Big Fat Wren

Spotted a wren like this one on the plot.  It's the first one I've seen in three years so it was a treat.  I had a good closeup of her, just like in photo.  She looked big so maybe she is pregnant and waiting to have her little chicks.  Too slow to take my own photo, but then sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment.  Thank you little wren!

The big blue sky settles after the wind in May.

The Gooseberry Bush is doing well.

This is the russet at the back end of the plot.  It didn't do too well last year as I think there's a lot of rubble buried at the back and I didn't prepare the ground as well as I could have but glad to see it's been pollinated and is growing apples this year.  This end of the neighbouring allotment which is the view here needs some work.

Weather:  Windy

Spotted: Black cat, ladybird, spiders, blackbird, frogs, seagulls

On the menu:  Strawberries, radish, spinach and potatoes

This has been a very windy May.  Since I planted the Passiflora a couple of weekends ago it’s had to deal with a lot of windy weather and it shows.  It looks a little bit fed up and not curling around the new willow trellis I’ve put in instead the tendrils are tight into its self as though it’s too cold to reach out.  The tall leggy blueberry bush, the Juneberry and the rasps have all had to be tied to bamboo canes or sticks because of the stormy weather, just as a bit of support.  The relentlessness of the  weather means I’ve not been on the plot as much as I’d have liked because it’s been so miserable working there and there’s  lots to do, especially weeding as I’ve now discovered mares tail growing in every corner.  I know you can make tea from it but I just can’t bring myself to do it. 

April saw the driest ever on record and now the incessant wind and strange things seem to be happening.  I’ve already harvested two punnets of strawberries (and ate them) and the roses are in full bloom.  I’ve cut one of the pink blooms and put it in a little vase with the pansy’s I’m growing too.  The frogs are doing well in the environment I’ve built them, a little, tiny pond and some green cover made out of a pile of logs placed higgledy piggledy together and allowing the grass to grow around them.  The frogs seem to be oblivious to the invisible phenomenon that rages above them.

Bob’s pumpkins (5 and 6 now) have perished as I suspected they would.  Why he gave them to me before they were ready to go in the ground I don’t know?   I’m going to have to find a couple of Big Max’s before he asks me how the pumps are getting on.  The kindness of plot neighbours is one thing but I just can’t grow them.

On the plot earlier today as most days there’s a blackbird that sits on a tall post just yards from me singing loudly and beautifully as if to say, ‘look at me up here I don’t mind the wind at all’.

Strawbs in May

Rose and Pansy's

A row of radish

Willow

As you can see from the photos I’ve completed my trellis made from found cut willow.  However, two friends have informed me that willow can self seed from a stump.  Dean who keeps bees on the allotment has built a partial screen made from willow  to stop children stumbling across them.  He thinks the willow may root and bud.  A friend in work told me the same thing and gave me advice on growing arches from the branches. 

The wood we found cut easily and I could thread the long branches through each other readily enough.  The willow has abundant watery bark and sap saturated with salicylic acid.  This chemical or hormone is similar to aspirin.  The leaves and bark of this magnificent tree have been used in medicine as a remedy for aches and fever in Ancient Greece and the Middle East.  So alongside the Pulsatilla which will be growing at the foot of these stumps, and the Passiflora which will be growing up it and the various weeds in the garden which contain medicinal properties I will be well placed to deal with aliments in the future.  I will see how the Willow stumps grows. 

Making a trellis from willow

Willow Structure

Rain and Birds

Weather:  Rain, light rain, heavy rain, damp, mild wind, chilly, blue skies, warm

Spotted:   Great tit, magpies, crow, robin, starlings, ducks, seagulls, blackbirds, ladybirds, frogs, insects, butterfly’s, slugs, snails, earthworms, woodworms,  quick moving black spiders, bees,  wasps, black and white cat, aphids, black fly, gardeners.



Pinking blackbirds this week all around the allotment. In fact the birds have been magnificent being busy with each other and catching food and raising young. After such a dry month in  April, May has brought with it the much needed rain. It has cooled everyone down. 



I loved watching the little brown jobbies having dry earth baths in next door's cabbage patch and  swooping in front of me. On a break lying on the hay in the shed watching a beautiful great tit hoping around the hawthorn branches and popping down to check out grub.  I loved watching the magpie dance and hop around all the beds seemingly in a world of his own.  I didn’t realise they took flying insects from the air.  And finally I loved the robin who stopped us in our tracks on our journey home, looked at us, cocked his head as if to say ‘where’s me morsel then?’ 



Work continues on the home made trestle for the passiflora.  I managed to source about 10 12 – 14 foot pieces of willow through the help of an allotment friend.  What I want to do is make a stake at one end and stick four of them in the ground as a frame and then weave thinner branches of wood through so that the passi can work her way up and around all the wood spreading her wonderful purple flowers. 

Willow and bamboo

Wet Socks

Damp Allotment

Grass Frost and Passiflora Caerulea

Weather: dry, warm, sunny.  One of the warmest Aprils since records began.

Spotted: bumblebees, ladybirds, frogs, magpies, aphids, spiders, butterflies, robin, blackbirds, sea gulls, black cat .

My neighbour on the allotment, Bob has given me a couple of pumpkins a couple of times now.  The first one died of thirst and the 2nd and 3rd were caught by grass frost.  I’d never heard of grass frost before but Bob said he’d been down the allotment very early and saw white frost at the very tips of the grass.  My rocket potatoes succumbed to the same frost so I’ve piled them up with soil.

When I lived in Kyverdale Road in London, my friend planted a Passiflora [passion flower] in our first year there.  It’s such a beautiful plant and over the five or so years we lived there I watched this little plant grow and spread into the most wondrous flower.  My friend who was a fantastic gardener and a great home maker one year asked if I would help her around the garden.  One of the tasks was to plant out the bulbs of various kinds she’d bought, snowdrops, daffs and tulips.   It was cold, we had our dibber and our bulbs and we were on our hands and knees planting and planting in November.  I remember now I was baffled that we should be putting something in the ground when it was going to be so cold for the next 6 months.  Job done we forgot about them or I forgot about them until February the following year, and then spring.  And it was over the spring of that year that I realised something probably obvious to others, that by planting these bulbs I was sending myself a message.  It was a message of love and hope and a reminder to plan for the future and to look after myself.  This is the second year that I’ve had tulips and snowdrops and daffodils down the allotment and it will be the first year of the new passiflora plant I’ve just got from Dents.  So with help from my gardener friend who inspired in me an interest in gardening and to the new passiflora plant going in at the weekend - here’s to the future.

14A

Pink Tulips

Black Cat