Christmas Time

Merry Christmas one and all. We've had a good time so far. Before the holiday actually arrives we have a European Market on in Manchester, which is famed for its bratwurst and gluwein. So here's Annie, smiling away whilst she munches on her sausage!

Manda and Colin were kind enough to invite us to feast with them on the 25th, so we were wonderfully fed and really enjoyed our day. Over here, Christmas dinner is much like Thanksgiving over there, in that it features a turkey and then some very traditional trimmings. Manda excelled herself in the kitchen and they also have a very fine wine waiter at that house ;-)

I joined Manchester Community Choir in September and this is one reason for less blog-time since then. Despite such an obvious drawback, the choir is really good fun and I love to sing (I think you knew that already). I've taken part in two gigs with the choir, over the holidays. Firstly we went and busked in the streets of Chorlton, to raise money for the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture and then we sang at a Christmas Party for asylum seekers. Annie came along to the first gig, and so here's a picture. We must be doing the reindeer calling song at this point as Liz, the conductor, has her special hat on!

We've had some winter weather too, which is pretty unusual over here. Snow arrived a few days before Christmas and actually hung around for a bit too. It has almost cleared now, but we have more forecast - amazing for us - and not terribly good news as the country is generally poor at coping!

However, Annie and Millie and I had a nice walk around the field over the road in the snow, with Annie safely on her "buggy".

My sister and niece are currently on a train heading north to visit us, so I need to get moving now and fix some good stuff for tonight. However, I'll be back soon :-)

Thanksgiving ... even this is late!

Deary me, where to begin? I have a whole trip to America and heaven knows what else to tell. The snap above shows me with my favourite blue raspberry sno-cone, at Allegan County Fair, from September. I think, since then, life has just been enough busy that I haven't made time to get here and then the plot needs a lot doing ... so that's another story.

Meanwhile though, we are well and we had a lovely thanksgiving. Colin and Manda came over and also our dear friend Eddie. She is a big-time Laura I-W "Little House" fan and so was keen to experience a true Thanksgiving. So we tried to put on a decent show with turkey, dressing, gravy, candied carrots, scalloped corn, green bean casserole and mash. Sadly the pictures don't show any of that as all I seem to have are before and after shots! But still, you can giggle at my table settings and so on.

And we do have a shot with dessert ready to be eaten. Dessert was Annie's authentic pumkin pie, apple pie and brandy cream. YUM! Meanwhile Millie was nearby in case anything came in her direction.

Hopefully I can get posting again now that the holidays are heading towards us fast. Meanwhile, happy December to all.

22 July at the plot

Last week, after going to the Tatton Show I headed up the road, with my faithful hound at my side, to compare our crops with the glories I had seen at the show. At the moment the raspberries are fruiting really well and we are able to have a few most mornings for breakfast. I know the raspberries aren't laid out in the same way those fruits at the show were. Clearly I'm using the tennis ball instead, because I wanted you to have a guage as to size. Aren't they wonderful? Surely first prize!

The blackcurrents are also still laden with fruit and so I could get another batch of jam made, if only I can find some clean jars! But those mystery current/berries can't be the josta berries shown at Tatton as those were growing along a single stem. This close-up makes it clear that our mystery black-fruits are each on an individual stem.

Everything is growing well and here you can see that our grapes have come along well in quite a short time.

A little further down the plot, our runner beans have grown to great height and so my mum has advised me to nip out the tops to encourage many beans to follow.On this closer shot you can just see the first bean forming, where the red flower is falling away.

The apple tree by the side of the beans turns out to be a cooking apple - big and very tart fruit. Some are falling off already so we have used some in with the soft fruit, to make a lovely sharp compote. Needless to say, the weeds are also growing well and down on plot 3, things are still quite jungly!Even here though, Colin has cleared some land and we have some new platings (radish, lettuce, spring onions, late potatoes and beans, and sweet potatoes). Not much to show yet, but the radishes are up.

