Starlings

This is what we saw. There must have been millions of them swooping around. You could hear the wingbeats as they flew over our heads and as it became dark, they flocked closer to where we were watching and seemed to fall out of the sky into the reeds. The field was black with them and the sound was incredible. It was like static when you walk under an electricity pylon - excited chatterings rather than birdsong.

It was a really fantastic evening and there was the most beautiful sunset too. As we walked along the track back to the car the dying sun was reflected in the icy rhynes. Stunning.

Digging for victory

This weekend we've been digging. The earth was just the right consistency at last so we both had a go and between us we dug over the top patch, well, the half that isn't covered with black compost bags.

All the neighbours were there too. In fact, in the photo of J you can see Moira next door, clearing weeds from around her new pond. I'm looking forward to her pond being finished, I'll get the benefit of gazing at it when I'm idling in the sunshine in the doorway of my hut.

This weekend was really good actually, I spend most of Saturday helping allocate fruit trees to their new owners as part of Transition Bristol's Virtual Orchard scheme. Incredibly busy! We all made cakes as well and made as much of a celebratory event out of it as possible, bearing in mind it didn't really get much above freezing in the yard we'd hired. I bought a plum and an apple tree for our tiny back garden so yesterday J and I went to buy huge pots to put them in. They look great. The idea is that they'll be portable if and when we move house. The time is ever closer now that Roo's only got one more year of school. It's a scary thought because we've lived in our house for so long and we love it dearly, but it's always been in the wrong place. Our surroundings are so intensely urban. What I'd really love to do is to pick the house up and plonk it down again on the edge of town instead of right in the middle. Incidentally, I've a cousin in Australia who did just that. Her house was loaded onto a lorry and moved about a mile up the road! Amazing.

This evening J and I are planning to go down to the Somerset Levels to see the starlings roosting and hopefully doing those swooping and dancing patterns in the sky. It looks like being a lovely day for it so J is taking a day off so we can take a little trip. I'll try to get some photos if we end up in the right place.

Happy gardening (and birdwatching)

Mainly fish and chips

It's been blissful weather this weekend. J and I managed to do all sorts of useful things at the allotment today, like emptying bags of bark mulch around the fruit bushes, cutting cabbage and leeks, tidying up and sitting around in the sunshine. I hugged my fruit trees too, to make up for not wassailing them earlier in the month. One of the mini daffodil bulbs has started to come up under the old apple tree and lots have emerged next to the hut. I can hardly wait.

It felt like spring is just around the corner yesterday too. I was too busy for gardening but I had a lovely walk up through the park to the library and then we had a bit of a panic over our fancy dress costumes for a party. We looked really good for the first half hour until the newspaper fell apart but it allowed us to make a good first impression! Guess what we had for dinner before the party?! Yup, fish and chips.

Happy gardening

Winter vegetables

J and I spent a soggy half hour at the allotment yesterday, pulling some leeks and generally having a look around. The rain and sleet had been coming down in bucketfuls the day before. We had a flooded garden and rain coming into the house through the back wall. It was seriously wet, drenching rain so it was great to see that the allotment hadn't suffered at all. The pond was nice and full anyway!

I didn't see any wildlife up there but it won't be long before the frogs are barging each other out of the way to spawn in the pond. They usually produce a seething mass of it around the time of J's birthday towards the end of February. Birthday spawn.

I dug up the last of the parsnips as well. I'm obviously not the only one digging them up, there were bits of parsnip scattered around on the grassy path but I think I've had a good crop despite this. I'd be interested to find out what eats them actually; the main predators on our allotments are pigeons, badgers, foxes and unspecified rodents. I don't fancy spending a night shivering in the hut waiting to find out!

As I write this, the rain is back with us again and I'm planning to spend today hibernating in the warm with a good book, and later on I'm going to cook a nice big chicken dinner (yes - organic free range from our local butcher) and I'll be roasting those parsnips to go with it.
Happy gardening (and hibernating)

Today is the first day I've been to look at the allotment since mid November and I've missed it. It's Christmas day in less than a week and I've been a bit busy and what with one thing and another I just haven't made the time to walk up the hill and see how things are looking. It's done me a lot of good. A combination of appalling middle aged hormones and a nasty dose of SAD has left me feeling sorry for myself. I don't know why I never remember that being at the allotment is the cure for all ills, but I'm sure it is. I've come home almost human.

This little robin kept me company while I dug up some leeks and parsnips. The broad beans I'd planted a while back have emerged but most of them have had their shoots nipped off by something, possibly squirrels, so I'll put the rest of the seeds in pots and take them up to plant when they're grown big enough to stand a chance against the wildlife. The squirrels look very cute and perky but they're a real pest these days. They don't seem to eat the plants they destroy, they just pull the tops off and leave them there next to the rest of the plant. Odd, and very annoying behaviour. Is there a squirrel psychiatrist out there?

