Bounty

Broad Beans , Chard  and Garlic

I cannot keep up with the Chard ,it comes and comes ,but is easily cooked and frozen. Aged Parent can eat it as she cant get much down (so she says) , and it slides down. It was a good job I watched  Gardeners World  last night, as today I realised my Garlic has the same fungus  spots as Monty's did, so I lifted the lot and left to dry. We however have been eating potatoes for 3 weeks, as the First earlies were ready then.

Arran Pilot

I only have an eighth of an allotment. It is enough for us, we have not bought any veg for 2 weeks. The secret is to grow what u cant buy or is expensive in Filey. I am trialing a row of Florentine Fennel round at Kiaora, and they  are going to be fine, now I realise how to grow them that is! Next year  I will put them on my Allotment plot.

One of the joys of having a small piece of allotment is the pleasure for me in solitude. I have a chair, a stash of fig rolls, I take a flask, and no watch. Except when it is really hot, and then it becomes a chore , I can potter . This week I filled all 4 baths with water from the hose. It took me ages to work out how to connect all the bits of piping across the plot , without knocking Bernards Cabbages over , or treading on one of his pieces of Perspex glass for the greenhouse he is reconstructing. I think  my Great grandfather ,the water engineer would be proud of me. I learn by doing , and by making mistakes and putting them right, a kineasthetic learner ,I  never read manuals, or watch others. 

The walk to my plot takes 10 mins from home. I have perfected the shortest route. It is my thinking time. Soon I will have to re do my walk for Plantlife, I have already noted all the wildflowers in my linear path, but will go again and add to the database as it has been an odd year and plants  have flowered very late this year, and  I have more to record.I realise that the allotment is actually on my Square. My walk is from the roundabout to Filey Field. However some of the wildflowers south of the railway line , and near the station have been really  good this year.

Allotment Goosegrass 

Mullein , Allotment drive

Bird foot trefoil-railway side

Allotment Sow thistle

lovely mix at Tescos

Tescos  Dock

Death in the afternoon

Spouse and I have just been to visit  friends in Osgodby, just south of Scarborough and  less than a quarter of a mile inland. We are 4miles south of them and 200yards inland . Spouse sat in the garden with P and I was indoors with D, and as we drove off home my beloved remarked,

• not that they had a gorgeous garden
• not that they had a huge garden room with all mod cons including TV
• not that everywhere was so clean and tidy,which it was

BUT that one couldn't hear a single seagull.

Here in Filey Old Town all the neighbours have started speaking to one another in a new and confidential way, a gentle probing sort of a way, a testing the waters sort of way. WE all seem to want to know what we think about the plague (my word ) of Herring Gulls that this year have ingratiated themselves on our roofs, or dormer windows, our chimneys and even our flower beds. The cacophony is unbearable. We cannot ring our Community Police Officer as we do when  few neighbours are brawling and screaming outside our dwellings when high on skunk. These neighbours have been as quiet as mice this year, or else have grown up . No,not  only are the gulls high on something  over our heads, but are divebombing our cars, our lines of clean laundry and our roofs. C and I and all our immediate neighbours would like a CULL . 

The  reason we are probing and testing in our inter locutions is because we have to be very careful. We  have friends in Filey who think the Gulls are lovely, are wonderful parents(which they are) and are fascinating to watch all day (if they are so inclined). Not in my backyard. I would be very happy if they went back to where they have come from, Bempton or Filey Cliffs. 

Side of Union Street, Filey

This last picture was literally the last. One of them strayed  into the road , as when I passed their flower bed 10 mins later , there was  grey roadkill  2 yards away.