Despite the passing of Elizabeth II and a new King. I’m still a republican. Last week, watching President Macron, just be classy and comparing that with the way Charles behaved while signing whatever it was he had to sign on Saturday morning, was just embarrassing. I have French friends, I know that Macron isn’t all roses and sunshine, the point is that the French people got to pick, the British people don’t. I wrote about this in 2009 and my opinion has not changed.
I’m sad for anyone who has lost a family member and that includes the Royal Family. I’m sure that personally she was a nice woman but it’s not disrespectful to talk about an end to the monarchy because she’s died. If not now, then when? I believe that as a nation we should reform our constitution, including the role of Head of State. What qualifications does Charles Windsor have for this role? He’s the same age as my mum, and frankly she’s had lots of jobs, raised two children, gives to charity in time and money and understands the Constitution, I think she’s achieved a lot more with far fewer resources and can put her own toothpaste on her toothbrush.Should she be Head of State? If the position is purely ceremonial, why should he get the job? Why not pick the Head of State like we select for jury service, I bet it would cost less.
This probably belongs in Friday Links but I’m going to refer back to Tony Benn (the man that gave up his title to be an MP) and his five questions essential to a democracy
A transfer of power has happened in the UK this week and we are not asking these questions and I’m feeling pretty salty about it.
Aside from the state of the nation, the rest of the week was busy for work and allotment but quiet for everything else, I did three days in the office and by Friday I was absolutely fried. Now we’re out of August, I need to make more of an effort to be in the office, so I really need to get my weekend prep mojo back. I didn’t do so well this weekend, I had plans but I got distracted by some books. Which is absolutely going to be my epitaph.
This week was also the smallest nephew’s birthday, my favourite quote of the week goes to him arguing with his brother and telling said elder brother that he didn’t have to listen to him “because he was seven now”.
Plans for this week are the same as ever, I’m in the office Tuesday and Wednesday, but off work on Friday, this is to have an extra day on the plot because there is a lot of work to be done to get it winter fit. On Saturday, I’m going to a 50th birthday party and it’s back to the grindstone.
I started this post on Tuesday, and at that point the new Prime Minister was the big news, then the new government’s energy bill would have been the the news and then yesterday, the Queen died.
I remember when Princess Diana died and the way it seemed that the whole country went nuts, this already feels similar. I will say that dying in your bed, in your favourite house, surrounded by your four children is a good death. We should all have that luck.
The country is about to embark on a few weeks of pomp and circumstance, like you wouldn’t believe and King Charles III, is not a prospect that fills me with joy. Let’s hope this King Charles manages to avoid the fate of the first King Charles but there are questions about the monarchy and its place in the constitution that need to be dealt with. We’ve ducked a lot of questions because the length of time she’d been on the throne made the institution seem timeless. It’s never been timeless and a lot of the things that look ageless, are relatively modern inventions, post Victorian even. Whether we know it not, things are about to change…
I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health. I’m not sure that they are all devastating lies, but yes, mental good health is circumstantial. It’s hard to be mentally well balanced when we are juggling finances, work, family and everything else and it’s hard to stay healthy if we are unhappy. Some of it is about the internal though, we sometimes just need to be aware of it and be resilient. I’m struggling a bit at the moment, the answer is to recognise that and not do what I want to do (stay in bed all the time and sleep and not do, or see anyone) but to do the things that I know will help me cope better, even though I don’t want to do them because it sucks to have to do them. My prayers at the moment (yes that’s a coping strategy) tend to be along the lines of “thank you God for all the things are good and yet, Lord please know, that I am fed up!”. Now I do this, because I have no real choice, I need to work to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach, I come from a family culture that is more about kicks up the backside and getting on with it (see the first point) and because therapy and age have given me insight and coping strategies aka resilience. Circumstantial change does need to happen, but that’s going to take time, in the meantime, we need to help ourselves while working for that change because there isn’t another option.
It’s the middle of September and while I’ve been dealing with a slight overload of produce. These have been some of the meals that are helping me deal with it!
Baked feta and tomato pasta. I’m late to this one because I didn’t have the right amount of tomatoes! This is low effort and tastes like you put a lot more work into it than you did!
Beetroot risotto. The beetroot has been amazing this year and this is a great way of using it up and has the added advantage of using raw beetroot (although I would recommend grating it in a food processor because washing up is easier than your kitchen looking like a murder has occurred!). You can skip the lemon zest and feta but it’s much nicer with it!
