We got back from Newcastle on Thursday and while I am happy to be home, I really enjoyed being away. We got good weather and rest and some walking and old buildings. It was good.
So having had a small break from my life, it’s back to it this week and catching up! This is going to be my first five day week this month, I have a feeling it’s going to be a tough week! It’s also going to be busy, at the weekend, I logged on and spent a couple of hours dealing with email! In a week away I went from the zero inbox I left to find about 450 to deal with. I got rid of the stuff that had aged out and sorted the easy stuff, I have about 20 that actually require me to do more work and I need to go and look at my manager’s email today!
So that’ll keep me out of mischief!
I also really need to finish some things in the flat (returning my broken heated airer and sorting the replacement) and generally get my mojo back. This year has not been good for motivation and I’ve been feeling so out of control. It’s been ok, because I’ve had enough support and systems in place to weather it. However, I’m about to embark on a new work thing. My role is changing and I’m taking on some different and new stuff. So it’s going to involve more learning and being way out of my comfort zone. While I’m looking forward to it and I think it’ll be ok, I don’t traditionally handle transition well and this year feels like it’s been all about transition.
I need to sort the other areas of my life out so that I can focus on work for a while!
Seven years ago, I signed up for an allotment and for seven years I’ve been struggling with indoor sowing. The reasons are obvious, I live in a one bedroom flat with no garden that is quite dark and as with all houses built in the early 1900’s, no windowsills.
February 2017, my first ever seedling set up!
I have tried all sort of things, mostly, I do a lot more direct sowing (all peas, beans and sweetcorn for starters) but I usually end up with the living room floor covered with leggy pale seedlings! Last year was the best year because I was able to boot them out into the polytunnel, so they did get more light!
Tomatoes on the floor last year
Since COVID and with more home working, a floor covered with plants, is just not on and so last year I bought a spare mini greenhouse for sowing seeds. Three weeks ago (you know how I’m always saying that I was late sowing? This year I really was!) Ma and I sowed our seeds for summer.
We did all the winter squash, the summer squash and the melons and the tomatoes. And then I realised that the one grow lamp I had (this one) wasn’t going to cut it and I bought these ones. They attach to the shelves and run off one plug and you can connect another four, which I’ll be doing that next year.
I also bought a timer so that they can click on and off this week while I’m away.
No solution is perfect, the seedlings are still leggy but they have a place now, I can use the living room and that’s a pretty good outcome!
Even with the grow lights, they are still as leggy as all get out but, at least they aren’t all over the floor!
Last Saturday we had lots to do and not a huge amount of time in which to do it.
The peony is in flower
We started with the sweet potato slips that arrived on Friday. First we had to fill the bed, then plant and then cover them with fleece because it still feels really cold.
Gooseberries and Sweet Potatoes all protected!
I put together an arch, to support my favourite rose bush, which is just about to burst into flower!
Yellow roses are my favourite
We set up the netting for the gooseberries and then I got sidetracked by the stated of the cane storage at the back of the plot (and I managed to bash myself in the face with some piping!)
Tidier
That done, we mulched the potato bed. I have only grown potatoes in a bed once before and it was really difficult to keep them watered. I’m also just not sure what the weather is going to do this year, this time last year, we were at the beginning of drought and I thought for this year, mulching would help with my growing. I may only use it on the potatoes, if it stays this wet, I might just experiment on a couple of beds and see if it makes a difference.
The first day of our holiday, it was a priority to get to the sea. I needed some seaside time, it’s called Vitamin Sea for a reason!
Ma wanted to go to Whitley Bay and I wanted to go to Tynemouth, so we went to Whitley Bay and walked to Tynemouth. While three miles isn’t that much of a walk, it’s a lot if you’re 74, have arthritic knees and feet and some balance issues. Ma did it though and it’s a lovely walk.
Ma wanted to go and see the Spanish City, it’s a pretty building but other than that was a crashing disappointment.
The walk was beautiful, we had been expecting rain but it was a lovely sunny day.
We got to walk on the beach and get our feet in the sea (Ma a bit more than she planned to!), however this route is prepared for the aged, walking along.
We visited the Priory for a bit and then went back to Newcastle.
Last week was an ok week, it was a four day week, and I only did one day in the office, I hosted (which feels like an over the top word for making soup and bread) Kathy and Sue for lunch on Wednesday, which was lovely.
I was busy indoors with trying to do all the things before I went on holiday and was a little bit more switched on in terms of work. I’m still really migraine-y at the moment, there does seem to be an uptick in them at the moment so I think I need to head back to the doctors. (My Grandma Iris had migraines and died at 49 with a brain tumor. I don’t think I have a brain tumor I would like the doctor to do more than tell me it’s probably menopause, although given the pressure on the NHS right now, I’m not sure that it’s likely!)
On Sunday, I went to Newcastle and here I am. We’ll here for most of the week, I need a break and this will be perfect, no work in the office, no allotment work, no housework! A proper rest from all that and a daily walk up a big hill!
