple tree is coming into bud. I sowed a lot of early seeds a while ago and a lot haven’t come up. I think they are just being slow to germinate, or the seed was too old and not viable. I don't suspect that the night frosts are the reason – my plot seems to be the only one which didn’t get any frost damage at all – I suspect the wood of the raised beds has helped to insulate the crops as there is a lip between the top of the bed and the top of the compost, but also the ground level is 10” above the actual ground in the raised beds, so maybe this has offered further protection too. Despite this, I am going to wait a couple of weeks and then re-sow where seeds haven’t appeared yet.

My plan for square-foot gardening seems to be working, I think the garden twine grid is helping massively but it’ll be interesting to see how it looks/works when everything is big and bushy and in full growth. My second huge 6ft x 6ft bed is now full of compost and ready for planting, but I need to get some timber to make a cage around it to prevent aerial attacks by pigeons and cabbage-white butterflies.

Square foot gardening bed, with salad crops

Carrot holes. No sowing in rows for me!

The brassica bed, awaiting its cage.

Crochet-wise, I have finished another blanket! The first part of my Temperature Blanket is now complete, off the hook and sewn up. I had been stitching over my ends as I went, so I only had two ends to sew in which has saved SO much time. This blanket represents six months of temperature data from checking the Met Office daily at 2pm and then doing a stripe in the corresponding colour. It is very green and blue – a mild winter when compared to last year! I had stocked up on white yarn for a really cold snap but it just hasn’t happened. Now it is time to start the next six months, which will hopefully be a bit more vibrant with yellows and maybe reds appearing.

My completed six-month temperature blanket

Work is going well, I have done just over three months now. It’s not been without its challenges but I am getting into the swing of things, and am very proud of work I have been doing at my sites. Having had an allotment for 9 years has given me a lot of knowledge and inspiration for my job and I can transfer things (skills, wood, insect knowledge, surplus plants) between the two, which is great.

My little car has ticked over 50,000 miles – not bad for 3.5 years driving. My 18 months of commuting to Nottingham and back is to blame for this, but it was a necessary evil as that job has helped springboard me forward into this one. Sometimes I miss being a Ranger as the role was more varied and hands-on, but I am thoroughly enjoying being paid to have two allotments! My life/work balance has also vastly improved. I am spending much less on fuel now (£40 a month instead of £240), my commute has dropped massively, I work in my local area, I am working alongside lots of different organisations and departments, and can call on lots of people to help when needed. My back is improving (I was getting really bad lower back issues from all the driving), and my plantar fasciitis is clearing up (caused by the angle of my accelerator pedal foot when driving).

A fresh small tortoiseshell butterfly. No relation to the blog text but I wanted to share the picture.

I am trying to get back into the habit of walking twice a week and hula hooping three times a week – this is something I am going to get back on over this weekend as I have stopped both of these for no particular reason. Hula hooping helps to ease out my back, and one of big issues last year was that I didn’t walk enough despite having a practical job – so I am trying to sort that. It will help my hip and back, as well as making me a bit fitter.

My battenberg blanket is progressing nicely; I have 35 squares made now (I need 195 in total). I tend to make one or two squares when I want something to do with my hands that doesn’t involve a big project.

I have also been whittling again lately – nothing too spectacular as I am still not massively confident with a knife following The Great Thumb Massacre of 2016 (this blog post has blood n stuff in it). I have made some simple plant labels from cherry twigs I collected last summer, and have put these to use on the allotment.

A lime balm!! Like a lemon balm, but limey.

Ok so maybe I have been busy! I am still trying to reduce how much time I spend on a laptop/phone. I have two laptops and two phones now, so it is a challenge. I don’t want to do a day at work and then shut one laptop to open another and write things for the blog, so I don’t. I have been getting back into reading actual books lately, which is a huge life change for me, but it has given me something else to do instead of playing games.

The rest of my five day weekend will probably include the allotment, crocheting, reading, whittling, bothering the cat, and trying to make space on my windowsill to grow stuff in preparation for planting it out on the plot. I do need to start some pumpkins, cauliflower, sweetcorn and a few more courgettes……

Here is Taffy-cat in her new favourite space; the broken brush arch from her scratch post.

Allotment Life: Plot 4 Update

Momma P is a busy little allotment elf. Helped by Storm Freya and a helpful daughter, the polytunnel is again up and re-covered. The shed roof has been done, slabs are down, waterbutts are in place, and guttering V.1 is up!

The kiwi tree that Momma though was dead has burst into life and is growing up the wall (nice micro-climate against walls). The rotavator men have been and done a section of the plot which makes it look a lot tidier. Guttering has been replanned (by daughter) as it needs more brackets and seals.  

The climbing clematis is getting its first flower buds, the spring bulbs are coming up, the bark chippings are going down, and Momma P is getting somewhere!

November 2018

April 2019

Allotment Life: Apple Tree

My wee little apple tree has been on Plot 31 for at least nine years. It was put at the front of the plot as there was a pre-dug hole there from the previous tenant – we think it was a pond but it was tiny and crap, so we put a tree in it!

This patch of the plot is always boggy and soggy, and over time the tree has gotten more and more horizontal, and this wasn’t helped by one of the limbs growing out to the side. It was effectively on the floor, but then I cut it off a little while ago to tidy it up. One of my grand plans for this tree was to get a decent tree stake, pull it up, and tie it – so we have!

It looks a lot better now. The stake came from Wickes (as this is now where I am bulk buying my timber and gravel boards from) and David helped to ram it in. The wee apple is now vertical, and I turned the clods over at the bottom before putting down some thick folded parcel packaging paper, and two sacks of 20mm gravel. The paper and gravel will act as both a weed suppressant and a mulch, but it also just looks a lot tidier.

Before....

...After!