An Allotment Reunion

What the bloomin' heck happened to February!?
I think someone stole mine; I remember so very little, I've lost time (anyone believe in UFOs?) There are some photos of me out hiking, hiking with Andrew and Toby and again with Andrew in the rain and such but apart from that, I think I slept. Seriously, I think I slept February away though I can see I read some good books - The Handmaid's Tail for instance. Anyway, it wasn't a good month and I can tell you, I'm glad March is here. The back garden has shown me some much needed hope in it's little blooms, that is something I remember smiling over, in the darkness.

But let us not dwell and instead talk of good stuff! We visited the allotment last Saturday what? - YES! We saw our land again after a very long absence and it didn't look too bad. I'm so glad we did all that work in the depths of winter, so cold and warming ourselves up with many a cup of tea. Apart from the field being a quagmire and the 'devastation' of Storm Doris (a little bit of our netting came down, it's nothing) it looks great, how surprising.

It's not that we fell out with the place but that the weather has been crappy and of course the field was never prepared properly and there is no drainage in place. This year, as last, we're absolute champions of the no dig system and we are going to sow direct as much as possible; in our 9 years at lottie owners we can't see that home sowing and planting out seedlings makes that much difference.

However, one thing we do plant out early is our garlic. We love our garlic and it loves us - 100% germination this year again. Aren't they just a happy sight standing like little soldiers all their rows.

Even had we wanted to do any work or even fork some wheelbarrows of newly delivered manure to the plot, we couldn't. The paths were sodden and these two very inadequate photos try to show. Look, even the slugs were being flooded out!

But TRUE JOY was to be found on 14b with our rhubarb patches. These young forced stalks had been so happy to get to the sun that they had pushed off the forcer lid :) We naturally took all these beauties home and I was supposed to make some of my compote and even some compote with ginger - but I've been a crappity mess so far this week. Poop.

There were also some purple sprouting broccoli plants that I reckon deserve a mention and these glorious little daffodils - what a happy sight.

Love and hugs
Carrie

So this weekend we are trying to go for a good hike and I'm not sure if we'll be at the lottie. This hiking lark has really given us a great joint hobby that's healthy and fun. It's just as, if not more, important than the lottie these days! x

April, tea breaks and garlic planting

April was crept up on me from no where! I'm in shock. It's probably not helpful that I forgot to get us a nice new house calendar at the start of the year - I'm constantly lost. Okay, I do know April comes after March but woah, hold on a minute, I was only getting used to it being March; it just doesn't feel April-y to me, not so much the 'drip, drip, drop, little April showers' and more buckets of rain and hail!

Except for these utterly glorious moments of blue sky, chill air and uplifting sights of yellow daffodils :)

As a born overachiever I worked my self into the ground on Tuesday and Wednesday at the allotment. I only stop when I get really dizzy or simply can't breathe any more. It's not right and its not clever and so Andrew bought a new stove and kettle and we now can have tea/coffee breaks. I love my hubby *blush*

Also, I am trying a new additional medication and it seems to be slowly killing me, so I do have very legitimate reasons for truly not knowing my limits at the moment. Funny, I despise being ill, I am so very frustrated by the illness itself and the bloody medications and their side effects. For all my bluster and positive messages about Ecotherapy and such, I just want to sleep, I'm tired fighting.

so shiny :)

Tuesday saw the planting of our garlic! What joy is beheld in such, the beginning of a new season, hands in the soil with a nurturing intent rather than a ripping out. Andrew had to plant out the garlic into modules this year as the ground was so terribly wet, but that was back in January and now it is a good bit better. So it was wonderful to see these healthy babies being placed in their new places of growth.

Here they are approx 6 inches apart in rows a foot apart - good luck little guys!