Greek salad. It doesn’t need a recipe but this is a great way of using the cucumbers and tomatoes. I get extra smug points because I grew the onions too! I soaked the onions in vinegar and water for 10 minutes to take the ‘bite’ out of them. This was my saviour dinner in the heat wave because it required no cooking, just chopping!
There’s a tendency at this time of year to feel that we are nearly done with gardening. The summer plants are coming to the end of production, the nights are drawing in and it feels like we can start to slow down and start to hibernate for the winter.
Produce haul
I have never found that to be the case. We have always done the grunt work of shaping the allotment during the winter months and this year is probably the first year that we aren’t going to do lots of building work on the plot over winter. However, we are starting to think about the things we need to do that will shape next season, September is not the time to stop, it’s the time to set up the plot for next year!
This weekend, after harvesting and watering the polytunnel, I changed plans. There is a massive pile of woodchip by the gates and we need to get it all gone before the allotment Halloween event. In order for me to use the woodchip we needed to weed the paths. So Ma and I weeded at the front of the plot and wood chipped it. I also cleared the middle path of the worse of the verbena and borage, in the hope that I’ll be able to walk down it without being bitten!
Lining the pathsWood chipped
It doesn’t look like much but it’ll really help condition the soil and improve the health of plot over all. We really need to do the other half of the plot over the next couple of weeks.
Over the next couple of weeks, we need to woodchip everywhere else, repot the blueberries (B&Q are delivering the ericaceous compost tomorrow!) and pot up all the things that need it. I need to paint the shed. We still haven’t sown some of winter crops and so that has to be done next week.
Petunias
I’m going to take a day off next week to give it a bit more time and really get it into shape. Then we should be in really good shape for winter.
For my birthday, my lovely friend Sue, took me to RHS Wisely. It’s the first time, I’ve ever been and it was one of the hottest days of the month, but Sue and I still managed to cover some ground and I found it fascinating.
CosmosA meadow test bedThe world food garden from above – this garden is the allotment of my dreams…Picnic – Sue and I are never under fed!
Schools are back this week and while parents of the country rejoice and people who hate summer rejoice because it’s nearly autumn, it’s time for me to knuckle down and and prepare for the darker days. Yes, this time of year I am a broken record about how much I dislike this time of year. The truth is that I do like autumn when the air is crisp and the days sunny, but I live in England, those crisp and sunny days are as rare as hen’s teeth. England generally, and my part of it in particular, does grey and damp really well not so much with the crisp and sunny! I could cope with the bad weather if the days were longer, I’m not good on eight hours of daylight. Right now is bad enough it gets dark at 8pm, by October, I’ll be a basket case.
Anyway, I’m going into this year with a better battle plan. Golden Hour and a bath before bedtime are requirements Sunday to Thursday, yoga every day and stricter meal planning are all happening this month. It’s boring but it works and it’ll get me through the winter with my mental health more or less in tact.
Practically, I’ve used my cost of living payment from work to buy a heated airer and a dehumidifier, if I’m limiting heating this year, I don’t want the flat to be damp and I want my clothes to dry in a day or two rather than a week.
In ‘tell me you’re middle aged without telling me’, last week, the lid of my magimix broke again. I’ve had it (a 4100) since I moved into the flat, in that time I’ve had four lids. It’s not me, it’s a design flaw, they crack in the same place, in the same pattern AND in the newer models, they’ve changed the design, but I’ve spent over £100 quid on replacement lids and when the fourth one finally bit the dust last week, I snapped and bought a new one. So this week I’ve bought a new food processor, a heated airer and a dehumidifier, other things I’ve bought this week include compost, a charger pack and an iron. If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room…
Plans for this week are mostly work. We have a new starter to the team and by the end of the week, everyone will be back in the office after the summer and then the final push towards year end starts.
Grace starts again this weekend, and we have a ton of work to do on the plot. So lots to do…
Over the years, I’ve got my skincare to a place that works for me and since I’ve been on HRT, banished my spotty chin. But I’ve struggled to find a moisturiser that’s budget friendly, works for my skin and that has a scent I can stand. It’s harder than you’d think.
At the beginning of this year, when I’d finally got around to using up a lavender scented M&S night cream, which was ok but £12 a go and I really didn’t like the scent. (It’s a strange thing, I love the smell of lavender but apparently just not on my face) I decided to try the Nivea Anti-Wrinkle and Firming Night Cream 45+, it was £3.99 in Savers, so it felt like a low risk purchase if I hated it.
