Up North

Here are some pics of Baz's parents' allotments. His dad showed us round when we went to visit last weekend. We covet their water butt system quite a lot and hope to have a similar one some day. Baz's dad makes these paper bricks for burning out of recycled office paper and water (and a dash of aftershave), he's got a whole massive production line going on! It's amazing.

It's in Talke Pits, Stoke.....

Summer Solstice

Here are some pics of how the allotment was looking on the longest day of the year (yesterday). Unfortunately neither me nor Baz had been to the allotment for a couple of weeks. This was as a result of Baz working and studying loads for an exam (with the OU), me lacking motivation and confidence to go on my own (yes I know it sounds silly but it's true...), and both of us visiting friends and family in Stoke over the weekend. But we went yesterday anyway and Baz reckoned things weren't as bad as he had expected. Me, I don't know, I was so caught up in feeling like crap and being self-absorbed in my own troubles and woes that I'm not sure either way. But it was nice to be there, despite all my silly, pointless worrying.

Ok depressing-ness over.....

...so of all the things we've put in the ground since we got the allotment at the end of April, it seems that some veg are doing really well whilst others, well, are not.

The onion, garlic, potatoes, dwarf beans, squash, chard, some of the carrots, raspberries and strawberries are all alive and well. However, as for the rest, they've either not come up or been eaten by various critters. The rocket and cabbage had been totally munched down to a few sad-looking stalks, and a few other things we weren't sure whether they had shown then been eaten or not come up at all. Partly our fault I guess for not being there, but I wonder whether they would have got eaten anyway?

Well anyway it's all a learning curve and we're at the very beginning of the curve, so we've got plenty of time to learn.  The raspberries we picked didn't make it home in solid form being as they were in Baz's bike basket, so Baz mixed them with the four strawberries and a banana, and we had them in liquid form. Yum. You could taste the goodness.

Now that Baz isn't studying so much and hopefully now that I can motivate myself to go a bit more, we should be able to put more time in. Oh there are cherries on the tree at the bottom of the plot, which look lovely. I'm not sure if we will get our hands on any before the birds get to them?

xx

Rainy days

We got lots of lovely rain today for our little baby vegetable plants!!

We went up with our friend Sanj who we roped into helping us sort the shed out, even though it was his birthday and we were really wet and cold and he probably wanted to be in the pub not shifting bits of plastic around in the rain, but anyway it was a good session as now the shed is no longer looking like a bomb went off in it. And it's nice to be doing it with a friend.

You can see the sparkly new bbq Mum gave us!

Hasta la vista xxxx

Is it really June already?

Can't believe we're in June.... But that's how that time thing works, especially when you're consumed with things like having an anxiety disorder and depression and trying to get through each day, somehow you wake up one day and realise you sort of weren't really here for the last six months.

So I didn't go to that physic garden I was talking about as it was closed, but am looking forward to visiting it the next time I venture north.

Was at the allotment yesterday, which involved weeding and digging for me and watering and bbq making for Baz. It really is looking so good at the moment, so alive with things growing and as I was feeling a bit more clear headed than usual, I could actually see it in all it's new glory. Wish I could have said Morning Glory, but I think we've accidentally killed off the ones Mum gave us. Oops.

Oh yeh I also put in some squash and pumpkin, totally forgot to take a picture, but they were given to us by Andy next door. The bed I put them in took so bloody long to dig as the ground is like concrete what with all the no rain and everything.

Yeh so Mum gave us a bbq which Baz put together, and I'm really excited about having summer bbqs. . . mmm sausages. . . mmm fry's burgers. . . mmm food.

Mum's also given us a reel of hose piping she didn't use anymore which is great.

No more exciting news but will post some pictures later and update on what we get up to today.

Adios amigos xxxx