Planting out the garlic seedlings

Over on 14b I am still, yes still, trying to tidy up; my goodness every weed on earth seems to be deeply embedded in the ground over there! Plus I finally got rid of the torn and tattered tarpaulins and lots of empty gravel bags - goodbye blue blight! But I tell you the forest area is killing me! Though I am happy to say that I have done a lot more than the following 'after' photo shows. We shall have finished paths someday!

before and after pics of the slow but steady work on 14b

After this it rained, it poured, it was almost biblical and we could have been washed away in our shed - though we would have had tea and coffee....

And that, my darlings is you all caught up :)

We haven't been able to go over since Wednesday as Andrew has been diy-ing here at home, laying a new and beautiful wooden floor. I have been reading a lot, yoga-ing and fiendishly hoarding any and all toilet rolls for some of my fussier seeds.  Maggie has been sleeping :)

I'll have a look at the seedlings etc for next time and record how everything is going.
Hope you are all seeing the changes of the season and gaining happiness from the lighter evenings.

Hugs and love
Carrie x

All about those Bs

In good old fashioned 'Sesame Street' style, this post is brought to you with by the letter B....

All I am about to tell you what happened on Saturday, a rare day in my life when I was able to cope and more than that, actually enjoy being at the plots!

This year, (as it is for everyone on our allotments) hasn't been going too well; we have been plagued by birds and the weather has been terrible. Thus it was that I found myself, on arrival, pulling out all our diseased and pigeon decimated broad beans. They were still in the flush of fruiting, some had flowers still to mature, but we had to say goodbye, even to the baby successional ones planted in a wee triangle further along the bed.

Beside them, the mangetout are starting to look in a bad state too, though there is plenty of flowers and pods on them. The birds have been nipping off the tops of each plant and every growing tip, they've been tugging at them hard too as quite a few plants were barely in the soil at all and had started to crisp up and crumble away from the bottom up. It really could get you down but I wasn't having any of that.

Pretty much all and I mean all (we had about 6 berries left) of our gorgeous blackcurrants were gone on Saturday. Only a day, one blasted night, after the bush had been full and gloriously bursting. Boy was I looking forward to a dark, juicy harvest only to have it snatched away from me by - you guessed it, the bloody birds. They ate every ripe one and took those on the verge of perfection and ripped them off and left them on the ground :( Such sad times.

I weeded wildly, fuelled by my annoyance for a while but soon calmed down. Andrew was off again to Gleno village for more wood - by goodness there was a netted fruit cage to be built this day! Damnation - thou shall not pilfer our blueberries! *shakes fist at sky*

the fruit cage has been working!

But, I mean look  - bird beaks have gotten to our Kale and the Pak Choi. Plus the Kohl Rabi  and PSB looks so sad. At this rate we would seriously need to consider netting our whole plot; one great big fruit cage!

So I turned my back and focused my attention on the beetroot, which amazingly Andrew had forgotten about. But then he has been doing everything else and was on Saturday building us a lovely gravelled parterre path on 14b. We really wanted a big tonne bag of the stuff but had to be happy with some smaller bags as the deliveries were over for the day at the depot. However he did a fabulous job.

Plus the Blackberries or as I like to call them Bramble berries are fruiting like crazy over there, it really does the heart good to see that one bush so big and healthy this year when so much else is a little disappointing.

Anyway, back to the beetroot, both yellow and red varieties had been sown direct and forgotten about so I thinned them all out, put the really tiny ones straight into the compost and the rest into our harvest bags. Oh did we have a feast! Now the rest will have more room to grow and become big and beautiful.

Lastly, I missed my own Blog Birthday. It was on Monday and it passed me by in a whirlwind. So happy belated 7th blogiversary to me - yay! I must remember to eat cake at some time :)

More photos to come from that day and some from Sunday too when Andrew made a quick visit :)
Love and Hugs
Carrie

Saturday on plot 24a

Exhaustion as truly hit home this week; every couple of hours of each day I have had to take a nap, just in order to keep going. These periods come every now and then and though I do get frustrated and maybe a little scared, I know it won't last much longer. Giving in and feeling lazy are not my style but it's what my body needs.

Now any remarks on my birthday coming up and that this is all down to age and ...I shall look for you, I shall find you, and I shall slap your face with a wet lettuce leaf!

