Andrew's solo lottie sojourn with a camera

Well as you know I haven't been the best (thank you everyone for your lovely comments - I have the most bestest followers ever!) so Andrew took the camera at my request when he went to check up on the lottie on night. Here is the joy he brought back.....it was great to feel up to date with pictures, not only a brief summary.

Firstly Andrew visited our 14b plot  :)

looks productive and quite tidy!



beautiful sweet williams








 

climbing brolitti beans and runner beans

broad beans grown well



Then over to 24a :)

the salad bar and a sneaky blueberry pot



the 2 sister approach to sweetcorn and squash growning





 

the main crop spuds



 autumn raspberries and the friut tree sromping away :)



 

Then he crossed over to the other side of the field were a small gathering of men were cooking their amazing catch of mackrel, plucked from the sea at Whitehead. Well done boys! With a master butcher on hand they were gutted with precision and smoked  - Andrew had a little and said it was good, this little pup would no doubt agree :)

To me this is exactly what allotment commaraderie is all about - forging friendships, hanging out together and eating good fresh food you have grown and as in this occasion caught yourself. What a great little party.



the great onion challenge

So it all started when Bill grew some 'Kelsae' onion seeds and each participant was given 6 seedlings each, all from that one batch. They were planted and then the secrets began, the 'special' fertilisers that people won't share, the fleece to protect them, the placement of the seedlings and what soil they were put in and goodness knows - the type of persuasive loving chats that each person has with their potential winners?, I wouldn't be surprised.

Oh I love the camaraderie of it all, the sneeky glances and the questions over whether the prize should go to the biggest one, or the heaviest one. Do they need to be trimmed and tied up according to the RHS show rules and more importantly -WHO exactly is the judge going to be???

There are far more people involved in this challenge than I have photos for and you will notice I have taken the pictures from different angles and some are close ups - just so you can't tell for sure whose looks best.

The big day must be coming up soon but this is a boy's game and I'm just watching from the side lines (though of course I know where my loyalties lie, haha).

Any tips for making your onions big and heavy (without cheating!) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks xx

Oh and the prize? some beer probably, a WEE CUP! and the knowledge amongst the lottie community that yes, you were the best in 2010!!

Dougie's

Our's (the best maybe, hehehe)

Stephen's ~ one of which is stuck in the yellow tube and is now a leek of sorts instead :)

Ronnie's

Colin's (he has a cheeky hidden one too that is rather big)

Bill's

News just in : there are 2 sections to this competition.

1- the biggest (weight) onion

2- the best pair (closest matching) out of the 6.

The competition is fierce my friends and I shall of course cover the big day for you. Including an interview with the winner perhaps!!

Calling occupants of Earth!!

DO YOUR PLANET PROUD AND PLANT A TREE!

I've been terrible and forgot to talk about National Tree Week which runs every year. This year it's from 25th November (way back on Wednesday!) to the 6th December (this Sunday). So there is still time to do your bit ~ plant a tree or six and enjoy the trees all round us, with out them, well, we'd be dead probably!!

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For those of you reading this humble blog and are who are Eden Lottie Holders ~ tomorrow at 11am, we are planting trees at the allotment gardens with the Conservation Volunteers. It's part of the Breathing Spaces Tree O' Clock event and if we try hard enough we could even break a world record for the most number of trees planted in 1 hour. Now there's a challenge for you.

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I really urge you check out the website highlighted, it tells you all about native UK trees (and international trees, if you want to take part where ever you are) and how to plant them. Very important to plant a tree properly, otherwise, what's the point! So read over that, even if you've planted many a tree before and brush up on the best techniques.

Remember that every day loads are cut down; venerable trees older than us that have witnessed the pasting of history that we only get to read about, ironically on the paper they sacrifice for us.

Therefore - Hug a tree tomorrow too, why not? - that's my challenge to you all.

Trees....bloody brilliant!!

Pumpkin carving and concussion

Halloween, what a day. Pity I can't remember the second half of it.

