This summer has been warm and I’m a fat woman of a certain age, while I don’t suffer from hot flushes, I do run hot and I struggle once I’m warm to cool down especially on the bus. At some point it was inevitable, and I bought a mini fan. This one.
It has been the best thing I’ve purchased for the commute to the office and the bus journey to Mum’s, even though it’s October. The Guardian had a list of the best ones (here) and if like me you are hot all the time and not in a good way, you should get a mini fan.
As you look at it from the main path, the left side of the allotment is a bit neglected, this is the side that is home to the pond and ‘rose garden’, it looked like this in 2022
It does not look like that anymore. The plan for that side of the plot is still good, but from the rosemary up to the back of the plot its a mess, so much grass. The raspberries have invaded the little iris patch and one of the roses has gone insane. There is grass everywhere and it needs work.
We won’t talk about how I meant to get to it in summer, that didn’t happen. So it needs some attention, I’ve done a lot of work this year to give the plot more perennials (strawberries, dahlias, lingonberries, the asparagus patch) and some of that work will continue, I would like a perennial leek bed established but we’ll see if I can get to that! However, I think my plan for the left hand side of the plot will work, if I can get it sorted. Let me tell you about the plan.
First the iris patch. I need to dig it all out, weed the grass and the raspberries out and replant any of the remaining irises that have survived. I’ve also got a bunch of dutch iris bulbs to plant there and because I’d like to have some to cut for mum in the spring.
Iris patch in 2023
I also need to sort out the raspberries, get the tables down and generally tidy the main path there.
Then the roses and the lavender. cut things back, weed, mulch – you know the drill. I think I’m going to take up rose at the front of the bed by the alpine strawberries because as the photo shows, it’s overwhelming everything. I have loads of alliums to plant around the remaining roses, and I’d like another yellow rose because they are my favourite! I bought two climbing roses this year, and I need to plant them, I’m thinking that at one end of this area, I’ll put an arch in and let them climb up it. There is already lavender in the bed that I shall trim. I’ve taken cuttings lavender so if I need to replace any in the spring, I’ll have them. As I clear up towards the pond, I’ll see what has survived the grass. There was oregano, knautia, verbena, hyacinth, bluebells and various thymes.
May 2023
Above is what was intended to be the second bed for winter squash and it hasn’t been grown on since 2024 and it’s completely overgrown. This year I cut it all down and covered it. My plan is that this is going to be another fruit area. I have a bunch of trees in pots now and some more to come (when they all arrive, I’ll have 4 cherries, 3 apricots, 1 peach, 2 figs and what I think is pear tree.) I also have a bay tree two bitter oranges that are supposed to be hardy, I also have a lemon tree but that is not hardy so will be moved in and out of the house. Yes, yes I am a plant slut…
This year after I cut the grass down and covered the bed
My plan is that I’m going to take the bed out because it’s ropey (of course it is, I built it!), dig it over and bury the pots (all 10 of them), so the trees will be removable but look like they are in the ground, the hope is that burying them will keep the need to water them down and it’ll look good. I was also given some grape vines and I have two kiwi bushes, they’ll go into this area too. On the ground, I’ll plant herbs and flowers. In my head I’m calling this the ‘mini orchard’ which is pretentious but there you go.
May 2023
Then finally the back bed, which had a peony, lovage, lavender and two of the roses. Behind it is the boysenberry, which has more or less taken over and is invading the polytunnel!
So the plan is to cut the boysenberry right back, so that I can better control the regrowth. then to see what’s still alive in the front. I don’t have a planting plan for that so we’ll see.
This is the plan, I have to do as much of it as I can before the garden waste bin collection stops for the winter in the last week of November so seven Sundays. It’s big. And there is other work that needs doing, the polytunnel needs a new cover. Beds need to be cleared and sorted (I’m down to my last 4 bags of compost from the massive delivery in spring), there is always something to do so it’s going to be a busy winter!
This week, I got eight glorious hours on the plot this weekend. Most of my time was spent on paths, which is high effort but low impact work. These paths didn’t get properly weeded and wood chipped last year and it really shows in how badly the weeds have taken hold. I use woodchip on the paths, in part because it helps improve the soil, I can see how much better the soil is on the paths compared to how it was when I first started, but the downside of that is that seeds want to grow in the improved soil! So ideally, I need to keep on top of the weeds AND I need to cardboard and woodchip every year. Because I’ve not been on top of anything at the plot this year, the grass has gone mad in the paths. I did this to myself!!
