Be of good cheer

They are, for the moment, well again! Hooray! I was so fed up with poorly children, tired husband and grouchy mama...

Now we just have the tired husband and grouchy mama!

But at least they are well! Enough to make me start singing and dancing... until they start fighting again and I return to grouch mode. Bah humbug!

Pip got Star-of-the-Day yesterday at school though... amazing! Apparently he was the first to sit nicely and listen EVERY TIME, ALL DAY! Zoinks (as Scooby Doo would say)! So that's great.

And Spike had to go with me to the opticians yesterday because there is no such thing as a day off in the run-up to Christmas! Instead of lounging at home with Daddy and reading books and playing trains he had to go with me because Daddy was out spreading good cheer. And little Spikelet was an angel... sat beautifully while I had my eyes checked. Could not believe it.

TWO children on star behaviour in one day?! And Dude was fine too... just not exceptionally, mention-worthy good. Hoorah!

We had Sloppy Joes for dinner. Good Christmas fare... ho ho ho...

So all in all, things are on the up! How are things with you all?

Saturday at the Infirmary

Urg.

They are sick again...

Two weeks ago it was Dude & Spike, ending up with Dude missing 3 days of school and Spike having a course of antib's to sort out a chest infection. Then we had a week of relative health... just general snottiness that most kids have at this time of year.

But now we are down again. Spike (again!) and Pip this time. And guess what? GardenBoy was all clammy and shivery and needed breakfast in bed before he could take the ibuprofen (not on an empty stomach!) and enter the land of the living.

Still at least he could cuddle and soothe the stuffy, snotty, hot and miserable Spikelet.

Thought Pip was ok again after having 2 days off school, but around noon he lay down on the sofa under a blanket and refused to move! He has a cough which is really disturbing him (and us) and a low-grade fever.

And to round off this litany of joys, little Dude is bouncy and healthy and happy and getting on the nerves of all the sickies...

Thank God I had my flu shot this year, and here's hoping that it will keep me healthy. Someone needs to keep the Good Ship Household running.

One good thing that happened today though, is that after GardenBoy was revived he went and bought himself a new laptop and so now I won't have to listen to him teach his children rude words as he shouts at the old one! He is a happy bunny now, playing with his new toy.

Reply to Don's Comment

Allotment (definition C/o Wikipedia): (gardening), in the United Kingdom, a small area of land, let out at a nominal yearly rent by local government or independent allotment associations, for individuals to grow their own food.

So now you know! :)

In my garden veg plot I have onions and garlic at the moment, and plan to grow potatoes (Red Duke of York maybe?), beans & peas, and perhaps some tomatoes and pumpkins/squash (being hopeful about the weather. Really not enough warmth and too much rain this year). And more raspberries since the kids love hunting and eating them. Apples going in the unfenced and so mostly unused (fear of runaway kids and the busy road) front garden, but they won't be bearing for a few years.

In the allotment... everything! More potatoes, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, more beans, more onions etc etc etc.

We have dreams and plans, you see, now we just need the weather and children to get over colds. They seem to be dropping like flies, in succession. Last night it was Pip and Spike... and as he's not on top form Spike has returned to having naps in the afternoon which is my usual window for allotmenting. So it's a bit of a non-starter for now. Ho hum.

Allotment Betrayal

We are sharing our allotment plot with a local school. We have been given half, they have been given half. We have been working darn hard on our half... well we had, up until about the middle of Oct, when it turned yucky and muddy and very cold. So I haven't been down there since. But up until then we had worked very hard to clear the surface and dig it over etc. The half claimed by the school was untouched.

BUT NOW... my partner in allotmenting went down there yesterday because a friend of hers was delivering a bunch of rubble for us to use to help our pathetic drainage. And the school side is completely cleared, completely dug over and even has drainage pipes running through it and out the other side to where, allegedly, the allotment chiefs are going to be running some drainage pipes.

I am really peeved because now we look like complete slackers and like we are totally unworthy of our half-plot. How have they done this? I mean, it is totally flooded, and theirs is worse than ours (even with the drainage pipes, because they don't drain anywhere yet). They have ice on top of their flooded mud. So HOW have they got it cleared and dug and drainage piped so quickly in such foul weather?

I bet they paid some gardening company to do it for them. That must be it, rather than just being two over-worked mums who have to bring children with them who are liable to fall in muddy puddles and need a complete change of clothes. And so by cheating and paying to get it done they have made us look unworthy...

