Autumn recipe

Well, I know this is a really rubbish photo but I took it myself, holding the camera in one hand and hoping I'd got my whole head in the shot along with the butternut squash. As you can see, it grew enough to be harvested (and for me to be ridiculously pleased with myself) so I had to put it into the blog, even though the photo's so fuzzy that my own mother wouldn't recognise me. Probably just as well!

We eat lots of these in the winter months along with various other squashes and small pumpkins and a particular favourite recipe with my family is this one.
Take a squash, halve it and scoop out the seeds and fill the hollows with lumps of butter and loads of chopped garlic and microwave it until it's a bit soft. Then fill it with a pre-cooked mixture made of:
chopped onion
diced carrots
diced parsnips
diced sweet potatoes (lots of dicing going on here)
red lentils and enough water to cook them
a few small tomatoes
tomato puree
salt, pepper, a teeny bit of tabasco, fresh oregano's good too
a teaspoon of the mystery ingredient (ok, it's marmite)
anything else that seems like a good idea at the time

Then I put grated cheese on everybody's bit except mine because I don't eat cheese and it goes in a medium hot oven for half an hour or so
It's very, very yummy - real comfort food which for some reason the boys have always called Mr Grumblebum and if you think it's because it has an unfortunate side effect, it's not. When they were little we had a small pumpkin sitting on the kitchen table for a week or so and the kids gave it a name. Honest.

Well, time to go but I've been given some bare rooted autumn raspberries so whatever the weather chucks at me tomorrow I shall make time to go up and get them into the ground. I've wrapped them in wet newspaper for tonight so they should be ok
Happy gardening (and comfort cooking)

Pond Clearing

It's my favourite sort of weather today, the sort of crispness in the air that makes you think of frost, steam rising up from the wet long grass as the sun's heat gets going for the day and a perfect blue sky. It won't be long before there really is frost. The garlic should go in before it gets cold, it's better for it to be in the ground by then, it seems to give it a kick start. I don't think there's anything else that could be seen as urgent though, I mean, there are always jobs to do, but nothing that can't wait a day or two.

Actually, something that shouldn't wait much longer is paying the allotment bill! I've had it these last three weeks and I keep forgetting to bring my card up to the office so that I can pay online. In theory it should be so much quicker than sending a cheque but that's only if I actually get round to doing it! This weekend, honest!

This morning I took my washing up gloves with me as well as my camera and got to grips with the very overgrown pond. I've hardly been able to see the water all summer, the plants had burgeoned massively this year. So, I've thinned (hacked at) the yellow flag irises and marsh marigolds and also some other stuff that had become so rampant that it was climbing out of the pond altogether and I don't even think I put it there in the first place. I've no idea what it was but there's considerably less of it now! Then I took my chair and my flask and set them where I could admire my work and enjoyed my coffee break with a couple of frogs staring at me all boggly eyed. I don't think they minded really, they always look like that!

As I left for home, I put my old yellow bucket on the wall with the salvaged flag irises. I can't bring myself to just shove them in the compost. I hope somebody will take them. I've left a note so hopefully the bucket won't go too. It's not much use really (no handle). My other bucket has a handle but it's also got a big split in the bottom! And before you suggest it...no, the handle won't detach and then go on the yellow one. I'd already thought of that! Time to go I think..
Happy gardening (with boggly eyed frogs)

Butternut squash ok?

Whew, what a scorcher! Fabulous weather, endless blue sky and vest and shorts temperature again, particularly when you're digging. I alternated between digging, clearing up and sitting under the tree drinking green tea with lemon. Lots of people were there today, I think Friday must be a popular day to have off work.

Today I've pulled the sugar snap peas out and stacked the canes away, dug up some madly seeding salad leaves that had been far too peppery for me to bother saving them, I've taken the netting off the strawberries and rolled it up into a bundle and stowed it carefully in the hut. Next spring, when I go looking for a nice clean piece of netting I know that it will have turned into a knotted, tortuous bit of unravelling knitting and I won't have the patience to untangle it so I'll have to buy some more! That's what usually happens anyway!

I had another look at the butternut squashes. The plants are amazingly prolific with fronds escaping all over the path in several different directions. What I had been going to say about them last time was that the little butternuts don't seem to be doing very well. There are lots of them but when they get to about two inches long, they go yellow and drop off......but......today, I was complaining about their lack of progress to a friend when we spotted that three of them have got bigger and bigger and finally look as though they'll grow into big butternuts! I'm really pleased. They looked so promising it would be a shame to end up composting the lot without some successful produce.

Last time I wrote my diary entry I was chased off the computer by a desperately hungry cat, this time it's J, just arrived home from work and still in his cycling gear but hovering anxiously over me because it's really his computer! I know my place.
Happy gardening.

Lazy gardener

Several seasons in one day today. There was a proper autumn mist this morning as J and the boys set off for work and school. It had all gone by the time I'd fried my brain with too many hours of computer use and decided I needed some fresh air. By then it was summer again and I had to take off all the extra layers I'd been wearing!

I did a bit of idle picking (some runner beans, more courgettes and artichokes) but mostly I just wandered around admiring other people's plots and then sat in the sun with my eyes shut. I'm a bit tired today so I decided not to start on digging the top bed, my next job. The ground is still very soggy after the recent rain so I didn't do anything about planting the daffodils under the old tree either. I took some photos of the burnt tree, mostly dead, but the branches stood out in a really interesting pattern against the blue sky. An artistic one I think! The other one's a mistake - it was supposed to be a butternut squash plant but I pasted the wrong one in. Silly me. Now I can't make it go away! I think you'll have to put up with it because it's time for me to go and start on dinner, feed the cat and generally turn into superwoman for the next hour or two. You know the sort of thing.
In fact I'm getting filthy looks from the cat right now!
Happy cat feeding.

