Engaging with inactivity , but not switched off

Reading the fascinating account of a hedge layer,who lived in a caravan and travelled around farms in Dorset and Somerset “Thorn and Briar” by Paul Lamb which I noted in my journal of READS as a ‘SHEER BEAUTY OF A BOOK, I  started off this year by tackling my boundary to the allotment and attempting a DEAD HEDGE.

Since then it seems that every article in botanical missives seem to think these a a wonderful and innovative idea for providing a habitat that is beneficial to the biodiversity of a piece of land . I thought this up all my own I tell you, but Paul Lamb got me thinking about what a useful thing any hedge is for a boundary. 

I am as all my friends and reader know an utter maverick on our allotment site.  

1. I have a ‘wild ‘ meadow strip planted 12 years ago, and just strimmed every August or September after  the seeds have set.Im still hopeful for wild orchids, but have dozens of species of flowering plants and grasses, frogs, grasshoppers , and last year my first lizard was spotted . The insects and spiders are too varied to count. I read of naturalists on the FBOG page who can tell the difference between 38 species of bees in Filey Churchyard. I know they fly here too , especially when my Lavendar hedges are flowering.
2. I aim to have some plants flowering during every month of the year, welcome Dandelions (if you are one of my fellow gardeners on the plots be aware I do not let them set seed If I have time to dead head them ), and tolerate creeping Buttercups, Hogweed flowering now , and Scarlet Pimpernel is in profusion, along with all the usual pollinators beloved of us botanists. My big success is to encourage my favourite wild flowers Crosswort  and Tufted Vetch which now thrive in swathes in my more wild areas of the plot . My Woad plant flowers from April to June, from my time (now finished as have given away my spinning wheel )of growing DYE Plants. It is a brute to get rid off, and have just got my daughter to cut it right back before the seeds take over Filey. Ten years ago I was cautioned nicely by the chairman of the allotments for growing Echium  wildpretii as my resident pollinator. Growing over 10feet tall, they must have alarmed the sedate ‘grow in rows ‘gentlemen on neighbouring plots. Now they are popular and am asked for seedlings. It seems most people now had seen them on One million years BC 1966 film with Ursula Andress , which must have been filmed in Lanzerote where the plant is a native.That dates the demographic of the plots then , but not now, as lots of young families and younger people now are on our site.Old Films are popular again.
3. I have a Szechuan pepper tree in a pot , which had red peppercorns
4.  I Follow Bob Flowerdew who leaves his weedings as mulch .At present Im not able to go on site much as am not able to do much after 10am when all household chores are done and beloveds lunch ready. I hope the wonderful Dr Sharma will sort me out soon. So meanwhile my wild plants are grown so prolific I’m actually seeing if some are really edible , like Fat Hen, and Hedge Mustard.I do promise that as soon as I am fit again I will thin out all my plants growing in the wrong places.
5. The frogs are everywhere , my own slug control, and this years tadpoles in my nature pond have already got their  back legs. Last year was so hot that the pond got algal bloom and I had to start again.I thank friend Paul for giving me lots of his UK weed and a dose of a pond treatment .
6. My greenhouse roof has partly collapsed now , this structure was rotten when I got it , and will have to be dismantled now.The family wont allow me inside. I shall find someone to deal with it and am saving to pay someone .Do not worry fellow allotmenteers , Im not repairing it ,but will do something when Im well again. Here I admire those fellow plot holders who are such great DIYers. They never cease to amaze me.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

New perspectives

 

Ive known Swine Church since 1953. Across the fields and the Golf Course it was a special landmark . As five year old I had to stand tall to spot it from my bedroom window as my head barely reached the glass of the window , not double glazed , but in the very latest Crital frames my father was so pleased with . ‘I shall never have to paint the window frames’ he said to my mother as they planned their build with Mr Sewell , the builder from the village , Sutton Village that is, or as we proudly say with Thomas Blashill “Sutton in Holderness”. 

So in 2025 I finally get to see the church that was my familiar landmark . It  was locked, we could have got the key from the name on the outside board , but I also wanted to revisit my own church , St James in the village , and look at Church Mount again through the shrubbery. 