I don't like it one bit. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I was rather hoping they would be as... what word am I looking for? Overworked? Slow? Useless? Not keen on the cold and wet? Perhaps 'normal' is what I want. Please let our neighbours (who we haven't met, I hasten to add) be normal and not show us up every step of the way. Please, God?

Veg-Plot Review

I was doing a bit of clearing out of the garden veg-plot the other day, getting rid of the cosmos skeletons etc, and I found a treasure! One last onion which had been hiding under the thickets of dead scrub. It started out as an onion-and-carrot bed. Then I planted some cosmos seedlings in among, just to add interest later on... and then the cosmos got huge. They loved all the rain, I guess! They grew and grew and fell over and grew some more and sprouted roots from the stem and kept growing. I managed to get (what I thought was) all the onions and carrots out from underneath them, but yesterday I discovered I was wrong. Hooray! It's like finding a fiver in the pocket of a coat you don't wear often... well, maybe not quite the same financially, but I was chuffed to bits to find an extra bonus onion. And it was oh-so-oniony too... Not damaged from neglect and full of flavour. It was eaten that night. Yum.


So now the veg-plot has come to the end of the cycle and is bare again... well almost. I have planted 4 rows of red onions and 3 rows of garlic, which are all starting to sprout. So even in the depths of dark November (which according to a friend's gardening calendar is NOT a gardening month!) we have the hints of what is yet to come, if we can hold on through the horrid cold and wet and dark.

And I thought I would have a look back through my photos and see if I could pull together some pictures taken in roughly the same spot of the veg-plot through the months of this year. So here you go:

April. Newly planted potatoes, onions & carrots


May: Potatoes coming through nicely


June: Baby carrots and onions... and weeds


June: Potatoes geting taller


June



July

Sept


And finally here we are in November.

We wait patiently through the darkness for the turning of the seasons back to lengthening days and months which ARE gardening months. Not November though. And I am not too hopeful for December either...

Cold: virus and weather

We have had the lurgey again. This time it was Spike and Dude who came down with it. They are mostly over it, and just full of snot and coughing (as opposed to full of snot, coughing, fever and lethargy). Here's one of poor little Dude, who fell asleep on the landing half way up the stairs... Couldn't even make it to his bed. Must sleep now...

We have also had snow... ok, so only half an inch, and nothing like the exciting thickness that the Canadian cousins had been enjoying, but still very exciting. Exciting enough to stir Dude from his lethargy and send him hurtling outside to play... only to come back in 5 minutes later and spend the rest of the day on the sofa with a fleecy blanket absolutely exhausted!

Pip made a very impressive (?) mini snowman. Well, very impressive considering what he had to work with!

He also got the Chief Scout's Bronze Award at Beavers the other night... highest award a Beaver Scout can get! It means that he had got all of the Challenge Badges. Very proud mummy... Considering that I was a Brownie in my time, and a sixer, and only managed to get 2 badges. We were a very lax group and mostly just played games! So to have a son whose arms are covered in badges rather makes up for my underachievement.

Romanesco Broccoli

We found the coolest vegetable ever in a greengrocers in a nearby town... It was fractal broccoli! I searched for it on the internet and found out that it is actually called Romanesco Broccoli, and it definitely wins the prize for worlds coolest vegetable.

It is now our favourite vegetable, but it is not sold in our local supermarket, so we have to go to the other town to get it. So we haven't had it since and I hope that next time I go to the green grocers they have it again. They didn't have it in another grocers in another town, so here's hoping.

In other news...

We had a wonderful trip away over half term with our church... We went to a Youth Hostel and took over the whole place for three days.

Edinburgh Zoo

Bamburgh beach with friends

We had a halloween party for Pip which was a great.

Eating doughnuts off a stick

And Spike moved into a big-boy bed. Which means he can now get out of bed at 6:30 with the big ones... so they have been put under a new regime and are not allowed to get up until 7. Which I think is reasonable, but they think is tortuous. Hopefully they will get used to it soon!

No gardening news, I am afraid, because, as a friend's gardening calendar says 'November is NOT a gardening month'. Too much rain, wind and general nastiness for me. We have lost all the leaves off our bird-feeding tree though, which means we can see the bird feeders now, so we have started filling them again, and are enjoying watching the birds. We get greenfinches, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, and have even had a woodpecker (but not at the birdfeeders). And robins, blackbirds and collared doves pick up whatever falls out onto the grass below.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon...