There were rumours of frost on the radio weather forecast. I'd been making a quiche with Gardener's Question Time imparting wisdom in the background and I was suddenly galvanised into action! As soon as I was able to leave the house I went up the hill and harvested anything that was ready. There was a fine haul of runner beans, two artichokes (I'm swapping those with a friend for a small rosemary plant in a pot) a courgette, two parsnips and my first ever turnip! I also gathered some mint and sage and a bag of spinach beet. I also picked a few greenish tomatoes to put in a bowl in the kitchen with some red ones. I don't know why but this helps them to ripen. The other thing you can do is put them in a paper bag in a drawer but I forget about them if I do that and find the mushy remains months later!

The plants themselves will have to take their chances if there's a frost. Usually, the courgettes die off pretty quickly but everything else should be ok for a while. The tomatoes won't like it either but they've been pretty rubbish this year anyway. After I'd cut the bits with blight off they recovered slowly and eventually I got a handful of tomatoes from most of the plants. Some just laid down and died so I grubbed them up and disposed of the bodies! ....... a pause while I look for a photo.....here are some post blight tomatoes. You can see the browning along the stem where the disease left its mark.

In some ways the cold snap at the end of the growing season is quite invigorating. I find the cold wind breathes energy into me and I start planning next year's planting. My organic seed catalogue arrived in the post yesterday so my bedtime reading is sorted out for a few days! (I need something therapeutic after taking my older son out for his driving practice every day. He's actually doing very well but my nerves get rather jangled!) The downside of autumn is the way it gets dark almost immediately after we've eaten our dinner so we tend to spend more time indoors. Having said that, I'm going to go out with the camera tonight and try to photograph the moon shortly after moonrise. It's a Harvest Moon, J says it's an illusion that it's so huge when it's low down in the sky but it's a lovely illusion and worth taking photos if it's clear.
Happy gardening (and moongazing)

Change of season

It really felt like Autumn just now, in fact, as I was about to leave and come home for a cup of coffee, I had immense difficulty shutting the hut door because the wind was so strong. Our hut is facing down the hill and every year it seems to give another lurch and tip further over. I used to think that it would be ok because on one side it's held up by a winter jasmine hedge and on the other by a big old honeysuckle but now I'm not so sure. It looks like it might be sliding between them and if it does, it'll just go rolling over onto the top patch. It would be such a mega job to clear it out and straighten it up that I've never been able to face it before but it looks like a job for this coming winter.

There were still courgettes and beans to pick along with tomatoes and one strawberry (!) but the plums I was expecting had gone. I'd netted these against pigeons so I was surprised that they'd gone, especially as they weren't visible under the leaves. The plums have been fabulous. I planted the tree last spring so this is the first year of proper fruit-bearing and I've been very impressed so far. The variety is Marjorie's Seedling which is supposed to be an all purpose cooking and dessert plum and it's certainly been good for both. It seems to be a prolific cropper too, particularly in comparison with my new apple tree (planted at the same time) and now suffering from something that I haven't yet been able to identify. Actually, that's unfair to the apple tree, the apples tasted good - there just weren't that many of them and they were teeny weeny.

Still, there's no plums left now! The last plum tart has been consumed! Lucky I'd taken the picture a week or so ago. I shall have to turn my mind to digging and other autumn tasks.

One of the lovely features of late summer/early autumn is the allotment tea party which started up a few years ago and this year's was last Sunday. J and I had been away for the weekend in our campervan but we arrived back home in time to show our (sunburned) faces. Some allotment holders had made wonderful cakes and preserves to have with our tea so we sampled some. Cylla's courgette cake was splendid. Yum. It's also nice to stop and talk to the people we normally see from a distance, busily tending their own plots. We should make more time to talk to each other, it increases the sense of community there which can only be a good thing.
Time to go, I'm afraid
Happy gardening

Parsnips by night

Last night we went up to the allotment at a silly time, it was only a few minutes away from sunset so we knew we wouldn't get anything done. We just went for the sake of a bit of fresh air and because it was such a nice evening.

As I walked up the path I spotted some more strawberries so I picked those, then we noticed some damage caused to our sweetcorn. Every plant has been knocked down and the cobs ripped apart and scattered across the ground. I haven't a clue what could have blitzed them so thoroughly, pigeons wouldn't have made so much mess surely? We came up with various ideas - badgers seem most likely although I've never seen them on the allotments or heard about them there. The foxes aren't likely contenders either. We were starting to say things like "warthogs" and "wildebeeste" to each other because of the way it looked as though some hefty mammal had charged about in the sweetcorn patch, shovelling the plants aside with huge tusks! My sensible allotment neighbour has netted her sweetcorn to preserve it from pigeons so maybe I should have done that too. Whatever it was (and I'm sure it wasn't pigeons) has been put off by the net.

While we were spontaneously generating names of unlikely animals it went dark on us so any remaining gardening had to be done by feel, which was a bit weird. I dug up some parsnips (pictured) but then we called it a day and strolled home for a glass of wine.
Happy gardening (mostly in daylight)