We grow a lot of garlic, my aim is that we should be self sufficient in garlic. This year we grew an extra bed but lots of our garlic while great wasn’t in great shape for storage for the year. I’ve been saying that I need to process for the freezer but I just haven’t gotten to it.
Last weekend Ma and I did it. It took four hours to get the garlic peeled, processed and ready for the freezer.
We got seven ice cube trays and a 250ml jar of garlic and oil.
It’s not all the garlic we grew, Ma and I both have been using garlic since June and we have garlic bulbs to use first, I have seven and I think Ma has more.
So we have enough garlic to last the year (I hope). While I we we’re peeling this, we ordered the garlic to plant next month (yes I can and I have used the garlic I grew to plant, but we are going for very early garlic this year to deal with the conditions).
Last week was the hottest week of the year, in September as it’s slowly getting darker in the morning and at night.
Climate change and global warming causes weather instability and this is what we’ve had over the last couple of years. This year was a colder Spring, a hot early summer and then a rainy, miserable summer followed by a week of 30C + days in Autumn…
all spiders are called fred
However hot it is, September is also spider season, they are out in force and I keep walking through webs on my way to watering.
My goal for the allotment this week was to get food plants in the ground (I feel like I’ve been saying that for months now!). After watering, Ma started with cutting off the leaves on the summer squash at the front of the plot and clearing the french beans and I attended to planting.
I needed to look at the red cabbages as they were covered in whitefly. It’s really odd as the other cabbages are more or less ok.
poorly red cabbage
I pulled eight of them up and left the two best looking ones. I planted some of the red russian kale in the gaps and treated all the plants with diatomaceous earth (DE). I very rarely use DE, while it is organic, I know it’s not wildlife friendly. I only use it in extreme measures and on plants that are under mesh to prevent killing bees and other pollinators. But this level of infestation in September is extreme and I made a decision. I mention this because I have been told off about this before and all I am going to say about it is that I garden in an allotment in the city and we have a lot of pests, mostly I live with them. I accept that whitefly is something we have every year and I usually just live with it, it’s not generally a barrier to growing food and I wash all veg throughly, however, this whitefly has killed nine cabbages because it’s happened so early in the season and I have lots of plants that I’m intending to grow to feed me so I need to take measures…
The extra cavolo nero, swede and chard had arrived and I planted them out with the cauliflowers and brussels sprouts. All under mesh. Everything has to go under mesh in the winter. The cavolo nero went into the ex french bean bed, we left the nasturtiums in that bed as well.
widow and orphans bed
I ended up with spare plants and was thinking about where to put them. Ma suggested the widow and orphans bed. I had bunged some summer squash plants, that had spent most of the summer in pots because I had no where to put them, and a stray tomato plant, into the ex potato bed as it came free. Apparently, in Ma’s head that became the ‘widow and orphans’ bed. It’s a good concept and I’m thinking I should just have a spare bed for bunging spare plants in to see how they do, if all they do is feed the birds I can live with that.
You know it’s autumn because everything is under a net!
There is still lots of weeding to do but this was a good weekend’s work…
Last week was hot and busy. And I need to explain the harder with one leg thing. This weekend we were listening to the news and they had a piece on Jonty Warneken, who swam solo from Northern Ireland to Scotland. They talked about it being one of the hardest ocean swims (it’s 21km and it’s not an easy calm sea and there are Lion’s Mane jellyfish too) and that he got stung several times. Ok fair enough, and then he said “and it’s much harder to do with only one leg”
Ma and I felt that this was burying the lede and it should have started with ‘Amputee swims the north Channel’, which this story does. All weekend, like children we have been saying ‘ah but it’s harder with only one leg’ and I keep thinking about the Tarzan sketch.
Last week was so busy, I didn’t get home from work on Tuesday until 8:45pm and had to be up the next day at 5.30am to go to the Southampton office for a training day. We have definitely come back from summer, it’s like someone has turned on a firehose of work and are spraying it all over.
It was also the hottest week of the year, so that was fun!
I also had an appointment to see the asthma nurse on Friday, and she confirmed that yes I do still have asthma, although the ‘puff test’ (I don’t know what you actually call it, but you need to blow hard into a tube) was worse than last time, it’s still better than the measure, so that’s good and I’m all ok for repeat prescriptions as we go into winter and cold season. Next week, I have a flu jab and then as my Grandad would say “God willing” no more doctors appointments for a while!