We did some errands in the morning and headed to the lottie at what we thought was 2pm but later released it was 1pm (Andrew was wearing a watch for a change and hadn't put it back the hour from last week!). We had been to Tesco* and got a pumpkin and a few packets of crisps and drinks etc and were ready for a Halloween/Autumn clear up day.

Andrew did the clear up bit, I on the other hand was too super excited to have my very first pumpkin to carve. When we were growing up all us N. Irish kids had to carve turnips for Halloween (HARD work) and not that enjoyable actually, no wonder I only did it a few times. You see, back then it was mighty difficult to get hold of a pumpkin here, this year we were surrounded by them. There is no way on this Earth that I would EVER carve (and waste) a pumpkin of this size had we grown it ourselves, but we didn't so I went at it with a swiss army knife and a lot of glee.

Half an hour later and pumpkin innards galore and this was the result - a pumpkin so scared of Halloween that it had puked all over the place. I was very proud.

It was raining off and on quite heavy and was cold but there was going to be a lottie gathering to celebrate the year and bbq's were lit (with blowtorches, haha, the weather was just not co-operating) so we wanted to hang around. Really, we couldn't be bothered digging and weeding etc so instead we gathered up a load of produce and had ourselves a Harvest bench celebration. Look at that bounty!! I'll talk more about what's there during the week and just how proud of our leeks I am.

Wendy (my best friend) came down to visit for the first time. Which was great.

'Really!' you say, 'the very first time?!'.

'Yes', I say, 'she is a super busy girl and rarely gets time to visit lotties'.

'That is sad', you say.

'I know.... ', I say (shakes head in pity).

We sat round the wood stove and had a good chat then went over to get a hot dog and listen to a bit of a sing-song at the BBQ area. It was fab, really fab. There was a great wee atmosphere even though few people had braved the weather, the sausages were cooked wonderfully (thank you Billy Dick) and the guitar was played perfectly by Ricky, even if he didn't know any of the words. Hahaha, we all just da da dee deee daa dee-ed our way along!

'The beast' - massive version of our wood stove - note full moon too!!!

Back at the shed it was time to gather up our harvest and poke around with our own stove; such heat - lovely. Fireworks began in the town and echoed around the lough and that was the end of the fun for Maggie, she hid in the shed, a pitiful sight poor thing, she really couldn't hide in a corner enough; it was time to go home. On the walk up to the car I got this great photo of Wendy and shortly after slipped and fell on some muck that's been churned up and re-seeded with grass. I've fallen here twice before, the soil has a lot of clay in it and it is very slidey. Well this time I supposedly hit the ground 'with a fair whack' according to Andrew and Wendy (I prefer to think it hit me, I'm the innocent party here!) and knocked myself out. Boy, the rest of the night is something of a mystery and yesterday my back was so painful I could barely walk. Still feeling concussed today and therefore confused and very tired but I'm fine. Great memories for Wendy on her first visit!


* may be evil ~ still to be confirmed

Tomorrow, tomorrow, it's only a day away.....

The Family Fun Day is tomorrow. Oh, I hope it's a good one. Andrew was a committee meeting through the week and I think the vibes are good. I think we have almost everything ready to go. Here are some things left to do:

1. Start gathering up other Eden lottie folk's produce for the Association stall. We starting that tonight, oh, I do hope people are generous and give what they can.


2. Get hold of newspaper to wrap up veggies in to sell, oh, crap AND bags from somewhere AND I wanted to pretty up the jam jar tops with quaint material and raffia...


3. Stop constantly checking the weather forecast and just try to believe the man when he says, "Saturday in Northern Ireland is shaping up to look like a nice day". We have clear skies and a lovely symbols saying 14 and 18 (meaning degrees) for the morning/afternoon.


4. Try not to think about the fact that we have our Dublin Allotment friends coming up to see us on the same day!!! They will need to be treated like stars and shown a really good time and we must smile through any fun day disasters in front of them.