There was wonderful Holderness waiting to be rediscovered as we drove to Sunk Island , Patrington  for the Queen  of Holderness,and Hedon for the King  and enjoyed the refurbished Trout Inn at Wansford. Was ever a place called Emmotland , never heard of that one until we got back home and a friend told us of all the great fishing trips he used to have there. Not so for me, my father fished the grayling from Hempholme certainly but mostly the Yorkshire Derwent near Kirby Moorside. I had three days of nostalgia in August then , and only an hour from home, staying in a huge house at Beeford with all 3 generations of our Filey Family . Reuben drove us to another church I had never visited, the welcoming St Augustines Skirlaugh. I’d been to that village many times with mother when we renewed her Blue Badge at the East Riding Offices. I had cycled to Hornsea with schoolfriends , the back way through Sutton to Benningholme , that land of ditches and low hedges and fields and fields of potatoes and wheat and field beans , no traffic and innocent adventure . 

The East Riding villages are still delightful , we spot the gable ends built with the feather pattern of the bricks , the local way,  remember to train to Hornsea , also spotted from my bedroom window , the steam trains and the exciting day when we saw our first Diesel.

My perspectives have changed . I rarely go more than 10 miles from our cottage these days, except the monthly visit to the Eye Hospital with Hull sister when she has her injection.I look from the train window from Filey and still spot lovely cottages, trackways and becks, and on a good day Herons and Little Egrets near Arram ,  and new crops like Miscanthus ,  the Christmas tree plantation  has gone now near Nafferton , but the rabbit warren certainly hasn’t. I always sit on the left hand side of the coach form Filey To Paragon and the right hand side going home . 

I was unable to use my childhood purchase of a secondhand copy of Palgraves Golden Treasury  , a beautiful bright turquoise binding . The book is dropping to bits, much written in from grammar school with many of the poems with little marks in pencil above each word showing stresses.I haven’t binned it .It has string round it . Last night I couldn’t sleep and had just finished the brilliant book by RamornaAsh . She talks much about Gerald Manley Hopkins so was trying to find a poetry book at 4.30 this morning, and eventually found one poem by him in my Mothers “A Modern Anthology “from 1924. I have given away most of my books now for friend to sell for for charity on a stall outside his house on the Cleveland Way , but just kept a newer Palgrave (no GMH of course , not published then ). What a lovely surprise , had never opened it before but inside was my father’s name , and it had all his pencil notes. What treasure for me.

Reuben and I like the Jesuits, and GMH

and we like Iona , both lauded in the book “Don’t forget we're here for ever  “

this book has changed my perspectives .

Sharing the joy

Durer has a lot to answer for , and maybe Archinboldo, as have always been drawn to the visual representation of things I love, and the way the natural world can be represented in ways which make you happy , thoughtful or downright sad . 

I was telling grandson  soon to go hopefully to live in London, that he must go to the  SAATCHI. Beloved and I have been many times in our travelling around days. We have seen some exhibitions which just blew our minds , with the assault they presented, making us react , with the colours some presented , with the draughtmanship some presented ,with the sheer audacity some presented (like a tank of oil). We are a nation of folk who may have opinions, and able to share them unless they are liable to scrutiny by the thought police or the real police. 

This  symphony in green is my Durer.

We don’t travel any more , the trip to Reighton nursery is the furtherest these days.

Imagine then the joy of seeing exhibitions which are right on our doorstep literally. 

I have been nurturing a plant I dug up on the plot.Its doing very well and is now over half a metre high. I have been trying to remember what I planted in the Spot.Its not an Echinacea or a Chicory, or what I have been trying to grow for 15 years , the perennial vegetable called Good King Henry. I have bought a packet of seeds every year and faithfully planted them.I particularly like its Latin name ‘Chenopodium bonus-henricus, an edible Goosefoot like spinach , cut and come again for ever. Just what I need for greens . It has dawned on me that my years of hopeful waiting have not come to fruition yet again. I have been nurturing a Rosebay Willow Herb, a beautiful ‘weed’, which colours the August roadsides and waste ground with its purple flower spikes.When the flowers go to seed  the air is full of the down like seeds wind blown and able to travel for miles on the breeze. I will be keeping it, its is lovely to see close up, and will just have to compete with all the other hopeful erratics in this corner of the old town, including a beautiful Sow  Thistle round the corner.