The weekend was also busy. Ma came over on Friday night and we were up and on the plot at 7.30am and again on Sunday. We also finally dealt with the garlic. I spent Sunday afternoon on a bus, I took Ma back on Sunday. We left the house at 11:45am and I was back home at 5pm. It was a hot afternoon all round.
This week is more of the same on the work front, lots to do and I’m off on Friday afternoon for a trip to Sipsmith with Christelle, she’s going to stay at mine on Friday and then Mike is going to come and meet us for lunch on Saturday. On Sunday, I’m going to see Ma and somewhere in between that I need to do some work on the plot, make jam and get the flat tidy.
It’s going to be a busy week for me, hope you have a good one!
Way back in 2011, when I was really struggling with life, depression and everything else I started listing things I for which I was thankful. While there were times I was bitterly resentful of needing to find things to be cheerful about, I know that as a strategy for coping with misery, it’s effective.
I’m not even slightly depressed at the more but I am slightly more stressed coming into this autumn than I have been in previous years, I’m trying to learn a new role and do all things and menopause is not helping.
Stress for me can manifest as whining and I really don’t want to let my brain create those pathways, because they are easy for me to find, so I’m going to do a little bit of proactive self care and to hold myself accountable from now until December, every Sunday, I’m going to show or write about something that brought me joy or that I was thankful for in the previous week.
This week it was these things:
The morning sun in the park on my way to work.
The violas are flowering and they are so pretty
The allotment is wild and its not been a brilliant year but it’s still pumping out produce and we are getting ready for Autumn
This week a commentator on the radio said that the Government risked coming across as entitled and petty, I was surprised that they didn’t think they were already coming across as entitled and petty. The truth is the Tories think they were born to rule and they hate to be questioned, which is a problem because the country is falling apart. There’s nothing left to sell off, even the schools that aren’t literally falling apart are on their knees, councils are in trouble so services are falling apart not just social care, healthcare has been in crisis for so long I’m not sure it can still be called a crisis anymore, even air traffic control doesn’t work. We’re not quite a failed state but the things we used to rely can’t be relied on anymore. Things don’t quite work.
Some of that is Brexit, most of it is government not able to govern and please don’t get me started on Gillian ‘doing a good job’ Keegan, the absolute state of it!!
Sometimes, something pops up on social media that is just what I need to hear. Jess at Roots and Refuge has managed it twice in the last month. At about 8:08, she talks about the struggle this time of year to stay connected to the joy of the garden, at about 12:57, she talks about what to do if you’re feeling that.
I’m there right now. The tomatoes have blight, the weeds are going nuts, everything is a mess and I can’t get it back under control because there is not enough time and I don’t have enough physical energy. This week a fellow allotmenter mentioned that a lot of the issues would just have to wait until next year.
I look at the plot and think how did it get this messy, so quickly? Ma says “you wanted some wildness and you’ve worked really hard for seven years to improve the soil in the paths as well as the beds.” Basically, I asked for it.
The question is what happens next?
We just need to keep plugging on. We have made a start by clearing the weeks in the main path..
I’ve potted up the viola’s and cauliflowers. Given the tomatoes the blight chop and stopped watering them, yes even in the current heat, I’m not finished eating them but I’m done with nurturing them any more.
blight
This weekend has to be about weeding, planting and tearing things out. The cukes in the poly are going, the french beans are done too. The courgettes are having a resurgence, so their going to stay for September. The brassicas need to go out – brussels, cauliflowers and kale, we have more kale, chard and swede coming this week too. I need to get them out asap.
I have a bunch of herby plants that need planting out too, which means weeding where they need to go. There is always work to do.
2023 has not been a year of prolific reading. However, I got book tokens for my birthday.
If you didn’t know a book token is an amazing gift, it involves guilt free book buying and a chance to spend a happy hour (or three) in a bookshop. It’s a perfect gift.
So I bought some books…
I have loved all of the Naomi Novik books I have read and I also enjoy that they are very different I bought and devoured all three of the Scholomance Trilogy (A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves).