I did not hate it. It smelt good, didn’t irritate my skin or clog any pores and it seemed to properly moisturise even the really dry patch of skin by my nose that is always peeling. So I bought the day cream and it’s similar but with SPF 15, which is on the low side but I use the Altruist Face Fluid which is SPF 50 over the top of this, I’d be fine if there was no SPF.
It’s a basic cream that does the job and works really well with all the other products in my skincare routine.
I know it’s the last week of the summer holidays (well in England and Wales, Scotland went back in August and I think N. Ireland went back this week) and so the news cycle is slower that it would be but I just can’t escape the feeling that the lunatics can’t even be arsed to run the asylum. We do still technically have a Prime Minister but he’s spent most of the summer on holiday and this week seems to be doing a ‘dress up’ tour of the country. The sheer arrogance of the useless waste of space, he’s been a terrible Prime Minister, and we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis and he’s doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.
However, the smart money says that Liz Truss is going to be the next PM. Being asked to choose between Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss is like being asked if you’d like to drink the sewage water or cook with it, neither option is good but Sunak is probably the lesser of two evils. However, I’ve been pretty vocal about my opinion that the Tory Party won’t ever vote for a brown man (doesn’t matter how rich he is) over a white woman who seems to worship at the altar of Margaret Thatcher.
Anyway, she won’t agree to an interview with Nick Robinson, doesn’t seem to have any ideas about what she could do about the cost of living crisis except, have a fight with the EU over N. Ireland and cut taxes. Look, no one likes paying taxes but tax cuts always work better at scale, the more money you have, the more tax cuts benefit you. The tax burden in this country already falls the heaviest on the people who earn less. If you wanted to cut taxes, for the bottom, you could but you’d need to raise taxes on corporations, the highest earners i.e. raise the top rate of tax (you could have a supertax year like MacMillan did in 1961 – I mention this because he was a Tory), or tax capital gains tax, so that people who have passive wealth pay more. The problem with all of those options are that Tory Party donors don’t like that.
So this winter is going to be horrible, this is probably the first time in my life that being single and childless is to my advantage. I’m just so aware how bad things are for people that were doing ok 18 months ago (yes even as COVID and lockdowns were happening!) and it’s going to get worse.
It’s that time of year, the pressure canner has taken up residence in my kitchen, the freezer is full, there are jars everywhere. Welcome to August, the month the garden is out of control and I’m struggling to find things to do with it!
Last year, I did a lot of fruit compote, pesto, and froze other fruit but the vegetables we got through just eating. This year, we froze some rhubarb but didn’t can any, I made loads of cordial from the rhubarb and drank it. I’ve made blackcurrant jam, and apple butter and this weekend will get to Ma’s current favourite of plum and raspberry compote, there are blackberries and blueberries in the freezer with an unseemly amount of plums. This weekend, I’m also going to make more plum gin because I need some freezer space back.
I’ve also canned 17 jars of chopped tomatoes, made a batch of tomato jam, pico de gallo and tomato sauce. Cherry tomatoes are prolific for us at the moment but the big tomatoes are slower, so I’m expecting that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll have enough to do some more pico de gallo and some more tomato sauce.
I made kale pesto last year and we preferred that, so I’ve only just started to make pesto but the kale grows all through winter so that’s something we can do as we go. I slow cooked a bunch of the summer squash with oil and butter, added seasoning and blended them into a ‘butter’ they are in pots in the freezer for use in soups, pasta and whatever I can think of in the winter. I really need to find another way of using up the squash, it’s tricky because you can’t safely can it and I’m limited on freezer and fridge space. Next year, I’ll have that extra fridge freezer and I’ll pickle and maybe ferment more, but that’s not gonna work for this year, so I need to use as many as I can and I may have to take the space hit and grate the rest up to freeze for use in soups and baking.
In the fridge there are currently four jars of cucumber pickles and a jar of roasted tomatoes in olive oil, I’m going to more of those with basil and freeze them, because I have a feeling they’d be great on pizza or as an extra on garlic bread!
When you write it down, it doesn’t sound like much but when you’re doing it, it’s a mission but Ma and I spend a lot of time and money on the allotment growing this food and it would be stupid to waste that time and money on not eating the food. So I do this…
Last week, before I went to nephew sit, I dealt with all the produce, things were preserved, pickled, pesto-ed and jammed and I was feeling in control of the produce.
