It feels like in the last couple of weeks we’ve had all the weather. It’s been very hot and sunny and also (Sunday I’m looking at you!) unseasonably cold and miserable.
The plot is looking ok for it though.
I was solo this weekend because Ma has covid. I’m testing negative but I feel like a loads of people have gone down with it recently. Anyway, Ma was confined to home and I did an early morning session at the plot, before it got to hot (7:30 to 2pm).
My plan for Saturday was to deeply water the plot, gather some potatoes and fruit, maybe potter about and then get out of the heat. I’d already given the plot a massive watering on Friday night and emptied two pots of potatoes that I suspected had ant infestations. One did, one didn’t, but I had watered that used up compost. On Saturday, I another quick weed of the back flower bed, watered it and laid down some cardboard and put the used compost on top of it. I didn’t get the whole bed, but perfect is the enemy of good and we’ll do the rest this weekend or as the compost becomes available. As we empty the potato pots, the used compost will mulch my flower beds and rhubarb plants.
Back flower bed
I also harvested onions, carrots, peas, blueberries, boysenberries.
I also finally got the extra sungold plants that I ordered back in May. Except they weren’t sungolds, they were tumbling toms and 10 of them are dead. I have enough tomatoes though but I am miffed, my guess it that they got more orders then they had tomatoes, and they had to grow other seedlings that might not have been in the best health. I have ordered from the ‘Grow Your Own’ magazine offers before and was really impressed with You Garden plants. Not so much this time.
The polytunnel is looking fuller at the moment, very soon I’ll get the garlic and onions out, I’m thinking that for next year I need a laundry pulley thing for drying the onions and garlic out!
I also planted out the remaining summer squash. All of them are alive, final count is three courgettes, one crookneck squash, four pattypans and three straightneck squash. The straightnecks are less fussy that the crooknecks and if we were just growing for production we might not grow the crooknecks, but we love that they look like swans….
Wild area
I did a bit of weeding and admired my jasmine, which is about to flower.
Finally, I welcomed a visitor to the plot. Hello, little frog…
The house I live in was built sometime in the early 1900’s, in fact with one exception all the houses I’ve lived in were built between 1850 and 1925. They weren’t built with indoor bathrooms or central heating, they weren’t designed for the most part with running water in mind at all, which is why so many British kitchens have washing machines in the kitchen!
They aren’t great at retaining heat in winter or staying cool in summer either and as my flat is a conversion, it’s all that with no outdoor space. Which means that the bathroom and the bedroom where I dry clothes can get mould. It’s not a huge amount of mould. In the bathroom it’s on the tile grouting and in the bedroom it’s on the wall that the airer stands when I’m drying things and it’s just on the surface.
I’m pretty good about leaving the window open in those rooms but every couple of months, I use this, just to keep things clean and stop the mould getting a grip of walls. It has bleach in it, so careful of your clothes when you’re using it, but it works better than using just bleach would because I’ve tried that!
I was the first firefighter into Grenfell Tower. Little has changed, and it could happen again. I think I’ve said this before, I know of David Badillo, he’s friends on facebook with cousins and people I went to school, he sometimes pops up on ‘people you might know’ on Facebook. It’s easy to see Grenfell as only happening to immigrants, but people who live in council housing used to be respected, now they are just seen as spongers to be ignored, as the Grenfell inquiry has and is showing. It’s not just a Tory problem, it’s a middle class problem. Now the political classes have ripped up all the protections and respect for the working class, they’re coming for the middle class. Even if you don’t care that 71 people died because the council and housing authorities were more concerned about something being pretty instead of safe, you should be outraged, because don’t you think they’re not coming for you.
It’s no wonder a new Scottish IndyRef is in the works: the status quo is unsustainable. I’ve said for a while now, that this incarnation of the Conservative and Unionist Party, is going to lead to the break up of the Union. I’m not Scottish but if I were and asked now, well an independent Scotland couldn’t do any worse than the Tories have done. I think it’s going to be a toss about whether Northern Ireland or Scotland go first but I think we’ll probably see the break up of the Union in my lifetime.
Smart meters are not just ‘dumb’ but a scandalous waste of money. I have refused to have smart meters installed because I had to minute meetings in a previous role, where these things were discussed. To this I would also add if I have a smart meter from one supplier and change to another, assuming the meter doesn’t go dumb, what would happen if it broke down? My understanding is that I would be liable for the cost of replacing it as my new supplier wouldn’t as they didn’t fit it. Despite the impression that energy companies tell you, unless you sign a contract with them, you don’t have to have one and that might change in future years, but it hasn’t yet, so I’m staying with the ones the flat came with.