15 years ago my Echium collection was just beginning. Folk knocked on our door to ask the name of the towering spiked inflorescences appearing above 8foot wall. Seedlings always followed by the hundreds and easily removed as recognized immediately by the spotted first true  leaves. Now even former critics like them as they are indeed Ace Pollinators and flower for months and months until the Spike is finished. (They are biennials or triennials and tender)

In this little corner of town there is now lots of joy to share. In our street alone people are growing pots of flowers outside their houses.We have no front gardens or even gardens at all in our case, just a small back yard. I love the accidental garden outside the flats around the corner from here where the cracks in the flags are supporting self sown flowers from last years pots, and a lovely ‘meadow ‘ of cornflowers has grown rapidly as the warm weather has brought them on.

 

 

Still here

Mother used to say that time rushed when one is old. I’m not old in my mind , but 

as time is rushing I must have made a sea change since my last blog post. 

It always seems to be Monday and I’m putting out the wheelie bin again. It always seems to be time to get spouses lunch prepared when Ive only just cleared the pots, hung the washing on the line and done Wordle and Worldle . 

Boring is not a word I could use these days. I use tired , I use what have I gone upstairs for, I use its time to do the online grocery order again, but never bored. 

Well maybe routine becomes ritual , but in this house we are always delighted when someone is at the door or online to us.  Today we had Kevin from Evri, 2 neighbours, 1 grandson, as well as three friends on Zoom Morning Prayer. No routine here, as we never know what a day will bring. 

 

I have Sue coming to Help with cleaning tomorrow. I have the excitement of climbing down  to the back door of our Newsagent to pay the Paper bill. ( A car drove into their shopfront in the summer and the work to replace is soon to be finished, after they have waded through red tape and planning permissions). I shall walk to the allotment with a bundle of 6foot bamboo canes, a sack of vegetable waste for the compost bin, and a 5l container of drinking water, as we wait for the frosts to finish and the water turned on again. 

No  not boring at all. The pavements in Filey are all looking awful as workmen install cables to every house , BUT joy of Joy the road surfaces in Station Road and Station Avenue have been efficiently re done, so no one can complain of potholes in the town centre.

It’s so long since I wrote anything on this platform that I have actually forgotten how to justify the text alignment. So sorry here. 25 years since i was in the Evron Centre doing all my Computer classes, and nearly 20 since I did my first Blog Post. I didn’t even know how to insert a picture in the first months. 

Today I’m still reading Seed catalogues, Arthur Upfields, Jane Austen (all every 2 years) lots poetry ,Malcolm Guite, Lemm Sissay, the Times obituaries , The Filey Parish Link, . I’m still reading my Bible every day, mostly at 4am . I’ve just done Malachi and Zechariah, and today I began Haggai. I read a Psalm a day. Ive got to 35 again.

Spouse is having to eat some odd meals as I count carbs for him and forbid all sorts of his favourites. WE have stew and Yorkshire Pudding but no potatoes. We have Celariac Mash and sausages, we have Veggie Lasagne made with layers of Aubergine. He never complains. He has always been a delight to cook for . (Note to myself , I am running out of ideas. Mary Berry’s Cauliflower steaks are tasty and easy but can only eat once in a while.

My brain spins when I contemplate Air Fryers, I have a dry Fry pan which have used for 30 years which does the same job. Dixons our local Emporium now does a huge range of silicon inserts for Air Fryers, and the display looks like Medical Supplies. But no ordinary Stainless steel pans with lids. Now I am sounding like my mother!

So now dear readers you have my update. I have not been to Scarborough Much , 3x to Skipton Building Society in last year, I took myself to Peterborough for the day in September to see the Must Farm exhibition in the museum. (No leaflets to buy or even read). Ive been once a month to the Eye Hospital in Hull with Sutton Village Sister, and this is a real trip out , as the train ride lovely, and we often get a lunch together in the Omelette . Filey daughter is running me up to see the Gypsey Race running again. Last year it was amazing. I leave you with the 2024 pictures.

Thin Place

 I've been having a rough year. 

WELL , not compared with people of Somalia , Nigeria , Yemen and South Sudan , who come top in some charts for Famine . WELL , not compared with people in constant pain, WELL not compared with people relying on Foodbanks in the UK, victims of crime, lonely people, you may think of dozens more situations, you may be really having your own rough times. It is relative. 

I am just venting .

