Trying to spare some 'allotted' time.......

Over the last few weeks I have been weeding the allotment as if it were my full time job and tonight I'm sitting watching TV whilst busily scratching away at the many tiny bites incurred.
The trouble with such a large allotment is that whilst your head down plucking weeds out of the cabbage bed there are others sneaking up behind you in amongst the Asparagus.

The allotment takes priority because if I get behind on that then I will simply lose the plot (if you pardon the pun). As a result the garden has a few more weeds than I would want but it is manageable and so I am tolerating it.

It is an odd thing that the weeds are so prolific when there has been practically no rainfall for the last 4 to 5 months. On average we only had 1.6" of rain per month and April only had 7mm (less than a third of an inch) whereas last year the figure was 4". I'm surprised that there is not a drought order on us especially as we had one this time last year. All through the winter everyone else seemed to be getting a soaking, especially Wales but by the time the clouds reached Norfolk they were empty.


Most of the farmers have had to hold back the setting and sowing by many weeks because it was both so cold and so dry and the yields are expected to be a fair bit lower as a result.
So that sets up my excuse for a poor crop in my allotment then.

That said we have already harvested 12lb's of Asparagus and 25lb's of Rhubarb, which is pretty good I suppose. We have eaten, or posted  (see previous blog), most of the Asparagus and mostly frozen the rhubarb so we can use it in our winter crumbles.

I originally broke my veg plots into 3 for a three year rotation but quickly realised that I much prefer the root crops and so used two beds for these thus screwing everything up before I even started.

 Here is the original root crop bed. I know it looks bare but it is very full indeed. In the foreground are about 100 seedling leeks then 2 rows of beetroots.

To be honest I don't 'get' beetroot at all. Alison loves them in a sandwich with cheese.  I'd rather have acupuncture performed on me by a newbie student, with rusty pins.... who was blind than have to eat that concoction.
I use to hate the things when I worked in the Supermarket because they were so messy when they leaked. The fresh ones in the veg dept. simply dripped their blood on all the other shelves and customers clothing more often than not an expensive white jacket. The real bummer was when a jar of pickled beetroot smashed on the floor. Within seconds the vinegar would strip the polish off the floor and then instantly the beetroot would for reasons I have never fully understood stain the floor blue. I know..... what must it do to your gut?
 So I have grown these for love and there can be few more noble reasons than that.


Behind the Beetroot there are two rows of carrots, four rows of Parsnips (a bit thin as I lost some to a mixture of weeds and too little rainfall) and behind them 16 rows of onions. These are made up of white, red and shallots. I have lost several of these down Alice in Wonderland like holes which have been created by troublesome moles. I'll try to replant them and as I push down to firm the earth the onion, the mud and my fingers all suddenly disappear into the ground without a by your leave.

 Ahhh, the potato patch. I bought a couple of bags of 1st earlies, 2 of second earlies and 2 of Main crop potatoes. Concidering they were meant to all be in the previous bed it is all the more frustrating that the next bed was completely filled up before I even touched the Main crop spuds.
Still as you can see these are nearly ready for harvesting and the few that I have pulled have been smashing.

I have never been very successful with brassicas but so far this years crop is coming on great guns.
In this bed
  I have Broad Beans, Sprouts, Round cabbage, Savoy cabbage, Kale, Courgettes, Sprouting Broccoli and bloody poppies everywhere.

At the far end of the brassicas my runner beans lurk.
 I have used the Hazelnut branches that with the help of some friends we coppiced from the trees in our back-garden.


Yes there are some weeds here and yes I'll get round tuit!

The nearest small bed here has Butternut Squash in the foreground and Maize. There is also a weedy piece of Purple Asparagus which I assume is only in it's second year. I will look after this plant for another year or two when it will then be able to be harvested.

The bed behind is the prolific Asparagus plot and then behind that the Rhubarb patch and the orchard.



Right at the back are two strawberry beds which I planted and we have had about 250g of strawberries so far. We are the only plot where strawberries are ripe already, Mmmmmmmmm!

