Plots and pots

Despite the Weathermen gleefully telling us that we have turned to "Meteorological Autumn" with the arrival of 1st September, this weekend has been a lovely mix of time at the allotment, time in the kitchen and time spent potting things on and tidying the garden.

On Friday we managed a couple of hours at the allotment with J and I
picking apples, hazelnuts, peas, greens and a little cucumber. We usually lose out to the local wildlife for the hazelnuts so it's great to actually manage to harvest a decent crop this year - we don't mind sharing but it will be good to be able to use some of these for a change. The cucumber may be tiny but it's tasty and as we rarely manage to get these to produce anything we're happy with it!

A small selection of this weekend's haul

We also had a chance to catch up with some of the other plot holders and exchange some of our bumper crop of cooking apples for a wonderful box of tomatoes. One of the things I miss most about working is the chance to catch up with folk and get a feel for what is going on in their lives so visits to the lotty are now doubly special - keeping me in touch with people as well as with nature and producing healthy ingredients that on good days I can turn into nutritious tasty food for us and for friends and family. Well worth the small rent which comes due this month.

Tomato tart

Apple and raspberry pie

In between the usual fair weather chores of hanging washing out, getting it in again, watering pots and shuffling them around I snuck some Tatsoi seeds into an empty pot - this Chinese cabbage is a new one for us but should give some different greens for J's winter stir-fries - whilst J edged the paths and tidied the compost bins, beds and pots. Last job of the weekend for me was potting on the pansy seedlings - J had sown these back in May when I wasn't allowed to play with compost due to the chemotherapy treatment so it was great to be able to move them on to bigger individual pots and to anticipate the beautiful flowers they will produce later in the year.