Last Saturday, during an epic watering session of the plot (mostly of the squash!) Ma turned around and said we should put an area to sit in next to the rose garden and pond. That part of the plot gets lots of sun and we’ve done a lot to make the garden pretty so it makes sense.
Most of you will be aware that the weedfinder general is usually the brake on my crazy ideas, not this time…oh no, in the winter, we are planning on moving the two beds that currently have tomatoes in and making a long patio area that will cover that space.
We need to get through summer but the winter work list is growing, right now, we are making a seating area, moving three beds, moving the blackcurrants into two new beds, sorting out the back area to make it more composting friendly, maybe building some other beds, moving the gooseberries and making a frame for the boysenbery! (Place your bets on what we’ll actually get done – I’ve been planning to move those gooseberry bushes for 4 years!)
We made some other decisions this week too. We are getting rid of the summer raspberries. They are old and not very good in comparison to the autumn raspberries. so we are going to have four beds of autumn raspberries, three red and one yellow. Also we had a chat about our winter veg plans.
We have kale, leeks and cauliflowers in. I’ve sown chard. And next week I will sow fennel and pak choi (I really will – honest!) I also ordered 20 cabbages, 10 to go through the winter and 10 to stand and be ready in March. They’ll arrive in August and September when there are free beds. I’m not sure if there will be anymore space but if I can find some, I’ll also sow some swede, turnip and black radish. If I can’t, then I’m not going to worry about it too much. We are hoping for quite a bit of squash and I’m hopeful that we’ll get some sweet potatoes too!
We harvested the last potatoes, the apple (it’s a very early type) and the plums. You’ll also see the first courgettes, finally! and we’re a week away from crooknecks too. We might be a couple of weeks away from cucumbers too.
We’ve had more productive summers in terms of food but I haven’t had a season where I’ve done as much plot structure or weeding to do! We’ll come into our own in August!
Happy Monday! Today is going to be a good day because I get a haircut and I get to catch up with Jane! We also get a trip to Ikea which means that I get to sort out the cupboard of doom with uniform shelving. Look I’m 47 in 3-ish weeks, stuff like this is fun for me!
Having spend 99% of the last four months in the house, I’m much more aware of how I need the flat to function differently, so things are changing a little, starting with the cupboard. Before Autumn I need to change the living room to accommodate a desk and this is the start of that!
Other than today’s excitement, my week is going to be the usual work/allotment mix but with added exercise because the week long headache was not on! So more yoga more regularly although I’m told by Jo that daily PE with Joe has really helped!
It’s not Friday. I forgot to schedule this on Thursday night and on Friday morning, got up at ridiculous o’clock (5:30am) because I couldn’t sleep and had to go into the office. Basically, I needed to clear out my locker a couple of other people’s lockers, the stationary cupboard and chivy my boss into doing the same in his office. I have never met a bunch of horders like this audit team! Anyway, I was in at 8am, left at 10am, the tube was weird, wearing a mask sucks but not as much as dying or being seriously ill with COVID-19 would and it doesn’t make asthma any worse (if you use that as an excuse I will talk about how you’re completely wrong!). So far, despite our Prime Minister’s plea today to start commuting because if the economy fails he’ll stop getting donations to the Tory party, we are still working from home but the plan for 2020 was to move offices in September, that’s still happening so things need to be moved, I don’t think our London office will be open until the new one is ready to go and I honestly can’t see myself in the office for more than the odd day until there is a vaccine. It’s really strange how everyone apart from the government is worried about a resurgence of the virus. Maybe they want it to happen to distract from the looming disaster of Brexit?
End of the office: the quiet, grinding loneliness of working from home. Our team is all at the point where we’d like to redistribute our office time, so three days at home, two days in the office, even the ones with kids (although everyone is keen for schools and nurseries to re-open). But the youngest members of the team who are flat sharing are really keen to get back to the office. I’m looking at getting a desk for the living room because working in the kitchen (also the darkest room in the house) is going to be painful in the winter but I’d struggle if I needed to share my space as well!
Why it’s time to stop talking about English identity. I thought this was interesting, I’ve been arguing that the UK needs to federalise for years. All the home nations should have a parliament, with the parliament at Westminster, responsible for overall foreign policy etc. Not only would it be fair, in England it would stop the concentration of resources on London and the South East, an English Parliament should be in the middle of the country too (my vote would be Birmingham). Yes, I accept that at least at the beginning, it would mean that English govt would probably be right wing but I don’t think that would last forever, look at Scotland and the drift there as they’re had a devolved parliament. I don’t believe that everyone in England is right wing but I do think there is a sense of grievance about how we are viewed, it feels like the money comes from us, the regions don’t see the benefit and everyone hates us. This is not a formula for considered thinking but for the politics of resentment. If we had a devolved parliament and a fair financial settlement with the ability to spend that money on places other than London then I think we’d see a change. We’d have the chance to develop an English identity that includes all our history (good and bad) and all the people that live here.