Doctors warn against over-medicalising menopause after UK criticism. GP’s yet again defending themselves instead of listening to what women are telling them. Which is that we need to be listened to when we say something is intolerable for us. Some women can ride out the symptoms, good for them, most women endure the symptoms because they can’t get their GP’s to listen to them when they say they are struggling to cope. I have dealt with my doctor not taking me seriously because of my weight (asthma is not reflux). However, over menopause, they were brilliant, I saw a doctor when I was 43 about menopause symptoms and she was great and walked me through options. At that point, we decided that I would do a couple of other things to see if they helped. They did, but last year, I decided that I’d like to try HRT so we did that. The biggest issue at the moment is getting it, they will only issue in 2 month chunks and review often, combined with a shortage, I ended up coming off for a month. One of the worst things about being a woman, is that society glosses over your issues, this feels like GP’s are trying to do the same and I will be listened to on this. I know what I can cope with and my symptoms of menopause (No, hot flushes but every month before a period, I got what felt like a fever, my migraines got worse and flooding was also a thing – having to fake my mother falling over, so I could leave the office, without having to tell my male boss that I needed to go home because I’d run through 3 pairs of underwear and the black trousers I was wearing had bloodstains on them) where not things I was or am prepared to go through because it’s ‘natural’.
June is one of the best months in the garden, it’s not producing loads but the berries are starting, it’s all looking green and and if you have them, the flowers are blooming.
It’s also really busy. For the first time in six years, I have all the beds built and filled and most of them are planted, I also have eight blueberry bushes in pots, three blackberries, nine pots of mints, an old tin bath with strawberries in it, 12 pots of potatoes and a polytunnel. Which means that watering takes over an hour, two 10 litre cans don’t go as far as you think. It’s also time to tell you again that if you are complaining about ‘hand watering’ with a hose, I don’t want to hear it, it’s not a hardship!
Yes, I do ask whose stupid idea it was to have a full plot and to grow so many things that need watering and it was my idea, I did this to myself. I only do a full watering of the plot on the weekend though. I will if it doesn’t rain do a midweek watering of the greedy crops. Right now that’s the polytunnel, the squash, the tomatoes and the blueberries if they are looking wilt-y. All of those crops except the blueberries will only get thirstier as they grow.
Boysenberry
If you didn’t read my post on Monday, you won’t know that my annual ‘the bastard bitey insects bit me’ post happened this week. Ma did not get bitten at all, I got a double dose of possible spider bites on my arm during the week AND ants biting my neck on Saturday! I need to take more anti histamines to keep at the plot and get some more insect repellant which I need to use more frequently.
Sore arm
We got strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and the first blackcurrants this week though so I can’t be too mad about it. The strawberries were amazing and we are going to grow many more of them, in towers not because I love watering pots but because it’ll protect them from the slugs.
Strawberries
The slugs are out in force, I’ve got some damage on the beans and courgettes and in the poly too, I think that I’ll see how it goes but it might be time to nemaslug those buggers, I’m also going to buy some ant baits for the poly and around the blackcurrants. I’m not keen on bitey bloody ants and I know that they are important for the ecosystem but it seems like there are more of them this year.
Ma and I thought that we were going to really concentrate on the weeding this week. However, it’s June, it takes at least an hour to water and another to pick fruit so that’s two hours gone. It was apparent that we had to pull the other bed of garlic up as the rust had got to it. We bought a mixed bunch of garlic last year, some early, some late and it’s now apparent that we need to grow early garlic, which we can over winter and harvest early (last year we harvested about this time but this year we did it two weeks ago and the rust really got a hold in those two weeks!). Some of the onions are falling over so I think they’re be ready in the next week or so. The garlic and onion beds will get a top up of compost and then in July will be planted up with brassicas. After that, I’m thinking that the ‘onion’ bed will be my asparagus bed, I think it’ll happily take eight to ten crowns and yes I know that the best time to plant asparagus is last season but it’s taken me this long to know that I want to grow it.
