I hope you enjoy my little video of our allotment.

I did find a cucumber, it was staring me in the face when I went back into the greenhouse, which I picked along with a few tomatoes and that lovely little cauliflower for our Sunday lunch.

I’ve had to cut some of the brokali before it goes over, so I will be able to use that later in the week. Cutting the plant encourages it to send out new spurs, at the moment the plants are proving very vigorous, so it will be interesting to discover how productive they remain and if we can keep them going right into the winter.

I do prefer the yellow courgettes, they are so much easier to spot and one has less chance of peering under their huge leaves only to discover a huge marrow shaped courgette. As always the courgette glut is upon us, but I adore them gently fried in butter with garlic, black pepper and then a few tomatoes, piled high on sour dough toast with either a scrapping of a good cheese or a poached egg on top, it makes a marvellous lunch.

I had hoped to be able to pick the broad beans as we go along, but the black fly have put paid to any smaller pods ripening and these would have only been a few pods at most. A few black fly seem a small price to pay for home grown organic veg. I’ve only recently found a love of broad beans, one of the few vegetables that I disliked as a child, unless they were the first pickings, when they were tiny tender beans. I just remember the chewy strong flavour of beans that were probably just past their best. From the couple that I nibbled on raw at the plot, these should be a delight and I’m looking forward to cooking them gently and serving them simply to enjoy their true essence. Also I have a few beans left and I may well just push a few into the ground to see if we can get a late autumn crop, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.

Mandy’s plot, July 2020.

29-05-37 to 27-06-2020

It is the saddest of truths that we all hope to outlive our parents and that to do so is so very painful. Mum died at home surrounded by family in my arms. It is the most painful experience I have ever endured, and still remains very raw. But I am glad that I gave her what she wanted and I was able to fulfil my promise of looking after her at home. In these dark days of Covid, to be lost and confused on a hospital ward as she was some three weeks earlier, with only telephone contact is not what we would have wanted for her and nor did she. I can’t praise the NHS highly enough, they really came through with such a comprehensive care package that we never felt anxious and were able to look after her needs emotionally whilst a fantastic team did all the heavy work.

Dad of course is completely lost, having been married for 64 years there is a rather large Mum shaped hole. But he is doing well, he’s mastered the washing machine, is starting to integrate back into society as safely as he can and has found the ready meal aisle in Waitrose, its early days but the first shoots of growth look promising. And the beauty of having a large family is that we all rally around and one of us is either seeing him or is in contact with him morning, noon, afternoon and evening.

We had a lovely service for Mum, with just my brothers, sister and our children, which started off with a last trip up the town for Mum to see who was out and about, she would have loved that, her favourite thing was to just ‘nip up the town’. How lucky to live in a place nearly all your life that you can do that. The humanist was perfect and outlined Mum’s very eclectic past wonderfully and we had a very small, but perfectly formed wake, with us all making sandwiches together and drinking tea and gin, doing all the good stuff that families do best. It was perfect, with its mismatched china, begged and borrowed crockery and cutlery and two big cakes to sustain us when we started to fade. Mum would have been proud.

I’m still deep in grief, but this weekend I am aiming to get back up to my allotment, to wrestle with weeds, pick some runner and broad beans and try to come to terms with all that has been. There is an awful lot I don’t understand and an awful lot of why’s, but in my heart I know it was her time and there was nothing more any of us could have done.

Rest in peace Mum, God Bless. x

I can’t remember who started the conversation, but during an impromptu evening walk with a very good friend I commented that I would love to do this every morning, early. And so it was a plan was formed.

The next morning, at ten to six, I texted to say I was up and received a reply that so were they and we were on.

6.30 a.m. we were off on our walk, chatting rather loudly, I’m sorry if we woke you up with our laughter as we trotted up the town and round the Abbey Fields meeting many lovely dogs, admiring all of the birds and exclaiming loudly with wonder at the size of the fish as they jumped out of the water to catch flies in the early morning light. The ducks were still fast asleep.

It was then that I remembered that it was the Summer Solstice. The start of new beginnings and light and joy. The promise of the sun, no matter how hard the winter, that it will always return.

I felt comforted by this accidental happening, our new plans to land on such an auspicious day.

I think it bodes well especially after the grimness of the last six months, to have plans with good solid foundations for growth, exercise and health coupled hand in hand with laughter, fun and joy. And that is what is going to get me up in the early hours of the morning.

The first of the mange tout, how wonderful. The fact that they went with some left over curry is neither here nor there, (I just had to cook them this evening!) they were a first taste of the summer vegetables on the plot and were delicious.

At this time of year you either see weeds sprouting through with the beetroot and carrots or a perfectly manicured plot. We tend to favour a few weeds, mainly because I am a bit clumsy and it is very easy to accidentally remove seedlings, so I just hoe as close as I dare and pick the biggest offenders out by hand. I do try, but bending over for hours on end is not the best way to see the world. But it is tiring and unless we have a decent carrot crop this year, and not one riddled with carrot fly we shall not be bothering with them again and instead shall grow and plant a row of globe artichokes and buy some organic carrots locally instead. Although, I will miss that carroty flavour, there’s nothing like a fresh carrot, the flavour is so strong compared to shop bought.

