Moving Swiftly On

The achocha is very pretty but it's not produced a lot yet and a good puff of wind will have the whole lot over if we don't put a bit more support in.

These are grass peas from Italy, an experiment. You let them dry and treat like chick peas.

These are fingers from Scotland. You put them on a Celtic harp and they produce utter magic. But who's are they? The give away is below.

Fungus Talking

Autumns fingers creep over Clougha and finger the plot imatiently. Enough of early springs and late Summers 'it's my turn now'.

Gaze at our Big Brassica Bed. Doomed, all doomed. What a bummer!

A sniggering laugh from the shadows
'you bet they are'

In the gloom twixt shed and greenhouse a fleeting movement

'You're Clubroot aren't you, why don't you just fuck off and leave us alone'?

'That's not my real name', the shape drifts back.

'Oh, I know your real name and I know (spit) your pH and I almost saw you then'.

'Oh yeah! What do I look like then'?

'Sort of a cross between Alfred Hitchcock and that big eejit in Little Britain'.

Clubroot grunts, irritated now. 'Hmmphh, well I'm stopping anyway and this Globular Warming will help me nicely thank you....think I might just spread out a bit too'.

'It's Global Warming idiot and don't even think about it or I'll push your pH up to 8...maybe even 9 and starve you to death'.

'Globular Smobular whatever. I don't starve easily and where are you going to get your brassicas from then'?

'Sainsbury's'

'Oh, that'll be satisfying won't it', Clubroot sarcastic now.

A shed plank whacks Clubroot where it hurts.....'OUCH'!

'Thanks Shed'

'No Problem'

Twilight deepens and children gather to play hide and seek on the allotments, careless like the fairies from the bottom of yer garden.

Tangled Up In Red

The camera had not crossed the event horizon after all. It turned up down in the cellar in the side pocket of a rarely used rucksack. No one knows how it got there or no one is telling.

Because we did not pick out the side shoots the tomatoes are now in fall me down tangled up mode and we can't risk raising them coz the stems will just break. However incompetent it all looks it will give the other plotholders a good laugh and there will still be masses to harvest. The spare plants we had after filling the greenhouse were put outside and they too are very productive.

Big Brother

While we've been away the eejits at work have clearly been misbehaving as the powers that be have now limited network access to a variety of internet sites on the grounds that too many staff are wasting time and bandwidth and hampering legitimate work related net access. The list of sites blocked includes:-
Online auctions Online gaming Pet sites Sports sites Sites kids often waste time on Sites about and selling clothing Sites about going on holiday Webmail sites Big brother.

Clearly then allotmenteering is not one of those categories people 'waste' time on and I may possibly be the only one who looks at these sites. You may think well why aren't you working instead of reading the muppet or mildew or horticultural or whotever. Well quite. In my defense all I can say is that I'm often at work till 11 at night when other network users are either tucked up safely in bed or in the pub and a large part of my job involves waiting for mayhem or chaos to break out and then dealing with it when it does. If nothing happens then nothing happens and so I may kill some time on finding out what killed my garlic. On the downside of this new regime is that they have also blocked pictures displaying so all I can get is your words of wisdom but not browse the often beautiful photography that goes with it.

Oh yes and that brings me to another whinge for the day. I have turned the house upside down and my camera has just vanished into a black hole or has at least crossed the event horizon and it's beginning to look like it's gone forever. I will send a jar of our finest preserve to anyone that comes up with the correct wacky location for my errant camera.

Blighty

Back home now and the plot looks good but since I seem to have lost the camera d'oh I can't put a picture up. We didn't pick out the tomato side shoots enough and the weight of fruit is now pulling some of them over. Everything else seems to be doing OK so there must've been a fair bit of rain over the last fortnight while we we're galavanting in Portugal.

I notice BBC News Magazine are running an allotment article today.

The Festival was completely bonkers as ever with far far too many nights that stretched into mornings and a bunch of folk that really have to be seen to be believed. Instead of running dance workshops next year we are discussing running workshops on cricket and how to make a good cup of tea, both of which the Portuguese, despite being otherwise delightful, are completely clueless about.

Ovar & Out

Gotta leave the wide atlantic rollers of Ovar and head inland now to Carvalhais. Itś too steamy so we are going to be extravagant and take a taxi there which will set us back 80 euros but given the distance that aint too bad and it would be a complicated journey by public buses and mega exhausting in this heat. Feeling a bit stronger now and more up to playing 3 two hour long sets + workshops in between. May not have access to a computer there so this may be the last post for a week or so.