So that's the status of the Plot at this moment in time. One of the mates of the previous allotment tenant keeps taking photos of the plot to show him how much I have done with his old weed bed. I think it might be an unsolicited service!


I'll leave you with a couple of slightly blurred photos that I took of the many Barn owls that are frequently to be seen around us.

They are a magnificent bird and whilst these pictures were taken at dusk most sightings of them are made around mid to late afternoon. Last year Alison & I watched two adults hunting and taking mice and voles to a barn to feed their young, it was just stonkingly brilliant.





9,031

Marsh Harriers at Cley.....

Over the Spring months I have enjoyed watching the Marsh Harriers at The Norfolk Wildlife Trust near Cley. Every year there are breeding pairs at Cley which feed on the small mammals and young wild fowl chicks that abound in these salt and fresh water marshes.
   We are only about 10 miles from the nature reserve which means I can pop up there any time in the day to watch these fascinating raptors.

The Male

Despite the quantity breeding at Cley these birds are recorded as an Amber risk on the endangered species and so it is a real treat to be able to watch them so close.

Whilst there are really good bird hides available the best way to watch them is simply from the paths through the reeds. Sadly my camera is getting old, a little like me, as it struggles to focus on things that are far away, near, oh and right in front of it. So whilst these pictures are not the cracking ones you'll see on Google Images I am still really pleased with them.

The Female

The male is a fair bit smaller than the female and it appears to me that she is very much the 'boss' of the two. (I know the feeling).
Most of our Harriers migrate to Africa each winter but I believe the ones in the RSPB reserve in Elmley near Sheerness in Kent are resident all year.


They nest in amongst the reeds on the marsh and having established where the nest was I could watch them come and go.

Here the female is about to drop down into the reeds with a twig for the nest as she builds it up. I watched them for sometime collecting nesting material from the side of the lake and bringing them back to the nest site.



I also watched as they hunted but to my shame I have no photographs with any prey in their talons. Still they are feeding their young now and so I still have time to go back and try.



Here the male has his eyes on something tasty whilst below the female is making the strike.

The two of them would also play in the air with each other. Male Harriers like to drop their catches in midair as gifts for the partner to catch and they seemed to be playing this game but without the prey.
They were very acrobatic and more often than not the female would be beneath the male with her head twisted at 180 degrees looking up at him as in the photo below.

The V shape of the wings is a classic pose of a Marsh Harrier. The following are a few more pictures of this courtship 'play'.

Then they would breakaway from this play and go looking for lunch. Lunch ideally being one of the small duck, goose or waders chicks way below on the marsh. However it is not that easy and most parents put up a good fight to protect their young. The most determined of these are the seemingly delicate Avocetes whom in a one to one fight I would lay odds that the Harriers would win. The Avocetes however are tenacious in their drive to protect their fledglings so much so that they take the fight to the Harrier mobbing it continuously until it steps down and moves further along the marsh.

Once again an amazing site to watch and here are a few of my photos of the battles....

A sorte of three Avocetes mob a harrier in the late evening.

You'd think that one beat of the Harriers wing and the Avocete would have been gone!

Eventually they chase the Harrier off.

However the Marsh Harrier strikes elsewhere where resistance is not so debilitating....

So there you have it my whistle stop tour of the Marsh Harriers at Cley. They are still there and will be until late September (probably) so if you can then come up and see them sometime ;)





8,979

Blackbirds

Blackbirds

They came to us one April day,

a pair of love birds looking for a place to stay.

ending their search and ending their roam,

Somewhere they could weave their nested home.

She in her clean coat of leather brown

prim and proper with a chest of fluffy down

spritely, sharp, determined and free,

fit as a fiddle a mother to be.

He an out cast, a shabby oily black,

from the wrong side of town, on the wrong track

missing his lower beak with feathers awry

been through the wars and refusing to die

This strange couple seemingly mismatched,

he from the ghetto a fighter as soon as he hatched.

she from the city and so strong that she thrives

They entered our garden and they entered our lives,

A brace, a couple and a mating pair

She full of grace and he of despair,

And in the dark shadows of the sunlit tangled honeysuckle,

their nest hidden and their eggs kept warm with a loving snuggle.