Tidy paths from the polytunnel to the patio
To start, I planted my new fig tree. Hello, little fig tree!
I now have two fig trees, I have three more fruit trees arriving in November (a cherry, an apricot and a peach) and then I am done and I can’t buy anymore until I the plot sorted although my Mum would say that I need to stop entirely and she’s probably right!
Then I really wanted to sort the cinque foil on the paths and there was wood chip so I started on the first path.
It’s not great
That done I took a rest and sorted out the bed, clearing the beans and stray potatoes, weeding, and cutting the dead flowers off the marigolds. I also emptied two pots that used to have mint in them and hadn’t really been used this year. The compost went onto the bed and then it was back to paths. So I got two of the side paths, cleared, cardboarded and woodchipped.
Reset bed
I got then got side tracked by the patio area where the grass had taken over again. So I decided to weed the main path that the two paths I’d already sorted. That let to me moving paving stones to get the grass growing it the cracks.
The green patch left is chamomile lawn and supposed to be there!
That done, I didn’t have much more time. I did a quick weed and woodchip top up of the small path by the asparagus patch.
I trimmed the dahlias, picked tomatoes and lettuce and then pushed the very full weed bin home!
Assuming there is still woodchip next weekend, I’m going to continue with the paths. I’m also going to try and plant up some beds, and clear and cover some others.
These two side paths and the semi empty bed and the strawberry bed!
After that, I’ll need to weed the front again and finish off what I started last month and maybe start some of the really big work that I’ll talk about tomorrow!
Last Monday marked eight years since my last day at Elexon. I hated the job and while I liked some of my colleagues, overall it wasn’t great, I was made redundant and the pay off was good enough that it would have been stupid to refuse even though I was worried about how easy it would be to find something else. I took Mum to lunch when the redundancy money came in, had a few months off, got a temp job in December and survived. Just as I was coming to the end of the money, I got a job at my current firm and 5 months in moved to Internal Audit. For the first time in my working life, I feel like my skills are appreciated and appropriate. As life changes up again, I’m so lucky that the work culture means that I have the support and flexibility in my role to also be able to support Mum and do my job.
At Mum’s I sleep in the living room on a airbed, it was what I slept on when my kitchen was being sorted in 2022 and it’s ok although putting it up and down every day is a hassle. This week, the airbed decided it had had enough and I woke up with my bum on the floor but with legs and head in the air and it felt like the airbed and the duvet when trying to eat me. After some discussion, we’re going to try something else for my sleep options..
Imagine me in the middle of it!!
This week, Ma and I went to her doctor’s to discuss a care plan. We sorted her PoA out in the summer and Mum has always been really clear about what she does and doesn’t want and the PSP diagnosis has not in anyway changed her mind. So I’ve always known and supported her wishes (anyway a PoA isn’t about what I want, it’s about Mum). Which is why I was very surprised to find myself crying as I watched Mum very clearly set out what how she wanted to be treated. All of this is all of this is appalling and sad and hard and yet again Mum, as she always has, is showing me how to do hard things with grace and love and bravery. The doctor said this was one of the best conversations about this that he’d ever had, which is good because I know it’s his job but it must suck to have to have conversations like that as part of your job, I’ll stick to what I do!
I finally have a lemon tree, it came with lemons! Yes I do want another but I’m going to practice restraint. But if anyone wants to buy me something for Christmas…you know what to do!
I was over enthusiastic at the plot yesterday. Eight hours. It was absolutely good for the plot and my mental health but there had been a distinct lack of rest in my week which I think is why I had a migraine in Sunday night. It also wasn’t something my back was happy about. List of yoga stretches in my life this week!
My parents had pretty different music taste. Ma did early Beatles and Motown, Dad did Rod Stewart and the more hippy stuff. So travelling in the car was interesting musically.
They did agree on Don McLean (there were others and I will get to those.. I did not as a general rule, but how often do the tastes of a teenager coincide with their parents?. I am so pleased that American Pie is the song they could always agree on and which I’ve known all the words to as long as I can remember but the rest of Don McLean did not do it for me.
