green blaze

My allotment had many surprises for me today.  I came across another when I was noticing how almost the entire crop of apples on three of my apple trees was on the ground.  They had all ripened themselves off the branch while I was away.  I was focussing on the quantity of apples, when suddenly I realised the colours of the apples were being set off by the bright emerald background created by the fine and juicy new grass underneath the trees.  I had sown grass there just before leaving, and now it was a brand new lawn.  It needed little lambs to gamble on it.  However, it just had rotting apples.  Ah well, they'll make good cider. 

Another surprise was my encounter with what must be the hugest apple in all the world.  My friend Pete showed me a very fine cooking apple tree in the communal orchard.  The apples on it were a goodly size, and so I collected some at my Dad's request.  He does love a nice apple, and baked apples with raisins and maple syrup in particular.  I needed three, and was searching for the biggest, when I met with an apple so big I thought there must be something wrong with it.  It fell easily into my hands, and then I could see it was a perfect apple, only with giantism.  Of course this could only be meant for my Dad, so he will have a hearty pudding tonight.

I love d major 7

I had the good fortune to meet my mate Pete today down at the allotments, and he gave me a bit of a guitar lesson.  I have a very beaten up old 3/4 herald with lots of smiley face stickers on it.  I bought it off ebay for a fiver, as I wanted to have a go at learning guitar, but didn't want to waste £200 on a proper new one without being sure I wasn't going to tire of it.  Anyway, it has a surprisingly mellow sound.  The allotment is the best place to explore it, as it is a peaceful space condusive to chilling out with a guitar, and I like to think the plants enjoy it.   I've been practicing basic chords, and gradually linking them together, but it's hard in the same way as dancing.  With dancing apparantly once you've done the move 24 times it will be in your muscle memory.  I must have played those chords much more than 24 times, and they're still rather tricky for me!  I've been exploring other chords lately, and discovered d major 7, which is a blues chord.  It is the most gorgeous sound to me, and it is very easy to play. 

Pete did some very melodious country and blues trickery with my simple little guitar, and made it sound like a real guitar for once.  It was very encouraging.

dirty protest

I really do wonder about the wren.  I've been in France for a while, so she's had free run of the shack. When I opened the shack door today for the first time in three weeks,  I was greeted by a pile of dry leaves.  She's obviously still got the pecking at her funny nest OCD.  Then I saw that she'd done some contraversial concept art on my chopping board.  Lots of tiny wren poos in a random dotted pattern.  Then I discovered a single one on my Learning the Guitar for Dummies book. Luckily I had covered it in glittery gold plastic wrapping paper. 

There were some other surprises too.  I seem to have acquired another chair.  It's one I've been coveting for a while, in my neighbour's allotment.  It  is like a deck chair, but with a slatted support for the body instead of a fabric one.  I had borrowed a chair that was near the same allotment, but outside it.  I was unsure of ownership, so I thought I would give it a change of scene.  it fitted like a dovetail into the bottom right hand corner of my allotment.  It gives a fine view of my land, and it is here that I see the interesting rainbows and light effects when the sun goes down.  Well, on my return I suddenly saw that it had a partner, the slatted chair, which was now in the corner position, with the other chair placed at a pleasing symmetrical angle beside it.  Who knows what chairs do when no one is looking.  They look a very well matched couple I must say.  I was delighted to discover that the slatted chair is in fact a rocking chair.  Lovely on a hot Indian summer's day. 

In actual fact, I suspect that its appearance is due to the kindness of my neighbour, who must have given me the chair, along with a huge tub of chicken manure which I found by the side of it.  I was going to buy some to give much needed nourishment to my land, so it is very timely.  It is very lovely of her, and I'm going to give her one of my huger pumpkins as a thank you. 

Another surprise was that the sunflower which was cruelly decapitated by the slugs has grown many heads in place of the one that was taken, and will look much more beautiful now when they all bloom. I'm glad I didn't pull it up now.  I'll know next time not to pull up decapitated sunflowers.  The slugs did for most of them along the maze fence.  I'm going to buy some oyster shells in bulk for next year.  Also I'm going to experiment with lambs' ears.  The velvety fur on their leaves is like spines to slugs and snails, so in theory will be an effective deterent as well as a pretty one.

Meet Penelope

My first born pumpkin.  I am very proud of her.  She is such a sunny orange colour, and did very well to grow at all.  It has been so dry, and the pumpkin leaves have suffered badly from mildew.  I gave the plants a top dressing of comfrey leaves, and have been treating them to home made comfrey liquid feed, so maybe that helped.  I stewed lots of leaves in water in a recycling bin the council gave us to put food scraps in.  We don't have any food scraps in our house - we eat it all like labradors.   It is ideal as a liquid compost bin though. It has a lid which locks when you put the handle down. 

I knew the brew was ready by the smell.  It took about three weeks.  I could describe it, but I don't want to offend anyone.  I felt like an old witch as I stirred it with a rotten stake and choked on the fumes.  All plants with developing fruit love it though.  It encourages fruit to set from flowers, and to grow healthily.  I diluted it 10 parts water to 1 part comfrey juice. 

Penelope is one of the smaller pumpkins on her patch, but I knew she was ready because the leaves of her plant drooped overnight.  She has nothing to be ashamed of though; she is just the right size to make a fine pumpkin soup.  The trouble is I don't think I have it in me to cut her into bits. 