I am in need of a change of scenery. Dont get me wrong! I had 3 great days away at Wydale in January when No 1 Daughter came and stayed here  with her DAD so I could recharge . I also loved my day out to Wharren Percy in May.

7 months later I'm in need of another change of scenery.

I love my days out to Kingston upon Hull on the train to accompany my sister to the Eye Hospital for her injections, I loved going with beloved to Holy Nativity Eastfield to a day with the wonderful Bishop of Wellington and his wife talking about New Monasticism . I love my Sanctuary Space OKA my allotment. I love Monday evenings and cant wait for Only Connect to come round again. I love my afternoons upstairs with my latest Library book as Beloved watches something in black and white on Talking PicturesTV.

I am yearning to go back to Iona . I want to stay in the B and B on the Machair overlooking the Bay at the Back of the Ocean. I want  to watch the Spouting Cave , and look for pebbles of Green Marble, and get to the Quarry . The grass is always greener on the other side. Last time on Iona we had a plague of flies in the bedrooms from the seaweed being tractored from the beach to the gardens in the houses facing the sound of Mull. IT RAINED mostly  for 4 1/2 of the 5 days we were there, and the sea was so rough the ferries were cancelled. I'm only remembering the Langoustines, the rainbows and the quiet, aside for the fantastic SKY TVs in our rooms and real sighting of Corncrakes. (I like a thin place for most of the day only.)

Ive learned a lesson today. I went to the quiet 10am Celtic Morning Prayer in St Oswalds, using the Northumberland Community liturgy. Angela and Paul read the devotion from the book and guess what , It was about Iona !

I was in Iona ,  I remembered scenes from all my the visits , with beloved, with sisters, with aged parent in wheelchair. 

It's all there in my wonderfully created God given brain. And Ive got all the pictures.

And the lesson is this , in Psalm 139

Lord, you know everything there is to know about me. You perceive every movement of my heart and soul, and you understand my every thought before it even enters my mind. You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book and you know all the words I’m about to speak before I even start a sentence! 

Wydale and Why Not

 

Filey daughter is holding the fort at home. She is letting spouse have fish and chips from the Brown Room today, she will encourage him to take a walk out to the chemist and back , and will accompany him. His walker frame is a Godsend literally, and we often think of all our relations in past years who would have loved one, but had to use old pushchairs and Sholleys to give them support and security or never went out at all. Leaving home for a  short walk to the shops or to look at the sea from the end of the road  is acknowledged to be good for not only mental health but a positive step to delay Dementia , along with Wordle and Sudoku.

For carers, the facility to have 2 nights away from home , with all meals provided , no chores, and lovely weather despite the BBC's forecasts is essential to maintain their well being  and the mindset to carry on , to be thankful for small things , and to recharge the brain from the stupor of tedium and repetition.  I only need a couple of nights occasionally in a stimulating but yet restful place.

What I love about Wydale  is that it is only a 13 mile  journey from home ,is in an idyllic rural setting reflecting gracious living of Edwardian gentry, so ticks all the boxes , rare trees,  beautiful vistas , short walks  , spacious public rooms, and really great food.  

I walked as far as the Sweet Chestnut tree today. I knew it was the right tree as the leaves had remained where they had dropped. It was a good walking day , a thick frost , bright sunshine , slight breeze. 

The view in winter shows the hall in the distance,no new

Road Kill

 

Daughters friend celebrates the Seasonal festive meal every year with what I presume is a roast pheasant. 

I’m told she has roadkill ,but can’t imagine there are any chickens on the rural ride following the Gypsey Race to Duggleby barrow from Boythorpe. Very occasionally one sees a badger or a fox, more often it is a pheasant, which straight after the kill is easily recognised by the tail feathers 90 degrees to the tarmac. 

I’m thankful for our turkey with legs from Adrian Colling, I do not have to draw and pluck it , as I used to watch my mother do with one of Mr Bastons chickens, or the pigeons and squabs (from Mr Christopher, ) often  still replete with shot. A couple of years ago I was offered a couple of hares, but couldn’t face skinning and drawing them, even though I know I could do it.These days I only dress Crabs, and even that pleasure is denied me now that our Filey fishmonger has closed his doors.