RHS Flower Show, at Tatton

The 2009 Tatton Flower Show is going on right now and yesterday Mum and I went for the day. Mum did amazingly, she walked for ages and seemed really well. She says she feels ok today too, so I'm really happy about that. As usual there were lots of great displays to see. Some of my favourites are always in the flower bed competition. These are msotly produced by public bodies, advertising their locality and the skills of their gardeners all at once. These beds usually have a story attached and show lovely pictures and objects made of flowers. This first one is in honour of honey and the honey bee and was produced by Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council (that's not the beer Newcastle - we have two)!

So here's the bee in close-up. Some cheating here clearly as those wings aren't made of flowers - lol. In the background here you can also see the story board describing the display, so that's where I got my info from, for this blog :-)

The next one here is about a faithful hound called Gelert who belonged to mediaeval Welsh Prince, Llewellyn the great. A truly sad story of a heroic hound. But - nice plant-building here! Possibly my favourite depiction this year was from Sheffield council, the traditional home of Britain's steel industry (and site of the film, the "Full Monty"). The bed shows a steel worker and a pan of smelt being poured, look at those flames!I didn't manage to get the story of this bed, with a hand-print clearly showing, but again, fine use of plants here.The Peter Pan bed was produced by Dumfried and Galloway council, as apparently that is where J.M.Barrie grew up.

This bed records an event that happened when the Liverpool to Manchester railway was first opened, and shows Stephenson's Rocket.

The beds were awarded prizes, according to how good a panel of judges considered them to be - but I don't appear to have any record of those, so you can tell how impressive I thought the judging was! Here's an award certificate on one of the displays inside the big marquee, where I didn't take a lot of pictures this year. Lovely begonias, however :-)

In a smaller marquee there was a fruit and vegetable competition that reminded me of something from 4H, though this was adults offerings :-) In view of my new "farming" habits, I was keen to see the displays. Probably the most appestising were these cherries. Yum!

I did think some of our produce from the allotment could have been entered, I'm sure our redcurrents and broad beans are just as lovely ... maybe next year! Meanwhile, I did like these gooseberries. I was interested in the Tayberries (longer than rasbperries) as something else we might plant next year. These are labelled "josta" and I was very excited by them as they look like some unidetified "too big to be blackcurrents" at the allotment. Ha! I said. However, when I got back up to the plot last night I took some pictures there which show that they are not quite like these. So, the detective work continues. (I'll post allotment pics over the weekend, hopefully).
Back outside again and there was filming going on for the BBC show "Gardeners' World". From left to right here we have the presenters, Toby Buckland, Carol Klein and Joe Swift, being filmed talking about the show (standing in one of the show gardens).

There was a lot of stop-start with the filming and at one point Carol seemed quite fed up. The crowd consensus was that she must have fluffed her lines!Finally, this was probably my favourite of the show gardens this year. The shape and colour of those walls and the use of plants along them - not something I can imagine achieving in real life, but pretty.

The garden is called "Strictly Come Dancing" and features a sculpture on that point. To y'all that would read "Dancing with the Stars" lol.OK more plot news soon and meanwhile, lots of love, K xxx.

Harvest time

Happy 4th July everyone! It's dull, hot and cloudy here this evening, so I hope you have sun where you are and that the hot dogs and fireworks are wonderful!

Here's a view, taken this morning, across the top of plots 1 and 2, with Millie standing guard (and wondering what I'm up to). About now the allotment is really beginning to produce a lot of produce, all at once. We are beginning to find out why folks who have allotments are so generous with fruits and vegetables - you simply cannot eat them all as they come in! Of course, we are very lucky that the plot has so many established fruit trees and bushes already there. But the strawberries, potatoes, broad beans and peas, which we planted are also producing well.

Today I picked some raspberries and strawberries, which I thought looked pretty beautiful, so (naturally) you get a shot of those!

The peas are producing at least as many peas as the four of us can eat.

And the broad beans are really magnificent at the moment. I need to work out how to freeze these or preserve the excess in some way.

I have made some blackcurrent jam and that's pretty lovely. The worst part is tidying up the fruit in preparation, the actual jam is easy to make and really sets well too. Even my Mum approves of the result. So, that reminds me to mention that Mum is still doing really well. She walked from hers with Millie and I today and then went on to the local store on her own, which was a first.