I’m not the most house proud person, I like my flat and I like to it look good but I’m not great at the deep cleaning and housework. I make my bed every day, change the sheets once a week, tidy the kitchen most nights and the flat is generally tidy, I don’t really dust. Lots of my other housework falls under the do it when I see it. So I’ll clean the toilet and sink about twice a week, when I notice it looks bad and the bath about once a week for the same reason. So it’s never perfect but it’s always presentable, which is fine by me, show homes that you can’t relax in for fear of someone tidying you up are not for me!
This is the kitchen just before the building work, with wonky floorboards!
Where that tends to fall down, is with the floors. Of all housework tasks, floor cleaning and hoovering are ones I least enjoy. I come by this honestly, Ma doesn’t like hoovering either. She bought a Shark in an attempt to make hoovering happen more often, which was magical thinking because she doesn’t hoover any more than she did!
Stef promised me that when we got married, I’d never have to hoover again (proof he was my soulmate) but then he died and I’m stuck with hoovering. In the flat, it’s been more annoying because the floors had been stripped and varnished (badly) and as a consequence, even if I scrubbed, they never looked clean. The house my flat is in was built in about 1910 and so precision wasn’t a thing and the floorboards also have massive gaps in them and nails sticking out which adds to the difficulty of cleaning them. If I have to clean the floors, they should have the decency to look like they’ve been cleaned. In fact, one of the non-negotiables for the new kitchen was some kind of floor covering because I hated it so much.
Living room floor, slightly cleaner but with much bigger gaps
As it turns out, I got new flooring in the kitchen, bedroom and living room, which is lovely. It looks nice, it’s all one surface and the acoustic underlay is nicer for downstairs and great insulation for me, I’m looking forward to having a slightly warmer house next winter. However, laminate really shows the dust and dirt. I know this, I’ve lived in a house with laminate before, but every time, I’ve lived with someone who was good at floors and it was one of the chores they did. This time I’m on my own.
Living room with new flooring
Into this story of woe, walks my brother, the only member of the family that likes hoovering (if he didn’t look so much like us, I’d swear he was a changeling) but he told me that the most life changing thing after his kitchen renovation when they moved to having the downstairs all hard floors was the robot hoover. You know where this is going right?
I bought exactly the same make that they had, which also has a mopping function. Ben and I are very different but we are in agreement here, the robot hoover is life changing.
I run the hoover setting roughly twice a week and have clean floors all the time. It’s not perfect, there are spots it can’t get to (behind doors) and I do need to put the kitchen chairs up so it can thoroughly do under the table (which I tend to do once a week) but it’s pretty good and although they aren’t cheap, mine had £60 off and I used some of my bonus and it was so worth it. It came with a magnetic strip which goes across the top of my stairs so it doesn’t tumble to it’s death and I do have to hoover the stairs.
I’m so happy with it, because it does a task I hate and now I always have clean floors. Worth it.
I wasn’t that happy with all the wanging on about the coronation, how it’s moved to wanging on about Eurovision. I’m not sure which is worse, I guess at least my taxes aren’t paying for Eurovision? Anyway here are this week’s links…
Gardeners urged to ‘keep it local’ when creating a wildflower meadow. I don’t have a meadow, but what pops up on the allotment is rye grass, couch grass and plantain and bindweed, dandelions and cinquefoil. This year there has been some red clover (which I try to leave alone.) Nowadays, I get californian poppy, red orache, some aramanth, cornflowers, marigolds, borage, verbena bonariesis, thyme and oregano. From Tana’s plot next door, lambs ears and forget-me-not. I’m big on leaving most of it where it grows, provided it’s not in the way although I do have to cull the cornflowers a bit though!
I signed up for a half plot in May 2016. Seven years later, I think the habit is going to stick. I have learnt so much and the plot looks completely different. The strip of soil in the picture above is where we planted the blackcurrant last week and the tank at the end is one of the hot boxes we grow squash in now, and in front of that is the rosemary bush! I don’t have a photo that shows the view but the photo below was taken in April and shows the line of blackcurrant bushes…
I’m grateful for the plot. I have found it helps my mental health, it gives me food, weirdly, it’s given me healthier nails and an appreciation for farmers. It’s changed how I shop, how I eat and what I believe about nature and the countryside.
How what did we do this week?
Guys, I have to tell you I did amazingly well with the grass. Do you remember in April, I was saying that the grass was really high and you could barely see the grape hyacinths and that I’d got some of it but needed to sort the bulb bed and the rose garden?
I hadn’t gone back and the grass has just got higher and it’s mostly rye grass and it had to be attended too. So I did it. Three 50 litre buckets of grass later (I’m so grateful for Ma, stopping what she was doing and coming and emptying the buckets as I went!) the front and the bulb bed was (more or less) clear.