Mr Christopher 1961 Sutton in Holderness

I remembered to look through the jpegs of  the 35mm slides I digitalised years ago, throwing away hundreds and just keeping some family milestones. My father took hundreds of slides, and yet 60years on , the interesting ones are of people and buildings. Our education often consisted of talks on why Agfa was better than Kodak or Ektachrome, and years later as the Agfa slides are all blue, and the Kodak are all red, I know the use of photo editing software would have improved many an evening round the fire with the screen and projector. We were allowed to comment and criticise but father could not improve on his work, and used to bore us talking about fstops and timings. My sisters will remember all the times we stood on a ladder with our head in the Cherry Trees for him whilst he took ages to adjust his light meter.

He never took a photograph of Mr Baston whose smallholding backed our land. Infact I think Mr Baston sold us the acre near the road , of which we had one third, Mr Bruin one third and Mr Kirby the other third.  Mr Baston came up from the village every day to his pigs and chickens, and often the field was pasture  as well for the bullocks of the nearby farm .We loved being allowed to see the piglets when a sow had farrowed, after strict warnings about her demeanour. Here I record that Mr Christopher was a retired policeman , and came every week to cut the grass and tend the  large garden. He used to shoot , and bring us his surplus game. I rarely buy rabbit now after the memory of it .

I cooked our turkey Breast down as always, then turned over for the last hour. Family commented on how moist it was. I am writing my notes for next year in my Christmas book, almost 50 years of shopping lists and to do lists. 

The most useful page is the what to do next year list.

It says 

• do not  make much bread sauce as only Colin loves it
• do not buy any chocolate biscuits
• do not buy many "nibbles"
• Buy plenty of roasted pistachios in their shells however
• only 3 of us like Sprouts
• cooked red cabbage with Cyder Vinegar next year not balsamic, was much better

I leave you with a prospect of May , my first photo being December , views of my beloved Yorkshire Wolds.

 

No dig allotment , the easy way!

 I've seen all the utube vids from experts like Charles Dowding, I watched Huws garden for years, enjoying his earnest and easy style, I've read books on Hotbeds, Companion Planting and have known Mr Hessayons input for over 50 years, and  I still champion the wonderful Ruth Stout, who knew a thing or two  before they were all born BUT declare that I have found my own way to grow my veg without getting embroiled in 'right ways'.

My allotment is full size, apart from the tiny part my daughter uses. My neighbours all come from school of straight lines , no weeds, and double dig.  I don't have rules , am not pretending to be wholly organic, don't have any weeds only pollinators, and plants needing a more suitable home.

 I get immense pleasure from removing couch grass  to its rightful home, the grass borders, and allow the bindweed to bind away next to the railway line so that I can play "Grandma! Grandma !Pop out of bed !' in August. I don't worry if my 3 colour rotation is tweaked , as long as onions never grow in the same ground 2 years running.

Picture one 

I don't dig, I gently fork out Some deep perennials like  Dandelions and Nettles and bountiful and profligate free seeders like Sow Thistles  and  Borage before winter, I know the hoped for frosts will kill the little annuals like Chickweed and Groundsel , Spurges  and Creeping Speedwell, and my favourite Scarlet Pimpernel but welcome them the following year, easily hoed out . I leave them on the soil as mulch.

I do not have access to a ton of Stable manure as my neighbours do. My plot is not next to the road so the tractor can tip it into the yearning  bins. I have to barrow it all from the pile dropped by the road to my bins. I cant manage that.  Friend Colin brings me beautiful 2 yr rotted down stuff from his small holding when he has time, and barrows it to the bin for me, but it is past being manure, it is lovely compost, friable and rich and I am sparing with it. 

All no -diggers add mulch  on top of beds every year, mulch on mulch, on mulch and on mulch. My soil is never bare, Crops over winter, and bare soil on beds which dont change  like Asparagus and Rhubarb are cushioned in mulch all winter.

My 3 year rotation suits me . I don't need to grow many cabbages, so one brassica bed is enough most years, as I like Sprouting Broccoli which crops for up to 2 years if the growing points are nipped off.  I have about 10 raised beds in old builders bags filled with greenstuff which rots down, like the masses of   creeping bulky Nasturtians which easily fill the empty  bag beds in October. I usually plant the bag beds up with garlic the first year .