Each taking their turn to cover the clutch and wait

for the tiny oval eggs to warm and slowly incubate

a duty carried out with an ardor so very dependable

sitting there a guardian, a protector and a sentinel.

April becomes May and the time flies by 

high above Swallows start to fill the bright blue sky,

and one by one new life breaks through

Four little blackbirds with nothing to do.

Defenseless and vulnerable to a risk ridden world

cossetted and protected until their wings unfurled

Blind bald and helpless the future unsure,

The parents work tirelessly until they mature.

Then all of a sudden on one designated day

They take the plunge and try to fly away.

Over the brim that's kept them all in

leaving their kin behind safely within

Mum and Dad fluster as their brood departs

you can sense the tension, the beating hearts.

This odd duo working as one,

feeding the fledglings their life begun.

Within the week two chicks are dead

 a bite to the throat and they are bled

No time for sorrow no time to care

the parents now feed the surviving pair

A few days pass and the babes have departed

two lives and two stories now have started

Oily black and leather brown still remain here

I wonder if they're sad or if they even shed a tear?

One day soon they too shall go

leaving just a nest and the status quo.

I watch this disparate pair with admiration

and see a love and devotion in it's personification.

                                                                m.thomas

 

 

8,898

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots. All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat: She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat! T S Eliot

This is Scribble,

Scribble is the cat that lives at The Old Bakery.
It would be wrong to say that she is 'our' cat as like all cats she is beholden only to herself.

We have cohabited for about 10 years now and it is fair to say that we both understand, and put up with, each others little foibles.

We brought her into the family from an RSPCA rescue centre along with Mr. Gladstonebags, a big black furry male soppy cat who Scribble doted upon.

Soon after they joined us Gladstone was diagnosed with a heart murmur and given only a year to live. He lived a 'relaxed' life and was seemingly never in discomfort going on to enjoy a further 3 years of life before he finally died.

Scribble clearly had great affection for him and spent many hours washing and grooming him for which he tolerated her with good temper.

They were very close and it was quite a loss to us all when he died but as is often the way with rescue cats you never know of their pre-adoption life and clearly their bond was long and strong. Thus Scribble was clearly saddened that her best buddy had disappeared. It is at times like these that you wished you could talk to your cats, but alas all we could do was give her a spread more of attention and pour on a dollop of extra affection too.



Originally Scribble was my daughter's cat, well the idea was that she was responsible for her but my daughter headed off to University and we were left with Scribble to look after.
I can understand why Claire left her behind, firstly because the Halls have a NO PET policy and
secondly because whenever any of us sit down to do any work Scribble will come up and sit on whatever it is that we need to read.

You can put 10 separate pieces of paper on a desk and only NEED to use one of them and she will seek it out and plump her big furry bottom onto it ~ game over!

We have tried all sorts of tricks to fool her, pretending to read one piece whilst really waiting for her to sit  so we can use another but it is a waste of time, she has the thing off to a fine skill. I'm thinking of entering her on to Britain's Got Talent, she is far cleverer than that dumb dog, however whilst it is a true (and very annoying) talent I really cannot see how it can be put to good use. Perhaps I could hire her out to the people that sell Time Shares and she could discretely sit on the part of the contract that tells the punters they are signing a contract which will tie them in for the rest of their lives. Or I could stick a Royal Charter seal up her butt and she could officially approve all of our new laws on behalf of the Queen as she is starting to delegate more tasks.

The long and the short of it is that whenever you want to get on and do something Scribble turns up and either puts her metaphorical bum in the blinking way and more often than not this involves her putting her actual bum in the way.
Here she decided to sit on the pile of towels that I was stacking, so I just carried on stacking them but she didn't seem to give a hoot.




Time marches on and here we are in different circumstances and a new dynamic. I used to see Scribble early in the morning and then often late in the evening when I returned from my ludicrously long hours working at the Supermarket. It's all changed now of course as my work is this place and Scribble is always 'there'. As a result we have developed a routine much as a retired couple would do and I guess I have become a 'second best' to Gladstonebags as well.