I’ll also digress from the allotment to talk about what I bought this week. Thanks to a Grow Your Own magazine offer, I’ve spent £22 and got myself a lime tree, a lemon tree and a cherry bush. The lime and lemon are in a 9 cm pot, so I’ll need to be patient about getting fruit, the cherry comes in a three litre pot so will be a little bit more established but not that much! I’m excited!
Nearly done with clearing the chard
Back to the plot. While I watered, Ma started to cut down the chard, which is a huge undertaking. We harvested and then I ‘loved’ my tomato babies. The ‘hospital’ bed outside has a couple of plants that are doing well and a couple that I’m dubious about, the six in the poly are doing well. The three good beds, which have Amish Paste, Feo de Rio Gordo, Gardeners Sweetheart, Yellow Millefleur. Black Russian and Tigerella are all doing well, there are baby flowers on the Tigerella already but tomatoes are a marathon in the UK not a sprint, it’s a long time from now until August!
Tomatoes all tied up
While I was tending to my babies, Ma weeded the back bed. I took some time to point out to her what the lavender looked liked. At one point she asked me if she should weed the rocket, I said yes. This was a mistake as she pulled up one of my lavenders. It was the Edelweiss lavender. I rescued it from the weed bag, trimmed it and potted it up in new compost, it’s had a heavy watering and we’ll see if it lives. Ma gets annoyed with me because I let most of the borage and oregano that self seeds live but that is no excuse for killing innocent lavender plants, and it’s not the first time she’s done it either. How can you so consistently mistake lavender for rocket or rosemary?
Less weeds and minus a lavender plant!
More weeding to do next week, we need to finish that back bed (but clearly, Ma won’t be allowed to do it on her own! Once it’s weeded, I’m going to lay down more cardboard, water it and add used potato compost from the pots to mulch and feed that soil (it was a very weedy area and it’s going to take some work). Over the next year, I’m going to look at densely planting at the front of the plot and in the rose and plot area, to suppress some weeds and distract from ones that will persist. If I had my way, I’ll just plant more lavender, it’s my favourite..
When I was a kid I watched a lot of football. I’m from a family that likes football, both my parents, my Grandad and my brother were all pretty keen and we went to a lot of football matches. I wasn’t as keen, but to the rest of the world, my I quite like football translates to ‘Nic is pretty keen on football’.
What I really miss about football is watching a game as it happens, listening on the radio or watching on TV is fine but actually watching it live is a totally different experience. I’ve always said that if I ever won the lottery, I’d have a season ticket to Chelsea and Ma would like a box at QPR (that would make the nephews behave!) because I like watching live football matches. I even enjoyed the time we went to watch the Corinthian Casuals.
All of this is a very long winded way of explaining why I picked up The Farther Corner. This is one of those books that gives you a sense of place, random facts about football, the North East, the history of both. It’s a tribute to all the people who participate in the lower (way lower) league game, it manages to explain why it’s important and what the North East has lost in the last 50 or so years. It does all that without being worthy and being really funny.
It was a delight, I took it up to Newcastle with me in May and really annoyed Ma by reading bits of it to her when I wasn’t just laughing whilst reading.
I don’t think you have to like football to read it, but if you do read it, it might make you want to go and watch a game of football!
Last week was a pretty standard week, I worked from home Monday-Wednesday and at the office Thursday-Friday. I quite like going into the office on a Friday, and I’m not the only one, this week we had six of us in and it’s quite nice. I got to spend a part of my lunch hour helping a colleague choose new glasses (we narrowed it down to two and he ended up buying both pairs!).
Right on schedule, for summer, I got my first set of nasty bites. I’m pretty sure that it was the raspberry picking on Thursday night. It’s actually a little later than usual, June rather than May, and although they did swell, it didn’t require shots this time (which is a mercy given the state the NHS is in!) just more anti histamines. To add insult to injury, on Saturday at the plot, I got bitten by ants, while picking blackcurrants! It really wasn’t my week on the allotment, but there were strawberries so I guess it all balances out.
The unsurprising disappointment of the week was that my new kitchen is being delayed, this is mostly because they can’t find the staff. Bobby who is a neighbour as well as a builder, just can’t get the crew, so it’ll probably be October, which sucks, but I am aware it’s a first world problem. Although I’m not sure if my sink will stay in the counter that long! What it does do, is give me some time to have a proper clear out of the kitchen and cupboard of doom, which should help packing it up easier when it comes time to do the work.
Which is why on Saturday night I consoled myself with a martini! It was World Gin Day so totally appropriate!
