Happy Friday! So it’s been a week. I’m working at home this morning and the afternoon off to sort my life out before the weekend hits and is full of allotment open day fun
So this what the flat looked like yesterday!
Here are this week’s links….
What Trump Did in Osaka Was Worse Than Lying. This sums up Boris Johnson pretty well too…
3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake. I’m still not pro monarchy but yes, it was.
I’m a civil servant – and we can’t make Boris Johnson’s no-deal fantasy into reality
Does Boris Johnson believe he can hoodwink the nation on Brexit? Yes, yes he does. This is the consequence of never, never having to face in any real way the damage that your behaviour causes. Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow but public school boys nowadays have all the confidence that they were born to run the country and no sense of responsibility or shame. Look at them. Cameron, Osbourne, Johnson, Rees-Mogg failing and just carrying on as if they didn’t no shame in any of them. Modern day Flashman’s the lot of them.
In praise of shame: how Trump and Johnson show we need it more than ever
Of all the hills to die on, why on earth has Labour chosen Chris Williamson?
Trump’s Dictator Envy Isn’t Funny Anymore
We laugh at Ivanka Trump – because to take her seriously is frightening
After urging land reform I now know the brute power of our billionaire press. I’ve seen the Telegraph’s coverage of the report promoted on Twitter and it is ridiculous.
Romance Novelists Write About Sex and Pleasure. On the Internet That Makes Them Targets for Abuse
What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse. As I get older, this increasingly feels true….
The Power of One Push-Up. I think that this month, I might start a push up challenge!
Just being Frank is a feelgood hit but will it win trophies for Chelsea?
For Smart Animals, Octopuses Are Very Weird
When I saw this flat I knew would be the right flat. Ma said that it was me as soon as she saw it, it has changed a bit, ten years in, I still haven’t got a decent wardrobe solution sorted out and it took me as many years to sort out decent kitchen chairs! I’m settled, I’m glad I’m here…
It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. There was weeding and harvesting to do. The only thing that really hadn’t survived was the cucumbers. I sowed some more seeds, but if they don’t take, we’ll just plant something else there!
At the courgette end, we now have six courgette plants (three striped and three yellow) and two crookneck plants. They are all looking ok and about to start producing, the yellow courgette have worryingly yellow leaves but are otherwise ok.
The uchiki kuri in the box obviously love their sheltered position and have gone mad and there is even a tiny squash ready to be fertilized, the other squash are growing but slowly.
The tomatoes are all still alive, but not flowering yet, we also have some voluntary nasturtiums next to one of the tomato beds. In fact I’m loving the amount of self seeded plants that are popping up in unlikely places. Aramanth, borage, coriander, rocket, the california poppies that didn’t ever seem to go away this year, there are also a couple of lemon balm and oregano seedings growing up at the edge of the plot near the courgettes. Next year I hope that we’ll add calendula to the mix too. We need to plant out the basil in those beds next week.
The summer raspberries probably had their time last week, and the autumn ones had a flush too but are also growing canes so I’ll expect them again in the next few months. The blueberries are all still alive and some are coming ripe. Five this week. This week’s soft fruit stars are the gooseberries, we picked nearly three kilos and there is more to come. They are eating gooseberries and so good, assuming I don’t eat them all straight from the bowl, I’m planning on at least one pot of jam and maybe some compote, some of them have already joined the raspberries in a granita.
The peas are all picked (nearly a kilo of them once Ma had podded them) and that bed is clear for a second sowing of beetroot, because we love beetroot. We picked 10 from the beetroot bed for eating and we’ll also use the greens as we would chard, which will keep us in greens until the chard starts again (we’ll sow that next week). The carrot bed is doing really well too, it’s the first year that I feel we done well with carrots, the ones in the enviromesh cloche have really done well, I think that they must be slightly warmer under it. That also gave us our first batch of pesto for the year, 8 pots and 2 jars.
The salad is doing well (I cannot say the same of the spinach!) and on the carrot and the salad bed, the row of sweet peas were looking lovely. We seem to have more ladybirds on the plot (I brought one home on my face!) and that so far seems to have seen off the greenfly. The other bed of sweet peas is also blooming and the celery in that bed seems to be doing well too. The french beans are still little but alive so I’m calling that good.
The potatoes had suffered a bit with the heat and me not being great at toping them up, so we decided to harvest four of them, we had loads (6 lbs) and the compost when straight into the empty bed near the shed, which will be full in a couple of weeks, when we harvest the remaining three bags.
The three sisters bed has sweetcorn and squash plants but there are a couple of gaps (foxes!) so we’ll see how it goes, in a couple of weeks, I’ll sow the borlotti beans and we’ll just hope for the best. There was a lot of weeding and feeding to do but I’m really loving the flowers (the day lily and carnations are both out, as well as the verbena and lavender) and the allotment looking productive again. We have six beds currently empty but have plans to fill them with leeks, fruit, chard, kale, beetroot, fennel and pak choi.
We have lots of weeding, sowing, picking, trimming and work to do next week but I’m feeling much happier about it. Amazing what a bit of sun will do!
Here are this week’s links
We didn’t count on me being miserable with cold. We left my flat about 10am on Thursday and arrived at the hotel about 2pm. We found the Askham Top park and ride into York and wondered around a bit. We found York Gin shop and bought some snacky bits for dinner. We got back to the hotel about 5-ish and that was me pretty much done for the night. 
The next day, we were up early and did the park and ride again. This time we had more of a walk around. 
From there we walked to the Minster and to 
It’s a contradiction of a house, it was bought by Frank Green in 1897, and was originally three houses, Green ‘restored’ it and he wanted it to look as though it had been there for a while and had gone through change. So there is a completely inauthentic Great Hall, where a copy of a Van Dyke of Charles I sits about a table owned by Oliver Cromwell’s aunt.
Green was rich and very odd (he didn’t like to see his servants or any dust, so every individual coal had to be wrapped in paper. He also used to inspect the drawers in the kitchen at night and pull everything out for the servants to do again if they weren’t arranged to his standards! It will come as no surprise to learn that he never married! The House was the first given to the National Trust with it’s collection. It was really interesting and I’m glad we got to see it.
After that, we wondered about a bit more and I bought a new shirt (I managed to spill coffee and egg yolk down the one I was wearing!) and Ma needed to buy wine for her holiday with the ladies so we did that and then as I was flagging, we went back to the hotel. I was in bed at 9pm (again).
I caught the train home on Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend working on feeling better and trying not to cough! Sick or not, I’m still me so I did buy some gin when I was in York but I haven’t had any yet. On Friday night I managed one premixed gin and tonic and then retired defeated, I don’t know who I am anymore!
Nic Dempsey 