But enough of my musings, what is happening on the plot. Well there is a lot of green, its always promising at this time of the year, before the bugs or fungus get a hold, and promising swathes of verdant there are.

And a bit of blue.

The blueberries are having a field day. We only have one tiny bush, it must measure less than a metre tall, but boy is it loaded with berries this year. It must have enjoyed the compost we put on it in the autumn, must remember to do that again.

All of the peas, beans and mange tout are doing well. The greenhouse is full of tomatoes and cucumbers flowering, we are eating our lettuce and spring onions nearly every day. The new potatoes have yet to flower but the plants are looking good. Pumpkins and courgettes seem to be doing okay. The beetroot is coming on nicely, all the brassicas are doing well.

We have a swathe of two varieties of corn on the cobs, which will do very nicely when they are ripe. There are never any wasted!

And a new one this year, Brokali Atlantis, an F1 of a combination of broccoli and kale, hence the spelling. Apparently it produces delicious sweet long tender shoots and is a combination of Chinese and European brocolli and has the potential for high yields. And from what I remember it has a reasonable germination rate. I know it is vigorous and is doing well, I may well crop a little after this bout or two of rain to see what we have.

This is what happens when you leave the resident chef to potter in the kitchen making a Sunday lunch! I walked into the kitchen to find this, Flipping ‘eck!!! It was amazing.

Please excuse me whilst I immortalise my birthday flowers. Some were bought for me, some I bought myself, all apart from the beautiful flowers next to the roses are at least a week old and all are supermarket flowers, which I make no apology for, supermarket flowers have improved incredibly in the last twenty years or so, and they are so affordable. I remember watching a documentary about the huge auction houses that exist for flowers, it’s totally computerised and is a huge business, quite fascinating.

I love to keep fresh flowers in the house and if I had more space on the allotment I would grow a few, I’ve even been thinking of getting half a plot to do that. But until then, I’ll enjoy the seasons bounty through the eyes of the supermarkets buyers and growers.

We are very lucky in our town in that we have a large and lovely greengrocers that has an avid following, meaning the produce is always fresh. I needed a few bits for supper and tried to entice my resident chef to come for a walk with the carrot on the end of the stick being the greengrocers. It would also help with the carrying back, but he was having non of it, still being very comfortably clad in his Jim jams. Well it is lockdown, there are no rules. But all of a sudden he changed his mind and I was ever so pleased.

We walked through the park on the way up to the town bellowing at each other as the wind had picked up and I could barely hear him. But once we turned into a residential area the wind died down and the sun almost came out to play. We gaily chatted about shops that were there and shops that had disappeared as we trundled up the town.

Once at the greengrocers we quickly decided on our vegetables for supper, some warm and ripe plum tomatoes to be made into a salsa, a couple of good sized butternut squashes, I only needed one but it was two for a pound and some lovely looking flat peaches, which if given the chance I can eat three or four a day while they are in season. A few treats for Mum which included a box of large sticky dessert dates and we were on our way.

We walked to Mum’s via the cemetery, some people think of cemeteries as glum places but I’ve always found them fascinating, there is just so much to see. Firstly we sat on my favourite bench and then we sat on Uncle Franks and Uncle Fred’s. We talked about names on gravestones and how unusual some of them were and if they were a character of a book what would they be like. We investigated a grave that had two gaily coloured windmills going ten to the dozen in the breeze, convinced it would be a child’s only to find it was a well loved grandma and grandad. We exclaimed with delight when we found longevity, the oldest being in their 107th year, and were saddened by when an all to brief a life had ended. Nearest to the entrance where the oldest gravestones are we admired the influences of Art Deco and Art Nouveau on the tombstones along with hints of Rennie Mackintosh engraved into big stone crosses. The use of the various coloured stones and marbles fascinated. We walked underneath the arches of ancient horse chestnuts, whilst we chatted and soon we passed through the beautifully ornate iron gates thickly coated with black paint having been painted so many times in over a hundred years and were back in the land of the living. A moment of precious time well spent.

My resident chef went off to start dinner whilst I spent a little precious time with my parents, a moment to remember.

Is there anything more satisfying than spotting the right piece to slot into a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t think so. You might notice that there are two pieces missing, that is because two Christmas’s ago one puppy dog called Rupert took a liking to the jigsaw pieces and munched a couple, so we had to put it away not realising that two had disappeared! So we never got the satisfaction of that final click as you put the last piece in, but it doesn’t matter. Hubby and I started this particular puzzle, hubby and son no.2 did large chunks and then son no.2 and I stayed up very late one night and had a marathon session on it, with much banter and laughter along the way. We left it in one piece to surprise hubby, I’m not sure if he was pleased or disappointed that he didn’t join in the fun. I’ve bought him a couple more jigsaws which includes one of London. Oh the joys of Lockdown!

Rupert and I watching doggie Tik Toks.