I didn’t eat raw tomatoes until I was an adult. In my late thirties, I would occasionally eat a bruschetta but not very often. Then I got an allotment.
In my first year, I grew some gifted cherry plants and a couple of roma tomato plants.
And I ate my first raw tomato, a cherry tomato because cherry tomatoes are gateway tomatoes.
Over the last four years my tomato eating has evolved to homegrown only. I eat tomatoes I grow or that I know are grown at home. I eat cherry tomatoes but I really like big tomatoes, it was the black russian, gifted to me by my allotment neighbour that did it.
Most years I grow at least 30 plants, this year it’s 33, we grow a bed of cherry tomatoes and two beds of beefsteak/paste tomatoes. This year for cherry we are growing red pear and yellow delight, and for the others, a couple of amish paste and orange banana and cuore di bue and marmande.
My favourite part of the year is late August/September when I get to eat my favourite dinner of homemade bread and mayonnaise with my homegrown tomatoes.
I didn’t last year but sometimes I even get to preserve them.
I’m hoping to do that later on this year but at the moment I’m watching people in hotter climates or with greenhouses, eat their first tomatoes and I’m over a month away from eating any of mine! Which comprehensively sucks.
Yesterday, Ma and I went to West Ealing to buy tomato feed and walked through the farmers market and the Isle of Wight tomato people were there.
Reader, we spent a stupid amount of money for the best tomatoes, I’ve eaten that I didn’t grow myself. There is a picture below but please bear in mind we’d eaten about half of them by that point.
It’s Monday as I write this, all of the tomatoes have been eaten and I’m seriously considering ordering more and/or working out how many I could reasonably get away with buying next week.
Is anyone else struggling and out of sorts? I am, my boss is, most of the people at work are. It seems like everyone is feeling a bit discombobulated right now, for me it’s about things going back to normal but not going back to normal, the concept of the ‘new normal’ because of COVID-19 has been around a while but living it, is I think making people grumpy!
I had a good week, won the team quiz, worked on the plot, canned 14 jars of rhubarb for storing, it wasn’t the world’s most dynamic or most productive but I got to the end of it feeling ok about it.
This week, is going to be more of the same but I have been sleeping really badly so I really need to work on that but if I was boring before lockdown happened (I was) I’m just more boring now!
With the general relaxation of lockdown rules last Saturday, the allotment committee decided that people like my mum could come back in! Which we were both very excited about.
Four and a half hours on the plot and I finally felt like I was getting somewhere because I wasn’t worrying about the weeding and the jobs that needed to be done.
So I halved the old broad bean bed, fed and watered and tied up the tomatoes (again!), I got one side of the paths weeded (the battery ran out after that), I cut back the gooseberry bushes (they didn’t produce and they are going to be moved in about 3 months so I didn’t want them to get too out of control and I wanted to weed around them), we put the Grandparents ‘plague’ in the rose garden, I weeded the flower beds, the rose garden and around the apple tree.
It felt like loads but there is more to do. I’ve been feeling really behind on the plot this year, how behind well I don’t have courgette yet, but things are growing, this week, we got rhubarb, carrot tops for pesto, beetroots and blueberries. The first winter squash bed is really stretching out and the tomatoes are setting fruit, tiny fruit but they’ll grow…
I’ll be there tomorrow to have a quick check and pick some more blueberries but the next tranche of work begins on Saturday, when I might just finish this list!
cut the grass on the paths and at the back of the plot
pot up the calendula, replant some of it in the flower bed under the plum tree
I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks because it’s been pretty difficult to deal with the news. Anyway this weekend, we’re going to get some relaxation of rules because the death rate is down, whether it will stay that way is anyone’s guess, but if we are relying just on the common sense of the public, we’re buggered.
I got to see the nephews last week and after a pretty fraught week, today I get to see Hamilton and tomorrow Mum gets to come and be on the allotment and stay the night. These things make me happy.
The government’s treatment of Mark Sedwill has been cowardly and unfair. The Tories generally and Boris Johnson in particular are bullies and cowards, there be a few brave men and women of conviction amongst them but none in Govt. Johnson wouldn’t put up with it. This is a man who wanted to have a journalist beaten up.
This weekend, Ma and I went to Shefford. It rained but it was lovely to see the family. Since we last saw them, L’s nan has died and B has been in hospital for a non-COVID issue so it was nice just to confirm that everyone was well.
I did some allotment time this weekend but rain stopped play twice! After the mini heatwave during the week, the weather has become very ‘British’ and there’s been lots of showers.
Other than that, I ran the team quiz on Friday (so I couldn’t win) but it’s pretty much been life as normal (for COVID).
Plans for this week are really exciting! I need to do a bunch of ironing and hoovering, work on the plot and do a bunch of actual work (the kind that pays me!)
Good news is that Ma can come back to do the weeding at the weekend, we are both very happy about that!