5. Tidy up our plots!!!! Good grief the amount of weeds and dead leaves on A24a and A14b are ridiculous; shame on us.

So, Andrew is rushing home from work today and we're collecting things from people (He was on the phone doing committee stuff last night, I try to stay out of private phone calls but he was sitting right beside me and had turned the TV to mute - what was I to do? Stick my fingers in my ears and hum? In my own house! ~ never) on the way to the lotties, where we'll hopefully be collecting other stuff from other people.

Golly, are 'fun days' always so stress filled? Kind of goes against the whole ethos, eh? Ah well the day itself should be great fun, everyone welcome, don't forget 12 - 4 pm. It's going to be, quite frankly, the party place to be seen at.

Moving on...for now

I am literally sitting here with the words 'mutton dressed as lamb' and scary images of clowns wearing all that ghastly make-up whorlling through my head. Why? Because of my new background. Oh, really I can change it back or start all over again. (I roll my eyes heavenward and ask 'why?, why tamper with something that wasn't broken').

But I must move on and I really couldn't wait (before I went on a design madness trip) to tell you about last night's little jaunt to the Lotties. Andrew had some more leaflets about the family fun day and our association stall to hand out/pin on sheds. We're just hoping the good folk of the lotties will donate a little something to the Association stall to sell to our visitors on the big day. It's next Saturday by the way (8th August) and you'll all welcome; if you're coming from afar I'll put you up in my wee house, as long as you spend money at the day and bring your own sleeping bag!!!

Anywho, the reason I wanted to write about it was because I was so happy with the responses we got. Everyone is now getting more interested in the fact that we're having visitors and a BBQ, stalls, a brass band and a petting zoo etc. They want their plots to look good and some have even been thinking of fun ideas themselves. It's a great little community spirit - the only thing that could dampen it would be the weather and that, unfortunately, may be the case. For instance I am sitting here in my living room with a long sleeved top on, jogging bottoms and a blanket over me, and a coffee in my hand tucked up tight against my chest (my glasses are steaming up intermittently but it's a price I'm willing to pay ~ it has been pouring for hours and the wind is fierce and it's making me feel cold. Maggie refuses to go outside, even though I'm pretty sure she must need a pee by now. She doesn't do bad weather, hahaha, a dog that lived on the streets, I've turned her into a softy.

Anyway, a great big virtual hug to all my fellow allotmenteers and fingers crossed we'll have a good day.

Plus if you don't like the new blog background blame Elle May's Mum, she started it. I love the look of her blog and wanted to be like her.

Little acts of kindness

At the weekend (I have a good bit to write about this week) there were a few random acts of kindness around the lotties, a lovely community spirit.

Firstly Gary's plot was all strimmed down and then mown for him by Bobby, Doug and Andrew. It was hard work and took a couple of hours for the 3 of them but they didn't complain and threw themselves into the task. The sun was blazing on them as well and it was tiring just to look at them. I didn't help because the grass was over my knee height and in flower, my hay fever was bad enough over on my own plots with all that pollen flying around! Through my hay fever meds are a godsend to be fair, sometimes they are just pushed to the limit, hahaha. Hopefully Gary won't find the sight of his plot too heart wrenching now when he gets back, his work has been sending him off to Scotland recently.

Then there was the happy news that we have more preserves being made by Ronnie and Bill's lovely wife and set aside for our stall on the fun day. Andrew and I spent hours making chutney on Friday night (I'll tell you about it tomorrow), so we know only too well how much effort goes into producing stuff and then there is the added knowledge that it isn't all for you to eat!!!

We were given lots of unwanted pavers on Sunday for free for the second plot. They're great quality and a good size but I'll leave that for another day too.

