Home Grown Loveliness

Where have the last 3 months gone?  For us, they have disappeared in a blur of house hunting, sleepless nights, deep dreamless sleeps of the totally exhausted, more house hunting, working on the allotment and generally coping with life.  Gone are the spur of the moment caravan breaks which we loved so much, gone, in fact, are thoughts of any holidays at all because G simply can't travel far.  His neck dystonia is getting worse making it hard for him to sit still for any length of time.  Driving is limited to around 30 minutes otherwise his neck pain is too bad.  He is waiting for more Botox injections to try again for some relief from the constant head movement.  The appointment came through last week (at last) for 15th July. It can't come soon enough.

On a happier note, the allotment is doing splendidly :)

 We had to net the sprouts because the crows and pigeons were loving them a bit too much. The photo was taken a couple of weeks ago and now they have grown so tall we have had to un-net them and put string across to deter the pesky birds ;)

The broad beans have been a failure.  Over half the plants died after black fly got to them (it's an organic site so we don't spray anything) so we have about 4 surviving plants which we are trying out.  The marigolds were an attempt to deter pests. They didn't work, obviously...lol...

Potatoes are doing well. We have no idea what variety they are as they were gifted to us, so have no idea when they will be ready.  I had an experimental dig around an end plant yesterday as we had no spuds for our evening meal and found a couple of giant ones.  The skins (hardly any) just rubbed off. I boiled them gently with some fresh mint and they were delicious served with sausages and home grown peas.  Isn't it lovely how fresh home grown tastes so much nicer, so full of flavour.

To sum up, we have been eating:

lettuce
radishes (not very successful)
beetroot
peas
potatoes (yay!)
strawberries (grown in a tub at home)

In addition, we are growing:

carrots
chard
broad beans

We have placed the fruit bushes; blackberry, gooseberry and a gifted raspberry cane,  out of the way at the top of the allotment.
When G was at work yesterday, I went to the plot for potatoes, as I said, and there wasn't a soul there.  It was 10.45am, warm and quiet except for the birds and totally relaxing and lovely.  I can understand perfectly how getting back to the land heals the soul.

The next post will contain news from house hunting!

Stay safe everyone and thanks everso for popping in after all this time x