off at a musical tangent...

this is off at a tangent from allotments and food and my mental health (which seems to have crept into my writing somewhat...) but thought I'd post this here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJnEzvY5E6k&feature=player_embedded

this is a youtube video that Baz made which he somehow persuaded me to sing and play and feature in....

hope you enjoy it xx

BBQs and flowers

Last weekend me and Baz had an evening BBQ at the allotment. Was really nice. Kinda funny though as we used a whole load of charcoal and our vegan sausages and burgers took all of 5 minutes to cook....bit of a waste but it did serve as a heater while we sat there for a bit after eating. Really peaceful up there in the evening. Here are some pics:

This is Henry the resident seagull. I have a feeling I might have mentioned him before but got his name wrong...

And here are some more pics which are from the 7th July (my sister's birthday).... They are mostly of flowers, which are everywhere at the moment, and none of which I know the names of!

 This is one of the crops doing really well, and not surprisingly it was something we didn't attempt to start ourselves...! This and the one below is the squash or pumpkin (not sure which) Andy from next door gave us.

 The first blackberries we've seen (at our allotment that is, not ever).

 Yay! They're surviving! This is the cauliflower..

So even though there isn't an abundance of things we have grown, who cares, there are a few things, and lots of lovely flowers to look at. Which are a good distraction from my silly mind and moods, if only for a brief while.

We didn't make it up there this weekend, we were too busy looking at museums in London and having roast dinners and swimming in the sea. We planned to go yesterday but thought we'd go tomorrow instead. So until then........ -x-

Pinch and a punch

for the first of the month and no returns.

So we are in July, how mad is that? Where the hell have the past six months gone....? Anyhoo. So a massive achievement for me personally is that I managed to go to the allotment by myself for the first time in three weeks. Yay! It wasn't particularly successful and I almost had an anxiety attack when having to speak to people up there, but I managed and hopefully no-one noticed I was feeling crazy inside....

So I've been up there once this week and Baz and I went up on Tuesday evening as well as on Saturday. Here is the photographic evidence of what we've been up to...........

These are tomato and squash plants given to us by our friend Lucy but sadly they have since died.....

Two more lots of carrots have gone in where something we put in died/failed to show.

 How cool is this pic?!

 Me finishing off the front bed that I took apart a few weeks back. We took up a load of carpet that was underneath.

 Baz is determined to grow rocket, mizuna and some other lettuce which were gobbled up by some critters.

Mmmm raspberries.

We bought some netting from Homebase (evil Homebase*) to put over some kohl rabi and cauliflower I put in last Saturday. We're determined for them to live!!

 Same for these squash.

 The first lot of cherries!

 Haven't got around to looking these bugs up, but they were on the dwarf runner bean leaves.

A sunny day at the allotment on Tuesday.

*Even though I say they're evil, we bloody love going in there and looking at all the pointless but cool stuff you can buy....
-x-

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