Un-Seasonal Weather Affected Disorder

I have come to the horrifying realisation that I have a new illness which I have called USWAD or Un-Seasonal Weather Affected Disorder. Hence my lack of blogging recently; there is only so much rain and chilly days during what is meant to be Summer that a girl can take. My body thinks it's winter and I've been doing a lot of hibernating style activity (or non-activity as the case may be).

I have struggled on valiantly when that yellow orb does decide to appear and stuff has been happening at the lotties and indeed, in the back garden too. I just haven't bothered writing about it, for which I am truly sorry - I know you must all be so hungry for your Grow Our Own news ;) Before I tell you any more I would like to say a hearty Thank You for all the comments on the last post; it makes blogging so much more fun when I have interaction with my most gorgeous and intelligent readers.

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The allotments are still a mess and it is still depressing but as to your great ideas about resolving (or trying to resolve) the issue I must report with a heavy soul that it just isn't going to happen. We don't even have the collective ability to make a committee work, it was tried for 2 years and it failed. Monumentally failed. Embarrassing isn't it?! So we can't go to the council as a body and ask for the things we pay for to be done, we can't complain unless we all do it individually and to be honest, what councillor could possibly be bothered listening to so many moaners when they have proper work to do. Our Allotment Officer is over all the parks, countryside and the cemeteries. Bickering about so and so who has paid for their plot but isn't using it, it really the last of their worries.

But anyway, it's good to vent sometimes and I have a blog so... Thank you for listening.

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Last weekend we had a new family member born - eek! So we didn't get to the plots and instead I was fawning over my tiny little niece and getting all soppy. But the weekend before we worked HARD, really hard and it was brilliant. So permit me to share, possibly in a couple of posts as I don't want to bore the pants off you and you probably have Olympics to watch anyway ;)

Plot 24a
So I'll start with this plot and first just say YIPPPEEE! As we lifted the Garlic and they are fabulous. Eeek! Look, they were just getting rusty all over and we'd been eating some green and loving it so we knew they were ready.

Just drying them now in the shed - didn't bother with fancy plaits this year as in previous ones as we had so much other work to do.

Looky at the lettuces! We are inundated and have been eating so much too; there's not much more rewarding than walking past those sweaty bags of pre-washed ready to go bags of salad (which cost a fortune!) and instead eating freshly picked leaves which are or better quality and varieties that actually taste of something! Ummm, I do love my peppery leaves.

The Summer Raspberries are just going nuts as usual. I reckon we get about a 10% of the crop every year, hahaha, all those birds just get in there before us and fair play to them, we're just too slow. As part of a huge shake up in the lottie layout to come, these will be getting moved over to 14b so we have better access to them and they can romp away as they so wish.

Heartbreak alert! ~ After losing every cherry on the tree again (3rd year running) we lost about half of our 1st ever Victoria Plums. I think, I hope this is just the plant doing a 'drop' so it can concentrate on making the rest of the survivors succulent and delicious. You know, just like the 'June Drop' in Apples.

I'll leave it there you know, I have a lot of boasting to do and I would like to sit down and fully enjoy every moment of it - right now I am in a good bit of pain having fallen hard, flat on my face on Saturday in the town centre. I now have a very beautiful bashed up knee, toe and a sore everything all down my left hand side, sitting still for any length of time hurts.

But guys, I'm back and I shall be writing more often, that really was an unforgivable break in proceedings xxxx