Autumn

The weather has been seriously autumnal. Which means leaves are changing and dropping and the weather has been unpredictable. It has been very windy, and rainy on and off. Not great allotmenting weather. I still have a stack of planks to transform into raised beds, and although I haven't been down there recently I can pretty much guarantee you that it will be flooded.

So I have been focussing more on the home garden. I have been trying to figure out how to create four distinct vegetable areas for proper crop rotation. Potatoes, followed by beans, followed by brassicas, followed by onions is the general 4 year advice... Not sure if I am going to be able to do this though.

I have planted my onions and garlic in old potato beds. I think I am going to put beans and peas in the onion bed... Not sure what I'll do with the bit I put the bean teepee in though... I really don't have a well laid out veg patch at home. Part of the problem is that we have a big rhubarb plant in an awkward spot that I have to plant around. I think I am going to dig it up when it has finished dying back and re-locate it... perhaps to the teepee spot... hmmm... this will bear thinking about.

Anyway, just wanted to let you see what's growing in the garden in the late October wind!

New onion and garlic patch.

Chrysanthemums

Feverfew

Dead cardoon flowers. New growth just visible at the bottom.

Raspberries are still ripening, and the boys still enjoy them.

Random and late gladiolus.

Short update

We went down the allotment (dow na lotment!, according to Spike!) the other day and took a few pictures to give you an update on where we are in the process.



Look! A path! Look! Dug over soil! Look! Gravel in a ditch to help drainage!



Look! Old boards out of which we will build raised beds! Hooray! Progress!

Also, Look! No flooding - although that has been reversed due to recent downpours.

Short post today since we are suffering from the tummy-bug that is going around, and GardenBoy is sitting in bed feeling very sorry for himself and I am being instructed to go and get him sustenance. What sustenance for a poorly tummy? Popcorn... Yes, he really is ill...

Apples and mud

I just bought (or ordered) some apple trees. I am very excited. I have never planted a tree, let alone one as, well, edible, as an apple. And I ordered THREE! They won't be dispatched until mid Nov at the earliest, since they need to be dormant, but still...

I have ordered:

Crispin

Redsleeves (you'll have to scroll down a bit to find it)

Saturn

We have been promising the boys that we would plant apple trees for them, but it has taken us a while to get to a house we are planning to stay in for a while, and also to figure out where we are going to put them. But I have now 'bitten the bullet'... Can't wait!

In other garden news, I have bought some garlic and red onions to go in the garden, since we are supposed to put them in now. The soil isn't too wet as we are lucky to have good drainage here, but I think I need to put in some paths, because I am just treading all over the soil that I want to be planting in, which isn't good for it.

I haven't been to the allotment in a week because last time I went there it was just mud everywhere. Worse than it had been before. Incredibly bad.

We need to get to the builders yard, buy some drainage pipes, gravel and dig ourselves a drainage ditch. Or a pond, which is what our drainage holes have turned into for now! Not great. Thing is that it's a catch22. Too wet to dig, and it's too wet because it hasn't been dug. Ok, so it has rained a lot, but our neighbours (who have dug over their plot already because they got it in spring)haven't got this problem.

So there you go.

Harvested the borlotti beans. Not many of them, but they were lovely. Will grow them again, but just more spread out so they can actually grow!

Oh, and we found a huge mushroom in the garden. Don't know what kind or if it's edible or poisonous. Told the boys not to touch it, but would have been fun to try eating it if we had known it was edible. Always rather fancied doing that, but was way too scared/sensible.

Sun and Showers

We have had such a wet summer, but this last week has been silly. Not really wet, but every time you start to feel optimistic about the weather and hang a load of washing out it starts to pour within 10 mins. So the washing stays out for the next two days trying to get dry.

Today was no exception.

And then... 1 o'clock... sunny. 2 o'clock... still sunny. 3 o'clock... what? Still sunny? QUICK! Get down to the allotment before it starts raining again!

So I picked the boys up from school, rushed them home to get changed, and then raced to the allotment, bumping into my Partner in Allotmenting as we arrived. She had had the same thought! So there were 4 little boys making squishy mud-holes and eating chocolate chip cookies while we yanked more carpet up. Got about an hour of work done. We have cleared very nearly half of the site now!