Lastly I was given the most beautiful bouquet of sweet peas, completely out of the blue by Donald. How nice was that?!!! Take note my love, another man giving me flowers! Donald's sweet peas are fabulous, so many colours and the plants are huge, tall and heavy with flowers; after I was given that delicious smelling bunch I was spurred on to gave my much smaller and less productive plants a good feed ;)

My depression was horrendous over the weekend, it helped being down at the lotties on Saturday and keeping myself very busy. I worked so hard and you probably wouldn't even notice ~ don't you just hate that! But Sunday I couldn't even go at all. I sat all dressed to go but couldn't leave the house. How can I hurt so much when there is no wound to heal?

Today is another BAD day so I'm off now to try and calm down on the sofa. Been depressed and uber panicky since I woke up and shaking even with a good dose of meds. Taken a little extra and hoping for peace soon, I find this all very distressing and frightening. I'm tired.

It's a lovely day outside and Maggie is sunning herself on the bench in the back garden; she's such a cutie.



Thank you all for the continued support and kind encouraging words x

other people's plots and produce to be jealous about

I love my friends in field A, they are approachable, funny and passionate about the lotties, blah blah, blah. But sometimes I tell you, they grate on my nerves! Just look at some of the great plots and fab produce they are growing. One person even has a pumpkin (the darn plants just WILL NOT fruit for us ~ conspiracy??) and look at Ronnie's onions drying~they are huge and just perfect. (I'm not that jealous about this though as onions and I have a very bad relationship - they make me very ill).

That broccoli head is massive, the photo doesn't really show that.

Overview photos are of Mary, Colin and Bobby's plots (just a few great ones).......

Down at the lotties last night was very disheartening as the wind, the damn wind!, was blowing a gale in our field; battering some plants to actual death on our new plot 14b. It's because we haven't got any wind breaks up yet in that plot and the site as a whole has no shelter, especially after the disastrous hedge 'trim' (read 'massacre') we had recently.

Ah well, I am really happy that my friends are doing so well, honestly. After all it isn't a competition.

However! I do have this ......

and that trumps everything everyone could grow!

So then, the AGM.... (plus Andrew is 30 today!)

First of...

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY ANDREW!!!!

BIG HUGS AND KISSES XXX

Oh, it's such a beautiful day today, the sun is bursting and there is just the slightest comfortable breeze off the sea. Heavenly. I wish I was outside writing this in the back garden but my hay fever meds from the Dr take a week to kick in and I only got them on Monday - no fair! Plus there are people mowing their grass and making it even worse - how rude!!!

So I want to tell you about our AGM last night. Officially you could say it was the 1st one, as last year there were only a few of us and now our number has about trebled! Of course it was held on the most glorious of nights and we should all have been tending our plots but such is life.

I was both happy and as usual, disappointed at the turn out. A lot more people than usual gathered (but then again we are a bigger group) but it was still only a fraction of our number. We (after much confusion and changing of the constitution to fit our needs better) elected our new committee members. We have 16 this year as opposed the the 10 we had before. I think it's probably a good idea; little sub groups can be made to focus on certain tasks and more voices = more opinions, ideas and hopefully fair decision making.

We chose our 4 main guys:

• Chairperson ~ Ronnie
• Vice Chairperson ~ Mel
• Secretary~ Austin
• Treasurer ~ Ivan.

Then there are the other 12 (including the Hubby).

Personally I think we have a good bunch of people and I wish them all the luck in the world. Red tape is my mortal enemy and they are going to have to deal with yards of it! A spiders web.r

The meeting somewhat descended into chaos and a shouting match, reminiscent of a school playground. Many people started to get, umm, passionate and this came across as anger and almost a bullying undertone began against our allotment council official. I'm afraid to say it was all very embarrassing and quite childish. We were all there to work together and make this the best Allotments we can and sometimes passions run so high we lose sight of the joy that we have an allotment in the first place. Yes, most of the arguments and comments were valid but I believe a calm head is required at these meetings or progress will never happen. Plus, there is no excuse for bullying at any time what so ever, no matter how frustrated we may get.

