Some progress of our own

Interested onlookers

It's a pleasure to report some significant progress on the allotment that happened while we were actually there. We took the last couple of days off work in honour of my completing another lap of the sun, and spent sizeable chunks of both putting in a bit of old fashioned graft on the plot. With so much work having been done for us so far, it seemed only fair.

Dodging The Deluge

Nature in action

Two fairly fruitful visits to the allotment this week, one each side of a mahoosive downpour on Saturday which certainly negated the need for us to get the hose out and has actually made things a bit plodgy on some of the paths. We're getting desperately close to the point at which we'll actually be able to eat decent quantities of the stuff that's growing, which'll be great; it has been a while.

Unusually sober notes from the plot

What's all this then?

I'm not normally given to taking part in well-branded mass participation larks, especially where they've shoe-horned the name of the month into it. You know the sort of thing: "Stoptober", "Movember" etc. The contrarian in me wants to smoke even more, or shave even closer than normal during such months, in protest at the depths to which, in an increasingly atomised world, supposedly shared experiences have plumbed. Anyway, for all that, Kasia is doing a dry January and I thought it only polite I should do likewise, the upshot being that it was with an unusually clear head and very little malice in my soul that I cycled down to the plot yesterday morning, the first such visit in a number of weeks.

Autumnal harvesting and planting

It's a nice time of year on the allotment right now. The flurry of high summer seems like a while ago; temperatures are well suited to working, there are still things to harvest, but there is that pleasing feeling that when you hoik up a weed, it won't be back with reinforcements anytime soon. There are some lovely colours around as well, not least of which being the Blueberry plants, whose leaves have turned a (un-photoshopped, honestly) vivid shade of pinkish red. We made the most of a nice Saturday afternoon to get a good amount done, although very much at "pottering about" speed.

Emergency Chutney Recipe

Ingredients!

Having spent a particularly fine night in the Lake District (no space to chat about here, this isn't a travel blog!), we got home yesterday to find that all was not well with the green tomatoes I had salvaged from Toni's discarded plants. A few looked like they were trying to ripen a bit, but a good number of them had developed some scabby bits on the exterior and some had gone full blown mouldy. They had only been sat on a windowsill for two days, so all this seemed a bit odd, if not quite distressing. Clearly the change in scenery had not been to their taste.

Storm Sandwich

A day of mental weather on Sunday meant that two slices of allotmenteering had to fit either side of a big meaty filling of a pretty serious thunderstorm.  Not for the first time this year, chunks of Newcastle found themselves underwater.  Things were fine down on the plot early in the afternoon and when the sun came out it was red hot.  Then it got muggy as hell, we were treated to a ferocious thunderstorm and then the heavens opened.

A storm brews over Fenham