Spike is going out to play tomorrow so if it's not raining in the morning we are going to meet down there and have another go at it. Must dig weeds while the sun shines.

Oh, and my washing got dried too! What more could I want?

Allotment and Home news

We have taken on an allotment. Well, half an allotment, but that's plenty for us. It is totally overgrown, but 10 years ago, when it was last cultivated, some kind soul put down layers of carpet to keep the weeds at bay. And while it didn't exactly do that it did at least mean that the weeds have grown on TOP of the carpet. So it's a carpet of weeds on top of the carpet. So my friend and accomplice in this project and I have been pulling up layers of organic and inorganic carpet to reveal the nearly intact soil beneath. Only a few very determined weed roots, like some nettles, have made it through the carpet layer to the soil, so when we get to the digging stage of things it's not going to be too bad...

It's still really hard work, and we are discovering that we are weak little girls! One of the resident allotmenteers came over and helped out one morning, and such a difference a man's muscles made! Every one we have met down there has been really friendly and welcoming and happy to chat and offer advice and vegetables. Gotta love it! So far I have come home with 3 courgettes (zucchini for you Americans!) and a huge bundle of dark purple beans. Plus the promise of as many strawberry runners as I can be bothered to pot up. Our neighbours are Carol next door, and Helen and Denise across the path.

So far I have only taken Pip and Dude down with me while I have been working, since I can trust them to either help out, or at least hunt worms and stay in the vicinity. Spike is more of a 'free spirit' as yet, and is more likely to wander off and go picking blackberries from someone else's patch! So he comes down with us when we just go for a look, and a walk, for a chat to people, and for picking wild blackberries. All of the boys love it down there. This morning we took another friend and her three kids, and it will be nice to get them all down there to work/play/look for worms/have snail races etc...

Back on the home front the potato leaves have died down, but the potatoes underneath seem intact, so we have been digging them up as and when we need them, and they are so delicious, and so abundant. Potato growing is brilliant. Stick one small baby potato in the ground in late March or so, pile lots of dirt on top of them, ignore them for 3 or 4 months, dig up and find 20 to 30 times what you put in! If only the chap in the bible had invested his talent in a seed potato then when he buried it in the ground it would have been a different ending to the story!

My onions have also been very successful. Small tiny little onionlet put into the ground in spring, large fat mega-onion comes out late summer!

Our carrots on the other hand have been less than successful. I think our soil is too clayey. Not very impressive. Besides, for the same space that an onion takes up you only get one carrot. And while this is fine for an onion (you generally only need one onion per meal cooked) having only one carrot in your dinner is ... well ... not so great. So I think carrots are off my allotment list.

The tomatoes are big and green, but showing potential signs of blight... not great. Hopefully if it develops I can save what we have by picking it green and leaving them to ripen on the kitchen window-sill.

Borlotti beans have not been hugely prolific. Probably didn't like sharing the canes with the sugar snaps (which have all finished now). What they have done has been very pretty though. I will probably save some of the seed to grow again next year... if I don't have any seeds left. Must look through my leftover seed collection!

And here's what we had for supper, in duplicate. Nothing was grown in our garden for this (for a change) but it was delicious non-the-less.

Happy 2nd Birthday!

As you can see he enjoyed the cake!

Look at this cool dragonfly that Pip rushed in and then dragged me out to see!

And while we were sitting there entranced by the dragon fly a tiny clod of dirt jumped at our feet... hey, that's not dirt! That's a itty bitty froglet!

Spot the difference. Above, dahlia. Below, sunflower.

GIRLS!

We had friends to stay for the whole week! And they were GIRLS! So there was a balance to the force...

We were so lucky. The weather was fabulous (mostly) and we got to do lots of fun things like:

Paddling in the river and building dams and going on picnics.

And kissing!

And hiding from the camera!

We went to the beach too...

Doesn't Becky look like some Hollywood starlet caught by Hello! magazine while holidaying in... Saltburn-by-the-Sea (?!)

Then we walked up the hill to see the view from the cliff top, since the tide was in and we couldn't go fossil hunting at the cliff foot.

We went bowling on the one afternoon that it rained all week.

And we went down to York to DIG

And went to the Museum Gardens and played by the Roman ruins...

And then Auntie Gilly came to stay and we had 11 people sleeping in our house - a record for us, I think! It was so great. Spike certainly enjoyed sharing a melon with her!

I will post Spike's birthday pictures seperately... Enough for now.