I imagine that heaven looks like a cold, dry gin martini
In other news, last week’s budget moment continued and I fixed my energy tariff. Before the price rise in April, I was paying about £60 a month, I adjusted my direct debits to £120 a month and was thankful that I could do so but there will be another price rise in October (and possibly January as the cap setting goes to every three months). It’s all a bit of a gamble but the fix based on my yearly usage estimates a cost of Just under £100 per month, so cheaper than I estimated for right now. It’s also a ‘carbon-neutral’ tariff, using renewable energy for all the electricity and offsetting my gas use, so it seemed like a no-brainer.
Least anyone thinks, I’m getting really sensible, I did buy a lime tree, a baby lemon tree and a cherry bush (look, I like cherries and it would be really amazing to be able to grow lime for a G&T, I’ve been hankering after all of them for at least three years!)
Plans for this week are much the same as last week, there are no plans. I do have to deliver a training/presentation to the team as part of my objectives and I need to write up a couple of processes which I put on my objectives in order to make me do them. My method is always to get as many of my objectives complete or almost done in the summer, I find it harder to focus in the autumn/winter!
Ma is away during the week and I think Sue is back so I may get a walk in with her this week but if not then next week.
Finally, I wanted to leave you with this picture. My neighbours are growing tomato plants in front of the house (the front has better light than their tiny decked area at the back of the house). I’m honesty delighted and have offered to water them when they are away next month!
I have always resisted using a rucksack for carrying my work laptop to and from the office, I was given one when I was issued with the laptop but for the size of them they were bulky and single purpose. So I used another bag and took that, with my handbag into the office when I went in. Then I started bringing a water bottle and a coffee cup into the office with me along with my breakfast and lunch, and my laptop bag and handbag. It was all getting a little less manageable. I walk from home to the station, it takes about 20 minutes and is usually the time I call my mum (yes I talk to her every day, no it’s not co-dependent) and one day in March, when I also needed to bring some produce into the office (I have a veg for birds deal going with my boss) I snapped. Four bags was too many to carry, especially when you are also juggling with a phone.
It was time for one bag to carry everything. This was the first thing I came across and it’s pretty good. I love that the main opening is framed. There is a section for keeping things cold AND a place for my laptop. There are also handles at the top so I don’t always have to carry it on my back.
It’s still not the most stylish thing I own, but it’s functional and saves me some morning stress, which is always good!
I’m in the office today, so this will be short. The photo is today’s breakfast, with berries from my plot. The news is still a garbage fire, here are this week’s links..
Great Britain doesn’t have a lot of fruit options grown in the country, apples and pears are our mainstay, we do get other fruit in season, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, plums, rhubarb to name a few, there are others.
When you look at things that are cost effective for growing on a plot, it’s soft fruit that comes up most often. We have a plum tree on the plot and I inherited gooseberry bushes (which have been hit and miss), raspberries (they were summer raspberries and we’ve taken them out since!) and rhubarb. There was a blackcurrant bush but it was sat on top of an ants nest and the previous owner was planning to take it up because it wasn’t productive (so I did!).
I like soft fruit and I wanted to have lots of it on the plot but it takes time. This year might be our best year for fruit (and there are plans for next year.) and we kicked off with the first raspberries this weekend, you can also see the first two blueberries and some strawberries in there too!
Raspberry rich!
That done, Ma and I got to grips with the squash. Some of them have some up and some of them haven’t. The winter squash has been the most disappointing in terms of germinating, the Sibley Storage and Hokkaido didn’t come up at all. All seven of the Waltham Butternuts came up, and the six Honeybears and Casperitas, four of the Anna Swartz. We planted those out and I’d bought a packet of Uchiki Kuri from Wilko and sowed some of those direct into the bed, it was a 75p gamble. I also added the soil from the pots of the failed squash into the beds if the seeds have a change of heart we might get something!
Around two of the arches we sowed Giantes and Lazy Housewife for dried beans (for those you keeping up, that should give us three types of dried beans!), we also sowed nasturtiums in the path down the middle. Last year we split a larger bed in half, the path has had a two layers of cardboard and woodchip on it and all of that has composted into lovely soil, which the oregano and other weeds have enjoyed seeding into. We, who am I kidding?, Ma weeded it but left the oregano on my instructions but against her better judgement, I don’t mind the oregano and my idea is that with the nasturtiums, there are flowers for the pollinators and they look and smell nice. If they get overpowering, we can pull them up.