It’s a magic boarding school, and it’s not in anyway lovely or cosy. Despite that, it’s about family and friendship and choices and how easy it is to live with bad things because everyone else is. And it’s funny, I was so taken with this at the beginning of the second book
Most of the religious or spiritual people I know – and to be fair, they’re mostly the sort of people who land in a vaguely pagan commune in Wales, or else they’re terrified wizard kids crammed into a school that’s trying to kill them – regularly beseech a benevolent and loving all-wise deity to provide them with useful advice through the medium of miraculous signs and portents. Speaking as my mother’s daughter, I can say with authority that they wouldn’t like it if they got it.
The Last Gradute – Naomi Novik
Aside from the part about communes and wizard school, it’s very true.
I really struggle to articulate why I like the books I like, it’s why I suck at English Lit. Anyway, I really enjoyed them and they are worth reading.
It’s autumn, so naturally the weather has improved markedly! Apparently by the end of the week, we’ll have met heatwave conditions. I’m so confused not least because Friday was so wet…
I did three days at work last week and it was full on. I had Friday off for a haircut and the weekend was a write off because I wasn’t well, this time cystitis, which is possibly my least favourite peri menopause side effect. I’ve been off HRT for a month as I transition to a new one and it’s definitely confirmed that HRT helps because this month hasn’t been fun at all…
This week is reporting week and a training day in Southampton. We have four training days a year, they are always in Southampton and they require me to do a lot of running around mostly making sure people are fed and watered.
Other than work and seeing Ma, I have no plans except to remember to buy the youngest nephew a birthday present as he’s eight at the end of the week.
Ministers face calls to explain delay in closing schools over concrete crisis. In the very early 90’s, at 6th form college, we had to have lessons in portacabins, they were not in great shape and I remember one had a massive hole in the back of it. So large that there were always less people at the end of the lessons than at the beginning of it, as the less interested would just disappear out of the back of the portacabin. In 1997, one of the reasons that the Tory’s lost was the absolute state of public buildings, schools and hospitals were falling apart. Here we are at the end of 13 years of Tory government and public buildings are in a bad way again. Yes there was a Labour gov in between that last Tory government and the absolute shower of chaos that’s been in charge since 2010. I’d like to remind you that Michael Gove shut down the school building fund in 2010.
Ex-Tory MP threatens to sue Cambridge University over slavery research. It’s interesting to me that the MP in question feels so threatened by the truth about her ancestors. I don’t know how I would react, although I’m pretty sure that my ancestors didn’t do anything of the sort (too poor).
Cleverly’s humiliating China visit was the perfect symbol of isolated, ill-led ‘global Britain’ James Cleverly is the most misnamed man in politics right now. He’s also (typically of his peers) completely unable to see that the world is not as he would wish it, it’s a special talent of this crop of Tories that they seem to think things are so because they wish it was so. And this is why and how we got in the current state.
A pony in Kingston, I did have to double check I wasn’t hallucinating…
Yesterday was the last Bank Holiday until Christmas and I just realised last week that it’s starting to get dark at night. Yes, I know it happens every year. Yes, I know that I should be used to it by now. And yes, I know I whine about it every year, this is my space where I get to do that if I want to but if you need to go elsewhere because you want to be excited about autumn, please go and do that. Why do you think I use this space to whine about it. Everyone I know in real life is very tired of the whinging on!
All that to say, I suddenly realised we are four months away from the end of the year and I’m going to have to get a lot more organised, if I want to get through it without sinking into a depression…
Aside from my existential dread of the cold, dark part of the year, last week was fine, I guess. I still didn’t feel much better but by Friday was so incredibly bored of it, I decided that if rest wasn’t working, I’d just burn it out with activity. This was partially fuelled by the knowledge that Josephine was coming to dinner on Monday and she hasn’t seen it since the work and I do like my living space to look nice for other people.
Washing was done and ironed and put away, things were tidied. Ma and I had a really good day on the plot on Saturday and while I’m never really ready to go back to work, I’m feeling that the work is doable rather than last week’s feeling that I was in way over my head!
A godchild!
Jo and T came over for dinner last night and goodness, the godchild is looking very grown up!
Plans for the rest of this week are very quiet. I have a Grace dinner on Wednesday and a haircut on Friday and everything else is the usual work, housework, allotment and for added fun jam making!