Anyway, the tensions calmed down and now we have some very confusing and upsetting questions cleared up and I think everyone left the meeting feeling a bit better and maybe reassured. Mistakes have been made by the council but they excepted that and no one is being evicted as they had feared. Mistakes have been made on our part too and I think, I hope we have a clean slate now.

Next event we have to look forward to is the family fun day and I know we'll all work together for that. We all care about our plots, we all care, that's the important thing.

The Artistry of Allotmenteering

I love looking around the other plots on our site, they are each so very different. It is like giving a large group of people their own empty white room and access to whatever furniture, material and paint etc they desire - it is an expression of who you are; your personality comes through and it is a joy to see; there is practically unlimited potential. We aren't all graduates from some fancy Horticultural school and I think it is all the more pleasurable for that; the quirkiness, the plonk-it-in-and-see-what-happens sentimentality, the way your mind thinks outside the box and every skip you drive past could have the perfect piece of 'rubbish' that you need!

Andrew and I are very plain to see in our plot layouts. Andrew did more of 24a at the beginning than me as I had NO confidence at all but it slowly grew into 'ours'. This time 14b seems to be a little more me at the moment (well so Andrew said as he praised me for the design so far on Sunday) and I find that very interesting. Yes, I knew that garden designing was an art form (just look at all the fuss over Chelsea the past couple of weeks) but to me Allotments were always strips of productive land that you grew veg on, productivity being the key. They are so much more than that, my eyes are open now.

So with this in mind I would like to introduce you too Mary and Phil, both of whom were working on their individual plots all day, like us, on Sunday. They're very different but both deserve a lot of praise and I have photos to prove it......

Mary has always had a lovely half plot, feminine and neat. She puts a lot of love into her piece of Eden and I always find something to take a photo of that just looks prefect no matter the time of year. In fact on Friday night past I took a picture of her plot thinking it looked lovely, only to find that it was even prettier on Sunday as she had whipped out the paint brush and tackled her shed. So cute, I love the icy blue colour. I bet someone could study people's sheds and give a full psychological work up of the individual. Plus, Mary is sensible and eloquent, a real asset to the Lottie Community meetings and full of praise for everyone who works hard. (I am not a sycophant, really, I'm just telling it as it is).

Phil, you may remember from a recent post - he is the mysterious and generous 'book giver'. Remember my detective work, or lack there of, hehe? He was done so much hard work over the past few weeks and really turned around an over grown, tired plot into something that looks full of live and new promise (my photos do it no justice). He also has finally got that darn shed together, the weather was not on his side over the winter and the wind was particularly cruel (bits of shed all over the show, not a happy time). It's also been really pleasurable to see his wife come down more often with a flask of tea and his son showing an interest too. Sometimes I wonder how people work their Lotties alone, I need that interaction with Andrew to really appreciate what we've done.

Phil is also good at identifying bugs - goodies and nasties. Which is very valuable really and something I'll talk more of on Friday.

So there you go, just 2 of almost 200 plots and so different. It's just my feeling, but I think we all have a bit of the artist in ourselves and being able to express yourself in many ways is a wonderful gift. What does you plot say about you??

Good Fences/ Ode to Bill

For the longest time we have been aware that a good sturdy wind break is absolutely necessary on our Field. Recently this problem has been compounded by the cutting down of all the hedges around the fields, I know in the long run they will thicken up and on top of that there were lots of baby saplings put into the existing hedgerows. But it will take quite a while for this to make any real impact.

So, to come to the point; we have surrounded our 24a plot in wind permeable membrane. To start with we took a trip to Gleno, a little village North of Carrick (frequently, inaccurately written as Glenoe - there's no E damn it). There, there is a fabulous farmers shop that sells everything, and I mean pretty much everything! You can get farming equipment, timber, clothes, any DIY stuff you need, gifts for the home, food and the papers etc. Fabulous. We only needed tree stakes for our fence, but we stayed for much longer, just looking.