I have a theory that the first version of a song that you hear is generally ‘the version’ of that song that you carry. My version of Crying, which I know is a Roy Orbison song, is the version by Don McLean (and the only version to get to No1 in the UK). I know it’s not the original and I don’t care, if I think of this song, it’s this version.
And it’s been an earworm this week, so now it’s yours
Labour just doesn’t get it: workers feel poorer than ever. Is it any wonder Reform is rising? I do disagree about the Tommy Robinson marchers, they are not some naïve innocents who just want things to change, they are racists. There has been enough out there about Stephen Yaxley Lennon and his views to know that he’s a rabble rousing racist, preaching about England while living abroad (you know what they call people who do that – immigrants) with an Irish passport. There is nothing wrong with having an Irish passport or living abroad but doing so while shouting about English and British culture I think the word I’m searching for is hypocrite. Anyway, the point I’m making is that if you choose to be part of the rabble, then you are being racist. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the chances of it being a chicken are remote….I guess it could be a swan…
Dorset school urged to reinstate banned book about race to reading list. This is wrong. What the school should have done is offered the complaining parent a class in reading comprehension because I’ve read ‘The Hate U Give’ and that is not what the book does or is about at all. Honestly as a Tory councillor he should approve of the parents in the book, the father is a reformed gang member who runs the local shop in the community they live in, which is poor and black community but, at great personal sacrifice, send their children to a private school for a better education, what could be more Conservative? And if you haven’t read it do and then buy copies for children you know, it’s a great book.
Can the Trump Peace Plan Overcome Unprecedented Cruelty? Thomas Friedman is so wrong. I pray for peace in Gaza every day but this plan designed with little to no input from actual Palestinians anywhere, is not going to bring it about. Netanyahu talks from both sides of his face and won’t ever let any of this work (can we please remember that Hammas was in part funded by the Israelis as a counter to the Palestinian Authority.) Finally, threatening a people with more violence and death if they don’t capitulate to your demands isn’t peace, its surrender. If you want them to surrender say that but Hammas are terrorists and much like the Stern Gang before them that we
Ma has been signed off by the reablement team and Adult Social Services has said that she doesn’t meet the standard for carers, unless I withdraw support, which I’m not really going to do. So Ma and I are getting ourselves into a groove. I come to hers on Tuesday night and stay until Friday morning. I get Friday at home and go back to hers on Saturday for housework and prep. Then Ben comes on Sunday to see her and she has Monday by herself.
It’s not entirely a logistical nightmare and I’ve talked about doing meal prep for Ma but what I eat is a work in progress, this is what I ate last Thursday!
Morning food at Mum’s is very like morning food at my house. I take my apple cider vinegar and supplements (a multi vitamin, vitamin D, Omega 3, sea moss, a probiotic, agnus castus) the ACV is from Willys, Ma and I both drink and (suprisingly) enjoy it. The claims for what daily ACV can do for your health are fantastical, all I know that since I started drinking it my heartburn has gone (heartburn is something I always used to get with PMT and at peri menopause all the damn time, no changes to my diet helped, I had it when I didn’t drink for a month, when I fasted. It was grim and after 4 days of ACV in the morning stopped.) Mum is convinced it helps with her hands and it’s a useful way for both of us to get a pint of water into our bodies first thing in the morning.
Breakfast this morning (as it is most mornings for me) greek yoghurt, fruit – strawberries today, a tablespoon of jam and homemade granola. There was a pot of coffee, which has my collagen (this one) in it. I think the possible benefits of collagen for menopausal women has been covered elsewhere, it’s not recommended by the NHS but I think there are benefits and it’s not doing any harm. Yes there is more water because hydration is important!
I did some work until Mum got up and we did her exercises and had her breakfast and coffee. Then I worked for the rest of the morning. At lunchtime, I popped to the Sainsburys local for ham and coleslaw, which was part of lunch.
Lunch
A ham and coleslaw sandwich (I made the roll) cucumber, carrot and a pepper.
‘Pudding’ was grapes and salt and vinegar corn
I did have a fudge at about 3pm when energy was flagging
Dinner was pasta
And another fudge for afterwards
And that was a day of food, it was pretty normal with the exception of the two fudges!