Meanwhile, Annie is doing fine, though her mobility is less than brilliant with her damaged foot. Clearly we aren't going to get stateside for a while. Anyone who knows Annie's Mom please don't mention said foot as she is keen to save Mom that worry. So far though, the x-rays suggest it is healing fine.
Back at the plot, meanwhile, the apples are growing apace, though many did fall in the "June drop", clearly the harvest will be big (apple butter .... yummmmmm) and there is one pear tree, which has a reasonable number of fruit on too.

Most amazing (at least for me) are the vines. Truly. They grow up beside the shed on plot 1 and there were just some little twigs at the beginning of the year. Now they are yay tall.

And sport mini grapes. What on earth do we do with those? They are not really likely to be very sweet (so far as I know dessert grapes don't grow well in our climate) so I guess that's going to be a wine-making experiment! When Mum taught chemistry she used to run a (rather popular) course on wine-making, so I'm hoping she can still remember how that's done.

The pear tree is up on plot 3 which is away from the other two and we haven't truly managed to get much of that one cultivated this year. Here's Colin though, by the shed on 3, trying to excavate some lettuce Manda planted, from the mess of weeds that have sprung up around them. At the moment Manda's mum is not well in hospital, so we are hoping for the best for her. I guess this rota of sick parents must just go with our age, huh?

The runner beans, which went in during May, are just beginning to flower (small red dots in this picture!) and are really climbing up the frame now. Likewise the sweet peas (in the background) which smell really lovely, are coming into flower very nicely.

Obviously I can't end a plot post without another shot of my faithful assistant gardener. She gets to run around the field on the way up there and on the way home again, but she is really patient waiting for me to work on the plot. ((((Millie)))) Awww.

Love to everyone, K xxx.

Hazardous Summertime

Annie and two of the guys played an acoustic gig last week and someone took video of them, so here they are, on youtube no less :-) The band is called Hazardous Waist, but the drummer isn't playing here, so I'm not sure whether they used that name or not. Annie's playing Mandolin. Phil is on acoustic bass with Andy on guitar.





Meanwhile here's another little plot update. The asparagus bed is needing so much weeding that Colin says he feels like King Canute ... do you know that story about holding the sea back? Anyway, following the latest weed, the bed looks very tidy.



The current bushes are coming on beautifully and we have already had a few redcurrents to eat. They look so pretty too!



Amongst the weeds, few are of much interest so far, but I do love the borage flowers. Apparently they taste sweet - so I'll have to give that a go one of these days!



That's it for tonight my friends. I hope everyone had a good day :-)

Scarecrow

OK, so a while ago now a little lass was on Easter holidays (that's Spring Break, folks) and she made her Grandpa a scarecrow for his allotment. As you can see above, the scarecrow is beautiful. The face is PINK and the eyers are BLUE. Very good work indeed.

Here's what the broad beans look like now and we'll get back to them shortly. Meanwhile though, to get back to the story, sometime after the scarecrow arrived we were up there at the plot with a lady from "Park House", the voluntary group which actually owns our allotments and she saw the scarecrow. She decided that we had to have one too and went back and talked some other women into getting involved. So now, we have .....

Bigfoot! Hey, he's subtle isn't he! No birds are going to bother our crops! I love his face too. I don't know if you can tell but he has a little facial hair, so is definitely a chap.

Though quite where he got those feet from .... The coat is cut and then painted with black splodges to represent age and dirt. Not that he'll need those long if he's living at the plot - lol.

When you touch him the paint splodges transfer nicely to skin, so I'm leaving him be, now he's in place! His banner is a "Just Married" one that has been adapted to say "Just P H". The allotments have all sorts of environmental awards and best plot and so on, but I think they're going to need a best scarecrow competition at this rate!

Meanwhile we are getting into the exciting part of the year where there are going to be actual crops. For now, the broad beans are starting to produce and I iamgine we'll ahve a few to eat pretty soon.

But probably best of all, now that the big push to get the marking done is all over, I have finally had time to get rid of some of the most massive weeds and I've excavated ...

The missing turnips! Only a few are ready to eat as yet, but this was the first one I pulled up and goodness, was I a happy lass!

Tomorrow I'm off to fight the weeds some more (weather permitting) so I'll hope to take some more snaps too. Much love, K xxx.