This is maybe part of the reason why I am so very tired this week - the hard work we pushed into a few hours at the allotment on Saturday last.

My work -
* Cut grass with push mower

* Weed leek bed, general bad spots on plot and the back bed (scary)

* tie back flowers and try to deadhead whilst being sniffed by bees

Andrew's work -
* rip out the second batch of broad beans now they are finished and get all last remaining beans off those plants, including seeds for next year :)

* plant out more broccoli under netting moved across from older settled in broccoli plants :)

* deal with bolted lettuces and spinach (which was a non-bolting variety!) It's my personal opinion that lettuces need to be in the back garden = easier access and used all the time.

Please do enjoy the other beauties in that bed (and further up plot). Everything has done well in 24a so far.. Only bad thing about it is us! We arent harvesting as we should and eating/sharing/storing! Ooops

Sweetcorn tassels; Kohl rabi; courgettes and flower; Autumn raspberry; Rudbeckia.

Love and Hugs

Carrie

Celebratory Photograph Time!

Yes, it's the morning after the morning before and it did really happen - I was at the lottie yesterday! I still can't quite believe it and I feel so scared at the idea of going alone again that I can't quite understand from whence the strength came from before! Or was it total insanity that grasped me and took me on my 2 hrs long adventure?!

I feel everything about this whole surprising, marvelous event deserves an exclamation mark!

Here, let me share my photos with you, put them out into the world so that it can be seen, remembered and one day, attempted again (eek!)!

And there she was 24a in all her welcoming glory :)

Bed #1 - lettuces, courgettes, sweetcorn, chard, purple sprouting broccoli

Bed #2 - loads of beetroot (various different colours), celeriac, turnips, carrots, parsnips

Blueberries coming into colour under netting - ha, take that pigeons!

Bed #4 - garlic, broad beans, mangetout, french climbing beans

Some of the many flowers that are in bloom, or coming into bloom :) This really makes me happy as I saw so many bees and butterflies on them whilst I was there. I love our plot to be full of colour and helpful insects. Cornflower (purple), dahlia, red velvet rose, marigold, california poppies.

A good hour of my time was devoted to this path and making it safe. All I had was a push mower, hand scissors and my grit and determination. Note how Maggie is NO help :)

2 hrs later and look how sleepy Maggie is (the cheek of her, she didn't do anything!). One last look back and what a happy little sight the marigolds on the shelf under the shed window are :)

All in all I am pleased I pushed and today I have plans for the back garden. Thank you for your comments on the last post by the way and if you are a Facebook follower xxx Harvest photos next time and I have some lovely Mount Stewart nature photos from the weekend too.

Hugs and Love

Carrie x

(pt2) Three day weekend - Thanks St. Patrick

Sunday 16th March ~

We've never done any of the twee and commercialised stuff to do with the St. Patrick's holiday and with an allotment now, we always have our own plans. Belfast has a crazy big St. Patrick's Day parade on today but, no thanks, it isn't even the big day. It amazes me how everyone else around the globe seems to make such a big deal of it, green everywhere (St. Patrick's colour is blue), four leaf clovers (lucky in Irish but he is identified by the three leafed, normal clover) etc. Plus where did this need, this urgent need to get drunk come from? Is it a diss on what it means to be Irish??

Ahh, sure.

We had FIRE! There was a lot of deeply rotten, moldy and diseased wood around our two plots, coming on 6 years that is bound to be the case. We really didn't want it near to the precious soil and new life we were cultivating. (Fear not, there are still piles of wood and slates etc for bugs, but this stuff was bad.) It needed to be eradicated and though it lots like a huge angry fire, that's just due to close ups and there wasn't any wind and Andrew was by it at all times and what I am trying to say is - this was needed and we were safe about it. It was also beautiful :) The middle picture shows all the dead stalks from the Jerusalem Artichokes too, so great too tidy that area up and it really bolstered the fire. (I contributed them)

Along with this going on, I was on 14b and having a very emotional reaction to the cherry tree bed. That's not a sentence I ever thought I would write, haha. Maybe it was due to the horrendous low I went into late on Saturday night, maybe it was because the cherry blossom is my moniker, but this bed needed my full attention and love.