The day starts with Scribble normally waking one of us up with a niggling meooowww out side the bedroom door. Obviously we both pretend to be asleep adding a little snore for effect hoping that the other one will go to feed her (much the same as when the children were babies and wanted feeding in the night). When we are both at our maxim 'acting asleep' capabilities and at warp factor 5 for obstinacy then Scribble will start to scratch and paw the hall carpet whilst emanating a blood curdling wail that will eventually cause one of us to break and get up in a huff thumping across the bedroom floor and making it quite clear to the other person that he or she should have got up instead. Alison can even make a crash and a bash whilst putting on her dressing gown, I admire that.

That reminds me that earlier today I was fooled. I seem to be under a constant barrage of various noises from telephones to Microwaves. It seems that every bit of kit wants to let you know it is there. If you don't open the microwave once it has gone ping then it won't let you forget and a few minutes later it will ping at you again..... then again until you can be arsed to open the door and then close it immediately to shut the darn thing up.
The fridge and the freezer beep at me if I have the door open for too long (in their opinion!).
The fire alarms let a random peep out just to keep me guessing.
And as for my new phone well it rings, beeps, sings, whistles and even knocks at me. The knock makes me jump as it sounds like someone knocking on the window. I don't know what half of these sounds mean or why it is bothering me. All I know is that it does every noise but burp, somethings remain in my domain.
So with this constant shock and awe bombardment of sounds I was totally confused by a 'dingggg' noise that I heard in the bedroom whilst I was drying my hair. Every time I had the towel drying my head I heard this new sound, slightly muffled by the towel, go 'dinngggg'. Well I stopped drying and patiently listened for it. Nothing. So naturally just as I started to dry my hair again... 'Dinngggg'. I'd whip the towel off to try to locate it but it was too late.

I checked my mobile, I checked the alarm, I checked the answer phone, I even looked out the window, still no sign whatsoever of where this 'Ding' came from.

EVENTUALLY as I 'threw the towel in', well onto the bed I found out what it was. Every time I dried my hair the loose end of the towel had kept flicking against the brass bed knob of the bed.... 'Dingggg'........ Duuurrrr!

Back to Scribble. Well as I say we are like an old married couple (without the 'relations' bit just for the record). She'll have breakfast and then have a morning snooze to shake of all that sleeping she had done all night. At about noon she will want to go into the garden to pester some wild life and at about 4:30pm she will come in for her tea.

However this 'partner' obviously doesn't speak the same language as me, OR should I say that I don't speak the same language as her for we are both equals in this inability to communicate. When Alison is at home well then I'm in the majority and feel superior to the cat but when it is just us two and I'm trying to tell her something or she is meowing something or other to me well it is just like trying to speak to a foreigner. I remember trying to explain to a french garage mechanic that my cars clutch was slipping. What an earth is the french for clutch slipping? It ended up with me doing an embarrassing charade, Marcel Marceau style. Well Scribble will come to me with a longing meow and I won't have a clue what she is saying but that doesn't stop her just as a true brit will use the shout it louder technique with Jonny foreigner Scribble uses the persistence method in the belief if she says it often enough I'll get it.

Eventually we both give up either she will walk off with a grump or I'll go into another room and shut the door so I can't hear her. That normally resolves it for me. Perhaps the power of the door handle gives me that superiority back after all. 

So we bumble on and in the evening she jumps up onto my lap and will flop out there until I go to bed only getting off when I have to go to the loo, which seems to happen more often now days.

We were watching a great Horizon TV programme in which they tracked 50 cats in a small village for 1 week with GPS devices. They over layed the cats movements on to a map of the village and you could clearly see how far they had traveled. Many had gone to a neighbours house and eaten their cats food and some had gone to a near by farm. If you did this with Scribble it would just be a line between the sofa, the food bowl, our bedroom and my lap...... You'd just have a blob to illustrate all her movement.

She is a pest at times and comforting at other times. Most of the guests adore her, even the guy that was allergic to cats liked her. So with all life long partners we just have to live with the foibles and tolerate the differences of opinion and concentrate on the positives, she's cute, she's fairly cheap and she is house trained.......  And the cat is OK to live with as well!!

8,842