Introducing the Shack

I love my shack.  It's a kind of magical beach hut, only on an allotment.  In fact her full name is Psychadelic Shack, after the Temptations song.  It looks just like an old shed on the outside, but inside it is a riot of rainbow colour, flowers and stars. 

I came across her first of all when I was out on a walk, before I was even an allotment holder.  It was one of those days when I needed a space to think, and I find walking very good for that. I found myself sneeking into the allotments.  They looked so intriguing, and I wanted to get a closer look at all their varied characters.  It was a Winter's day, but even so there were some beautiful structures created by the things people had used to support plants, and sometimes even the plants themselves, crystalised in frost, looked fascinating and dramatic. 

This was the case in the plot my shack was in.  There was what appeared to be a kind of fairy ring of lavender, and I felt impelled to trespass and stand inside it.  Then there was the shack itself, unlocked and with some of its shiplap fallen off.  It looked very desolate and unloved.  I thought I would go inside to explore and give it some company.  I discovered an old bird's nest that someone had put on the table, with four perfect pale blue eggs in it.  It was a lovely space just to sit and think. 

I came back several times afterwards, and put my name on the allotments waiting list, in the hope that it was available, as it looked so neglected.  In March I was taken to the allotment allocated to me.  We turned down the familar pathway towards the shack, but still I couldn't quite believe it.  My surprise and delight knew no bounds, as my plot turned out to be the one I most wished for.  The previous tenant had just phoned the day before to say she wanted to give it up.  Was it fate, or the fairies?  From that day on the Shack and its Land have become transformed, and so have I. 

One of the first things I did for the Shack, was to give her a blue ceramic doorknob with white stars, and two brass door knockers.  One is in the shape of a Pixie, and is for humans to use.  The other is in the form of a horseshoe, and is placed at Fairy height, just in case there are any around. 

The next thing I bought for her was a rainbow fly curtain, which totally set off her plain exterior, and suggested the whole theme for inside.  From then on it was a kind of rainbow rollercoaster than I couldn't step out of. 

My shack mate the wren

I share my shack with many creatures - including numerous sadly misguided insects and recently a mouse enjoying the sauna-like warmth of a plastic bin liner.  My most frequent visitor however is a wren.  At first I was quite surprised by her presence, but now I happily accept her as a shack mate, and we live a peaceful existence together. 


My first clue to her claim on the shack was the sudden appearance of a carefully structured and tightly packed cluster of leaves above the door lintel.  It happened after a period of wet weather, and I thought perhaps the leaves had been dislodged by the rain, as my shack is a friend to the elements, and likes to welcome them in.  I knocked the leaf structure down, and noticed that there was a quantity of moss in the centre.  My immediate though was, 'oh no a mouse nest', and I was careful to clear the whole lot out.  I am a little bit squeamish about baby mice. 


The next day when I opened the shack door, I noticed a tell tale sign of leaves on the mat.  I looked up, and sure enough there was the pile of leaves back again.  I immediately responded with my broom.  This went on for a few weeks.  The strange thing was, it didn't look like a nest - there was no entry or exit hole, and there were no signs of life from within it.  Some scratch markings appeared on the lintel, and a white deposit that looked more from a bird than a mouse.  Or perhaps a bat.  Nothing makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck than a bat. 


Then one day I opened the door and there she was on my table.  She quickly flew past me and sat on the fence for quite a while twittering at me in a way that sounded very much like scolding.  So that changed things.  I was concerned that if the wren was trying to build a nest, she would desert it when the young were born because of the disturbance I would create on a daily basis. 

I put a bird box up on the shack, and tried to encourage her in by putting some of her leaves in it, and draping the moss on the perch.  I even staple gunned some roofing felt over what I thought was the access hole.  The next day the leaves were back in their usual place, and I worked out that she was probably coming in through a tailor made little doorway at the bottom of the shack door, just below the fairies' door knocker.




At that point I accepted the inevitable, and decided to live alongside her in a companionable sort of way.  The leaves never did turn into a nest, and I wondered if she was suffering from ocd, or was mentally challenged in some other way.  Some trauma at birth when she was prematurely evicted from her nest, or perhaps she was a lone bird who had the nesting urge, but hadn't been able to find a mate, so the nesting blueprint in her mind wasn't fully formed.

Then I discovered that is was most likely a pair, when I saw them hopping quietly about in the tree next to my shack.  I wondered if there are same sex couplings in the bird world, and this was what they created as a kind of nest. 


Then just recently I was lying in my hammock reading the Heap's Lush Times ( I got him a new one), and she fluttered in and perched on the hammock pole.  I watched fascinated as I was able to witness her whirring, hovering, fluttering progress from hammock pole to table, then from table to lintel.  Once there she proceded to eye up the pile of leaves for some time, head on one side then the other.  Then she chose one leaf, picked it out of the pile, and discarded it so it landed on the floor.  That explained the leaves that had been appearing there for the last few days.  Then as quickly as she appeared she whirred out again. 


So I don't know what's going on now.  Perhaps she was alone, and now she's found someone she doesn't need an almost-nest any more.  Anyway, I've enjoyed our time together very much, and maybe she'll come back next year and make a proper nest with her man in the bird box.