Oh well, back to the pre-Christmas list-making. I hope I've now sorted out what we're eating and when. It's going to be so much easier this year because my Mum has decided she didn't use her small chest freezer enough so she's given it to us. Brilliant! We fetched it in the camper a couple of weeks ago and it's now installed in the airing cupboard in the space where the old hot water tank was. It was removed when the new boiler was fitted so we had the space available and because the freezer emits heat, the airing cupboard still warms the bedding and towels. Clever, huh? (Not my idea of course, J thought of it)
So far, I'm using it for Christmas stuff but it'll be really useful when the fruit's ready next year.

Happy gardening (and list-making)

Planting bulbs and beans

Before I start telling you about bulbs and beans I must just say that the heating engineer has been with us this week and has performed miracles! Our house, which is large and Victorian with the usual lovely high ceilings and original sash windows, has always been difficult to heat in the winter. Since the old boiler died it has been pretty grim and we'd dug out a selection of unflattering woollies to wear as we huddled around the cat to keep warm in the evenings. With our new high efficiency rated condensing boiler the cat cuddling has returned to previous levels (the cat is, of course, bewildered by the sudden change) The heating engineer was reassuring that the insulation we use will keep the heat in, so we don't intend to overheat the place. It's just so wonderful to be warm! He says the new boiler is 91% efficient compared to probably less than 50% for the 30 year old one we replaced. After the initial play around with the controls we'll probably stick to a modest 17 or 18 degrees in the evenings. Not tropical anyway.

Anyway, with the advent of some more cold, dry weather I've been messing about under the old apple tree. When we first took over the allotment it was a fine, low branched, (huge) tree of unknown variety that the boys used to climb. Because it was so useful as a climbing tree we though of the apples as a bonus, they came early and didn't keep but the flavour was very good. Over the years, the boys got too big to climb the tree and it managed to acquire all sorts of pests and diseases so after several attempts at pruning and even more poor fruiting years we gave up. We chopped it down as far as we could and I was going to try to take it down even further, put a plank on top and make it into a bench. But, I could never find the right tool to saw through the thick trunk and while we deliberated, it sneakily threw out more and more branches until last year, we realised, it really, really wanted to be tree again. So...I've done some more pruning and today, I've planted bulbs around the base. Welcome back tree. I only chopped you down because I thought you were pretty dead! I'd mulched the grass in a sort of circle around the base so it was easier to dig into it and make holes for the bulbs and I was going to clear the grass away but I was overwhelmed with indecision (it happens a lot, I'm afraid) and I think I'm now going to let the grass grow back. It'll look more natural.

Before I went home I put in another row of broad bean seeds and sat on the hut step admiring the autumn colours. Because we're on a hill you can see down over the city and at the moment every little bit that used to be green is tinged with lovely russets and browns. The sky was clear too, winter clear, which is quite different from a clear sky in summer. Lovely. Maybe I'll make a small stained glass sculpture to hang in the tree. I'm making garden sculptures at the moment, mostly to "plant" in the ground or in a pot, but I could do some hanging ones too. As long as they're wired onto a branch they should stay on ok in the wind. Hmm. I need to go and do some designing.
Happy gardening

Wow - frost

The first thing I do most mornings is fumble for my glasses and read the temperature on the inside/outside sensor on the wall next to my bed. I'm ever so slightly obsessed with the temperature so there's another one in the kitchen too! At this time of year it starts to get quite interesting, 2 degrees this morning and there was quite a frost on the roofs and the cars outside.

It felt like quite a few degrees of frost in the house as well, we've got no heating until the (dead) boiler is replaced. Not long to wait now however, the man says he's coming next week and we're all looking forward to his arrival even though I'm sure we'll have a week's worth of builder type upheaval. Ed (older son) has taken to saying things like "ooh, only another 14 days" as though the heating engineer is Father Christmas or something!

It was so beautiful this morning with the sunlight streaming down and highlighting the glittering frost, so I wrapped up like a roly poly woman and went up the road to take some pictures. The standing stone is sheltered from the early morning sun by a bramble hedge so there was enough frost left there to photograph but the sun is obviously still pretty strong and it melted fast.

My total haul of vegetables was a sad little butternut, the last one on the plant and unfortunately partly frozen. We'll have to eat it very soon. There's not much left to pick at the moment.

In my dreams, we would move away from the city and create a haven of self-sufficiency a la John Seymour and only ever need to shop for tea, coffee and bananas, but in my heart of hearts I know that we'd probably starve. I wish I was more organised and then at least we'd have successive plantings and a more reliable source of our own food throughout the year. Project - must do better.
Happy winter gardening