So back on the plot Andrew hammered in the stakes around the two long sides of the plot and then we were super duper lucky enough to get the aforementioned mesh off Bill. He has a friend he could buy it off wholesale and boy did it make a heck of a difference in price! He was able to give us more than we needed for hardly anything, when it was £2/3 per metre everywhere else (which sure adds up when you need 18 odd metres!) it was a godsend.

It took a couple of days to get it all finished and battened down top and bottom, to make sure it stays in place. The wind really can be that bad ~ last week a shed was turned on it's head in our field by the storms. It was really sad to see but it's fixed now. Just goes to show you the power of the gusts down the Lotties.

Then, on top of all that Bill give us the gift of a lovely kidney bean shaped bench. There were 4 of them going to go the rubbish heap at the house of a man he was doing a job for! Okay it had 2 missing legs but Bill had 2 new ones sawn up in a jiffy and it's perfectly good again. Ours is going on 14b and will have pride of place and a lick of paint (once we get it sorted out over there) looking over at the flowers. I'm hoping I can get Andrew to build a little arch for it too and then we can grow another rose or some such thing up and over it.

Here is the man himself - Bill. I hope you have a handy, generous friend to help you out on your plots too, it such a lovely feeling to get and share things with others.

Chocolate straight after Breakfast!!

Easter Monday ~ sitting in my dressing gown beside my equally clad hubby, enjoying the sun and watching a kids movie on the TV. Maggie has successfully 'killed' her favourite toy and is now sleeping off the battle on the rug. All is well.

I think it's time I wrote a little about the other Eden Lottie Folk. Boy, have I noticed a big surge in activity, not just in those who are new to the project and therefore have lots of enthusiasm and ideas bursting out of their heads (i.e. those in Field C and D) but also in Field B and my favourite (I'm biased I know) ~ Field A.

I have lots of photos to show you, mainly from the Plots of those close to me but also from Donald's plot way over at the farthest side from us at A24a.

1stly, here is dear Ronnie.

He kind of has a full plot, it's 2 halves with a proper road in between them! A half each of 2 separate plots. He works seemingly all the time, I wouldn't be surprised if he was found down there in the middle of the night with a miner's hat on working away. You will not believe what he made yesterday with the help of his son-in-law. A Greenhouse, from scratch! We're all very impressed but secretly really rather jealous. It's roasty toasty in it.

Inspiring plot/s, no?

2ndly, here is Davy.

Like us he has a half plot and has had a major double espresso style surge of energy. I LOVE his Chiminea which is uses to make his dinner on and he has decided to grow cauliflowers in huge pots this year which I think will look fantastic and I'm looking forward to watching them develop; veggies are just as pretty as flowers a lot of the time. From his place of work he manages to get a lot of scrap (but perfectly good) wood and a lovely fence is slowly going up surrounding his little piece of Eden. I really haven't taken enough photos of his plot...

Then there's Wilma and John and Wilma's Brother Robert. They share the full plot next to us. Until recently it was covered with black plastic to keep down the weeds. When lifted weeks ago, they discovered a large family of mice living comfortably under there. Glad I wasn't there for the screams!! They have lots of potatoes planted and a good selection of other things already - Brussel Sprouts, Onions, Potatoes, Cabbage and celery, for instance.

Lastly, for this Bloggette....I was visited by Donald and his lovely wife yesterday. They asked me to take a few photos of their plot so family way up in Bushmills (yes, where they make the wonderful Whiskey) could see with their own eyes the great work they are doing. It's very impressive indeed and I hope the family is proud! ;) Andrew and I are particularly taken with the small but perfectly formed lean-to greenhouse, but we haven't room ourselves. *

Just as a wee extra - this is Ricky's shed near to Donald's , I think it's my favourite shed, just so cute and hand built by the man himself. Check out the wine glass too, my kind of Allotmenteering!

*I've more photos I'll try to get to you.

Finished this bloggette at Mamma G's house - big thanks to her for the lend of the mobile broadband thingy and for visiting us at the Lottie yesterday. To my friends that I didn't write about 'sorry' I'll get round to it xx