However, last Thursday it rained for an entire morning (we could do with a couple more days of that kind of rain) it was combined with slightly cooler temps over the weekend and although I had a friend water the poly, nothing else got watered or cared for. The plot was not deterred and yesterday, Ma and I collected 15 cucumbers, 15 summer squash, 1.2kg of cherry tomatoes, three boxes of raspberries, some blueberries, just over a kilo of potatoes.
Produce Haul
August is a tiring month on the plot for us and for the plot, all the plants are trying to get done before the autumn and Ma and I are just trying to keep up.
The polytunnel is bursting, if you cast your mind back to May when I panicked about the tomatoes and ordered 12 Sungold tomatoes via a Grown Your Own magazine offer and when they turned up, they weren’t Sungold and they were in a state and I took the last three and planted them up and put the container in the poly and hoped for the best? Only one of the three survived. Clearly ‘plant Sparta – they live or they die’ really worked for the one that lived because it’s trying to take over the poly. It’s not the only plant trying to do that, the sweet potatoes are wild. Last year we grew them outside and it was a really bad summer so we got some but not many reasonably sized potatoes, this year I did them in the poly and we had the kind of summer that they would have been fine in. The irony. If they’ve done well in the poly, I’ll probably do some inside and some outside and see what we get…
Tumbling Tom plant
I did manage last week, to pot up some of the herbs I got for my birthday, either out or into bigger pots, and some of the mints I’ll leave in the poly over winter to try and stretch out our mint tea supply. Because I had a couple of duplicates, I potted the berries and cream and ginger mints into bigger pots and used the pots the older plants were in to pot up the blackcurrant sage, olive plant and parsley, the basils I bought at Wisley went out into one of the tomato beds.
I have a load of other plants in trays in the polytunnel that need planting out/giving away but right now, the ground is too hard. I may just have to wait until next spring.
Outside, we’re not having the best squash year ever, the butternut squash have managed one fruit and overall it’s not going to be like 2020 when I think we managed 40, I’m going to need to amend the soil in the beds because everything seems to be struggling a bit. With the slightly cooler weather the beans we are growing for drying up the arches (lazy housewife and giantes) have recovered and there are beans. Which is good because the dwarf drying beans (Jacobs Cattle) have not done well at all. Ma and I have been discussing beans and next year, I’m only going to grow beans and peas (I want to try carlin peas and I think borlottis would also be a good shout!) for drying up the arches and dwarf beans will be for fresh eating only.
Giantes (yes they are a type of runner bean)
The summer squash are also running riot and along with the cucumbers have mildew, I could do more about it but its’s September, the cukes have only got two or three more weeks in them and while I hope to grab some time at the weekend to cut the worst of the leaves off the patty pan and the straight and crookneck squash, their time is coming too. I’m not touching the hybrid courgettes. I can’t remember if I mentioned that I planted four courgette plants, and they are not producing courgettes, I think they must have crossed with a winter squash because they are running rampant and two are producing courgette shaped fruit and one is producing a round courgette and the other is producing something pear shaped and pale green (you can see them in the top photo). They are also running all over the plot with what I can only assume is hybrid vigour.
Everything is a bit crispy
They aren’t bitter and they eat fine so we’re using them. I want to put a disclaimer in here, in 2021, there seemed to be a lot of squash seeds that had crossed, on some of the groups I’m on there was lots of talk about how the fruit they produced was poisonous and should never be eaten. Toxic squash syndrome is a thing, it’s caused when a squash has cucurbitacins in it. The squash would taste bitter and should be binned, ours don’t taste bitter but if they did, I would throw them away. I’m telling you what I’ve done, not what you should do!
We’ve bought garlic for autumn planting and have the first of the two sets of planters, we want to use for strawberries, I’ve bought another nine bags of compost for this and for the cherry, lime and lemon trees, that really need to go into bigger pots. It’s past time to repot the blueberry bushes so we either need to buy and have some ericaceous compost delivered or we need to wait until Christmas when we have a car, we’ll see what the budget is doing after we’ve paid the rent for the year and sorted out the strawberries.
This weekend we will try to do more than water and harvest, I would really like to find the time to plant out the leeks and sow chard, turnips, pak choi and radishes. There was a massive pile of woodchip at the plot and if it’s still there, I’d like to collect some to re-up the paths, but the paths also need to be weeded, I have lots of cardboard but I’m not sure that this is the best course of action because it’s so dry. I also need to cut the grass on the paths down, generally tidy up and it’s probably time for another turn of the compost and to riddle the stuff that’s mostly broken down and has been sitting for a year.
Nic Dempsey 