By that point I was on a tear and did the same to the pond and rose garden.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t done, I decided it was time to get the plants in pots at the back in the ground or in bigger pots. I transferred some hyacinths I got in the winter into the ground by the others at the corner of the pond area. I put a bronze fennel the rose garden, and the other in the ‘wild area’, which went in with the only that sweet pea that survived the winter!
I planted some camomile lawn at the edge of the patio (something I’ve wanted to do for a while). I’d already put a roman camomile in the wild area and the other one, went in the corner of the alpine strawberry bed.
If you’ve followed my gardening progress, you’ll know I like to encourage some plants to self seed at the edges of beds and also to encourage things to grow over the edges of the beds and I’m starting to do that deliberately. All that to explain why I planted a pinata lavender and a lemon bergamot in the longer blackcurrant beds and, a creeping thyme in the corner of one of the winter squash beds. The lemon verbena went in a pot because I’m pretty sure that the big one on the plot died in the winter and the other lavender went into a pot for the moment.
Two of the four that will hopefully spread out and be a little green camomile scented ‘lawn’
Then Ma and I gathered some produce. Rhubarb, the last of the polytunnel leeks, coriander, parsley, mint and the chard before it went to seed.
I don’t want you to think that Ma did nothing because as ever she got to all the stuff I wouldn’t have got to and would have been kicking myself if I hadn’t done it. So the arches over the winter squash beds are all strung for beans, she watered everything that needed it, removed some pesky (and very prolific) dandelions, trimmed some plants that needed trimming, sorted out some beds and generally kept me on the straight and narrow.
One of the tulips Lu and Ben bought me back from Amsterdam (I really thought we’d killed them!)
We also got to admire some of our earlier work. Carrots, peas, beetroot and potatoes are beginning to show their heads. There are baby gooseberries, the blueberries are flowering like mad and things are beginning to look like they are coming back for summer. As does the bind weed…
New Lavender, I love the leaves
There do seem to have been some casualties though. One of the citruses is definitely dead, although one has a leaf, so lets see! The aforementioned lemon verbena, is not showing any signs of life and the cherry tree seems to be in the same state. I can wait another month before I go into full mourning for them!
Blueberries
So to the list:
Get all the compost to the plot – partially, I have about 20 bags to go
Weed and top up all empty beds – partially, all the beds in the new half of the plot have been done
Sow spinach and other salad next to shallots and in ex parsnip bed
Sow parsnips
Apply ant nematodes to polytunnel, blueberries and bulb beds
Strim the grass path – partially done, I did a bit more this week and will finish next week
Weed the paths and top up with woodchip if there is any available
Finish weeding the pond area, rose garden and iris bed
Mulch the pond area, rose garden and iris bed
Join the rose garden to the iris bed and plant out the area
Plant out the herbs from Urban Herbs
Finish the patio
Set up the arches for bean planting
Turn the compost bin
The priorities for next week are nematodes, grass path strimming, sowing the beds, module sowing for the poly and, netting and sorting the poles for the gooseberries, blackcurrants and blueberries. May is a busy time.
Happy first working day of the week (for me at least!)
All the coronation nonsense is over and the radio at least is starting with Eurovision nonsense. If you love either of them, please go and enjoy yourself, but I would like to hear about something else!
Last week was all about work, at home I did very little, sorted out my growing set up, celebrated seven years of having an allotment, put a shelf up, read a couple of books (when I die, I want an obit to mention that I could always be distracted by a book!)
This week, is all about making sure work is sorted so I can go on holiday next week with a clear conscience.
At home, it’ll be packing and compost delivery to the plot.
Hopefully, it won’t rain too much and it’ll get a bit warmer, it’s chilly right now.
So the local election results don’t look good for the Tories. My word of caution on this is that losing Tories doesn’t equal winning Labour and honestly, while I’m sure that a Labour government will be better than this Tory one (not hard Count Binface could do better), I’m not sure how much better as they are not convincing and a cocky overconfident Labour party loses elections. Anyone younger than me should look up the 1992 election…
The other news from Jonathan Dimbleby is that the King didn’t know about the ‘Homage of the People’ bit of the Coronation and it’s probably the brainchild of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I call bullshit. I can see exactly how the thinking went. The Homage of the Peerage is a traditional part of the Coronation, but in the world we now live in having the peerage swear homage looked old fashioned and elitist, so why not let everyone do it, be democratic? It didn’t occur to any of them that swearing homage is the problem not having the peerage do it. Look this shindig, to celebrate a very rich man getting a shiny new hat and a job, is costing the taxpayer somewhere between £100-£250 million, in a cost of living crisis. It’s tone deaf, like the Prince and Princess of Wales using the Tube yesterday.I wish someone would greet me every day as a walked into a train station and escorted me to an uncrowded train where I could get a seat!
They don’t live in the real world and this seemed like a good idea because they don’t live in the real world. If they did, they’d at least pay for some of this. The homage idea and they give up your Bank Holiday to volunteer are the ideas of people who really don’t understand what is happening to the country right now. The trying to defend and deny, instead of admitting you got it wrong is the final insult.
Nic Dempsey 