Written in shed, in notebook ~ 'I can't quite explain it, it was therapy, there were too many emotions. But I suppose, chiefly amongst them was the need to get rid of that crap; clearing out, destroying it - it did something similar for my soul. I didn't want to give up'.

I have a sense that turning this mess around and making something productive and beautiful with it will do me no end of good. It's going to be an 'easy maintence' half plot with fruit trees, bushes, rhubarb and asparagus in it - things that like to be left alone. Plus it is where my cut flower border is going to be and I am serious about this time, really good dahlias, roses, echinacea, sunflowers, poppies etc, flowers that make my heart sing and will brighten the home too.

Just a little example of what I was talking about in the last post - getting those blasted weeds out by the root and all :) Squeeee - it makes me happy.

This is more the thing that gets Andrew to squeeee inside. A man's well rotten horse manure and compost bins are his Kingdom! Haha - Though, honestly this stuff has been fantastic and not a single whiff of anything nasty :) Is it wrong to love horse poo and kitchen scraps so much??

So this was the state of things at the end of day 2 around our plots

Maggie in a 'I've got a bit of biscuit suck in my cheek' pose ~ 14b coming on nicely, check out the path :) ~ dead gnomes

Plus we decided to take a dander before leaving - there wasn't anyone else there, we had the place to ourselves again! The council has put in a bridge and path to connect the local community to it's community centre, just above our plots. The path isn't great but the bridge is fab - cool idea!

The Conservation Volunteers know how to lay a hedge ~ catkins ~ hubby xxx ~ pretty flowers on a bush planted in the hedgerow ~ daffs in the hedgerow ~ me ~ the new bridge

And so endth the second day of the long weekend's gossip
love and hugs

Christmas on the plot

Twas 3 days before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a Maggie...because she was snoozing as usual on her on sofa and it looked wild cold outside.

After lunch we decided to go and do the Holiday ritual of gathering our own parsnips and leeks. I am not impressed with what the weatherman and woman on tv are saying about the coming days...warnings for 80mph winds and bitterly cold raininess. So today seemed the wisest option for a visit to a place where the wind would cut through you on a good day and the activity is all about mud.

It was an incredibly welcome surprise to find this when we drove down the main path...tarmac, blacktop, whatever you call it, we now have some real road!!! This has always been the worst area so I am glad they started here but other areas have lots more hardcore down as well... It was a great feeling not to be sliding all over the show when we got out of the car :) Hurrah to you Council people and thank you!!

Look it put us in a happy/silly mood...

Kiss chase

So here is the last shot of the plot before Christmas and all the madness and subsequent exhaustion the days bring. I wanted an overall shot in case it's the last of the year. With reminds me Happy Solstice!! The days are getting longer now :)

A sign of Spring....

This is what we came for - the parsnips. We have honey roasted and mashed (with carrot) at this time of year - I think parsnips are one of my all time favourites. This bed was well and truly double dug last year but we think there may have been a layer of manure that these young parsnips hit early on in their growing and thus they are swat and many legged...a bit of a disappointment but still edible. We were hoping for the usual gorgeousness seen in the long photo on the right but we (Andrew!) didn't thin them out either so it's our (Andrew's) fault. These are our usual 'tender and true' - they'll taste fabulous so who cares really...

washing parsnips in super cold water-butt water, bbrrr

We also came for leeks and were not disappointed even after an earlier attack of rust; there are many left too. They are beautiful as always and as I am intolerant to onion..we eat lots of these every week. Have you seen the price of them in a supermarket!

Still come colour on the plots...who says the winter months are dead on the allotment?!

Brilliant garlic bulbs; best way to store them really

An action photo of Andrew for you, he was doing the 'really cold hands' dance and insisted I take a picture.

Hugs
from Me xx

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