Squash and bean beds
We didn’t build the third arch until later, but I’ll so climbing french beans up there later on, we already have dwarf french beans in a bed so I want to give it a bit of time so it’s successional and we’re not dealing with too much of a glut!
The summer squash has been sluggish too, the courgettes and early prolific straight neck came up but of the pattypans only one has come up and clearly only this week, the same for the crooknecks. We planted the courgettes and and straight necks out and left the crooknecks and pattypans in the poly for the minute, but we have weeded and prepped the beds we hope they will go into.
Cucumber bed and summer squash beds
We also wrestled with some wire to put in the middle of the cucumber bed, we sowed them direct and this year it’s Early Fortune and Boothby’s Blond. Cucumbers on my plot are wayward, after several failures, we just stick them in the ground, sow some dill, water and hope for the best. We generally get something. Next year, I want to work more on sowing things in the polytunnel before I plant out but for this year, we’re sticking with my haphazard outdoor sowing method!
Finally, I rigged something for the polytunnel for the melons we also sowed this week.
Melon thing
It’s not the sturdiest but we’ll see how it goes, if and when the melon vines appear. That’s the polytunnel beds filled. I have some camomile, basil and the summer squash left. I do need to find space for the Sungold tomatoes that still haven’t arrived but I also have a couple of takers for some of them, I’d like to hang onto six and I think I can find some space for them.
We are pretty much planted up now, I have two more summer beds that are waiting to be filled and four other beds that are empty or needing to be cleared but one is for fennel and the others will house some of the brassicas that are due in July.
We fed the birds (I think feeding them through summer is stopping them from attacking my beds!) and my plot neighbour gave me a spare blueberry plant will will save me buying one.
Beans
Our plan for next week is harvesting, weeding, and watering. It may be time to tie up my tomatoes but we’ll see, it’s been pretty wet and grey this week so they might not need it!
On my staycation (a staycation is when you have time off work but stay at home, not when you have a holiday in the UK!) last week, Ma and I took advantage of our National Trust memberships and visited Osterley House.
I had been to Osterley (Osterley and Ham Houses and their construction were part of my GSCE history, so it was 1987 or ’88 and the house wasn’t opened then. Which is why I can tell you that the house was originally a Tudor house built in the 1570’s, it was owned by Thomas Gresham (honestly the period I was most interested in) and it’s known that Elizabeth I stayed there. It was extensively re-modelled by Robert Adam from 1761 to 1765 (the basis of my GCSE study was the difference in refurbishing them to reflect the prestige of the owners – at Ham you can see the changes, at Osterley you can’t).
We took the train to Osterley (the Piccadilly Line) and walked to the park, there were cows grazing. They were not Jersey cows but Charolais, which Ma felt was a missed opportunity! (The Earl of Jersey inherited Osterley from the Child family when he married Sarah Sophia Fane, the first female grandchild of Robert Child, who owned Osterley, his only child was a daughter, also called Sarah, who had eloped to Greta Green to marry John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland. At that point Child cut Sarah and all her male descendants out of his will and it was left to Sarah’s eldest daughter, Sarah Sophia also known as Sally. (keen readers of Georgette Heyer will know her as Sally, Lady Jersey and one of the patronesses of Almack’s), my favourite of her nicknames is Silence…)
Cows
The house is very Georgian and quite imposing, you wouldn’t want to live there, but actually it wasn’t a house that was lived in much, it was visited and was a bit of a showhome for Child and Co Bank.
StaircaseMrs Child’s Sitting RoomThe Library
Because the house wasn’t much lived in, it wasn’t much changed, the Yellow Breakfast Room is currently being refurbished and research is being done to make sure it’s as much like it would have been after Adam finished the house. Meanwhile, it’s always fascinating to see old buildings stripped back to plaster.
The State rooms are typical of the period, ie ornate and not terribly comfortable!
Entrance Hall
Next door to the house, you can see the stables (where the cafe and the shop are!) and they are much more Tudor in appearance.
We wondered around the gardens and met a duck.
The Temple of Pan
The gardens were lovely, there’s a cut flower garden. They use the flowers in the house and the flowers they grow are era authentic. I recognised a lot of them from my plot, so there you have it, the plot is early Georgian era authentic!
Nic Dempsey 