The weather was great on Saturday but by the time I got to the allotment on Sunday, it was raining. I did allotment in the rain but by the time I was finished, and I had to go, the rain had stopped. I didn’t really do anything on my list.
First up I had a lovely surprise, my friend Jude had weeded around my gooseberries, as discussed last week, that area needs a thorough weed and clear before I plant the new gooseberries (we’ve bought them but they haven’t arrived yet!) so this was an absolute gift! I did see her to thank her personally it really was the best thing to see on a rainy Sunday!
Look how lovely that looks
I’ve had a not great growing year and one of my real points of failure has been kale, I’ve killed so many kale plants I’ve stopped counting but it’s been more than 20!! I really like kale, so I wanted to get what I have left alive in the ground. I know where it needs to go but I hadn’t got around to sorting it out it was going to be my end of August task and that didn’t happen. So I wanted to do it on Sunday.
However, my brain took one look at the path next to the bed that also weedy and needed to sort that too! and decide to weed that too. So I weeded the path and topped up the woodchip.
Bed before
I weeded the bed, watered the bed, (which is an odd thing to do in the rain, but the soil is still quite dry) and added compost to the bed and then I planted probably slightly too many kale plants. I think they are cottagers’ kale and cavolo d’nero but like a lot of the allotment beds this year, it’ll be an experiment.
Bed after
That didn’t leave me with much time and I was quite wet, I weeded the new lavender bed and the lingonberry bed and then I did some harvesting. tomatoes, cabbages and chard. I also pulled up some borage plants that were in the paths.
The paths are getting really overgrown again, it’s my fault the grass is running wild and I have not been on top of it, I was thinking about why it’s so bad now and then I remembered that I’ve lost my weeder in chief! It’s going to take a lot of work to get it back under control. The thing I’m most concerned about is the cinque foil on the right hand side of the plot as it’s really nasty and I just can’t dig it up enough and it’s started to move into the beds, which I can’t have and won’t spray.
Cinque foil
In consultation with my plot neighbour on that side I’m going to do something I’ve never done before, and use weed killer. I’m going to paint the leaves with it and then I’m going to cover with cardboard and a very thick layer of woodchip and see if that’s enough to kill it off. It’s not ideal and if I had more time or easier to deal with weeds, I would do something different but I am already dealing with rampant couch grass and bindweed, I just can’t add another one to my plate. I need the allotment for peace and mental health and getting this weed sorted will help me.
There is still so much to do but I’m chipping away at it! Definitely on the list for the weekend is sorting out the blueberries, they need weeding, topping up with compost and strulching. The lavender needs trimming and I want to take cuttings of it too. Once the fruit cage is tidy and where there are no plants, wood chipped to help with weed suppression. It’s time to sort the path by the last untidy tomato bed. As cool as it’s been this week, it may be time to clear that bed. I have plants that can go in there.
More path clearing!
There is loads of woodchip right now so if I can clear the paths I can top them up to help with weed suppression.
There is lots to do but by November I’d like to be working on clearing up the middle section of the plot. It’s good to have goals!!
If you are going to send flowers to a sick friend, possibly one who has just been given life limiting diagnosis that is not pleasant (like say PSP) maybe don’t send dried flowers. Do you want to remind them of dead, withered things? I know the gesture was kind and well meant but it did seem a bit off!
This chair has made me happier than any further should! (And yes that is a glass of prosecco next to my mum, she can drink what she likes and I’m here to stop her falling over!
I’m not enjoying autumn, it gets dark at 7:15pm and I’m unhappy about it (and even more unhappy about it being dark in the morning) I am trying to take what joy is available in autumn but this morning’s walk to the station was one of them.
Autumn morning
It rained all the way through my allotted allotment hours yesterday but I did manage to get the kale planted!
Kale
This week I was sorting out something for mum and cam across my school reports, the themes are clear, ‘reads all the time even when she should be doing something else, struggles to know when to stop talking and lacks motivation to do things she’s not interested in’. Things change but the are always the same!
This has been the earworm of September so time to put it here. The only grip I have is that you pull the petals off of daisies not daffodils but who knows what Americans do….