This is how my easy no dig works

Raised bed and dormant straw bale
awaiting its fate

• Divide your plot into strips so that you can work without treading and compacting the soil.
• Work out each autumn what you want to grow the next year, and  plan where you want to put them within your rotation system , 3 year or 4 year
• Don't think you have  to  cultivate each strip the first year
• Work on one strip at a time, depending on what time you start
• Starting in  Autumn  cover strips with cardboard and mulch ( could be manure or heavy stones or bricks to weigh down from wind)
• Cardboard is the best friend of no dig. Encourage your friends to give you all theirs from buying large items. Ikea is your best friend here! Cardboard should be brown and with no sellotape or writing all over it, or a shiny layer. Plain porous brown is best, just remove tape and staples. Cover your strips with it , having taken out perennial weeds and large stones  first and raked as flat as is practical. (Ruth Stout planted on top of grass field , but you will have  to google that  as she planted on bales of hay.)Stop the cardboard blowing away  by watering it and weighing down with bricks or large stones. My foolproof method is to buy 10 bale of barley straw every Spring which I leave to get thoroughly damp and wet so that by the autumn it can be separated into slabs and easily placed on the cardboard. See Picture one 
• Just gradually do this to all your strips
• If you are using a strip as Add Manure in Autumn, my yellow  strips that year, add  chicken pellets on top of straw , or stable manure if you have  some. Add more in the spring too . 
• You are now up and running . By the spring you can plant straight into the bed, even if you have to make a hole .  I rarely plant seeds straight in to strips as most seeds can be sown in modules  and dug into bed when large enough . I put potatoes under more straw and never earth up , just making sure straw is thick enough to block the light, as green potatoes are poisonous.  Brassicas go straight in from modules when about 6inches big with 6 leaves, Leeks the same , Chard the same , sweetcorn too and beetroot. You use the modules discarded by garden centres, and fellow gardeners. I wash them and use very year until they split. 6  or 9 are the best, as the tiny ones have  not enough root run and have to be replanted in to larger ones . Our Nursery Reighton sells ready grown seedlings in a 5in flower pot ready to be pricked on into modules, these are cheaper than buying a packet of seeds. 
• I often let vegetables go to seed , and when plants come up around them I use these, Chards and broccoli do this easily.
• If you are starting in the Spring  you have to make sure not too much bare soil is open to the 'weeds' so plant Green Manure until you ready to use. Cover with crops as soon as possible, even radishes, and lettuces to cover. I would plant lots potatoes under straw the first year just to use the land , and gradually do the 3 Colour rotation.
• 
  I plant Garlic, Onions ( from Sets) and broad beans in the autumn. More sets can be planted in the Spring. Advice from Mr Hessayon still applies to cultivation here. 
  
  
  
  
  
  

Ace pollinators

 The heat this summer has given my Lavender bushes a boost. I have never appreciated before just how , being Mediterranean natives , they prefer dry and hot conditions. Similarly the Rosemary bushes are thriving, and we have olives on the potted Olive tree, my friend Ann is harvesting figs, and our Oleander in the yard continues flowering. I am hopeful for bananas on the small Banana plant , but it only has 4 leaves yet as it is only young. 

This year I have sat longer on my plot, enjoying the bee loud glade. I’ve pulled out unwanted plants and laid on bed to act as mulch, anything to keep the soil moist.

Barbara on next plot is harvesting her Lavender today. She cuts carefully into even sized bunches and hangs in her light and beautifully made greenhouse/shed that husband Terry built for her. She was widowed recently after a being a full time carer, and she gradually brings the plot back to its usual perfection as she restores the years the locusts have eaten . She is leaving some of her lavender , as I am , for the bees. My daughter has just messaged me to ask if we should get a beehive. She can forget that idea. I do however love to drive round these Wolds and spot hives hiding in the fields of Borage , Oilseed rape and Linseed, purple, citric yellow and blue. My honey is produced by a local beekeeper, a Mr Danby of Seamer. I buy it at Reighton Nurseries. The borage honey is the palest yellow. 

I let Borage and Nasturtiums seed freely all over my plot. No dig gardeners like the soil all covered with beneficial plants, bringing in insects and keeping down the unwanted  but not unloved Sow Thistles , and Spurges, the delightful Scarlet Pimpernel . I like the Dandelions and love the chickweed (beloved of Budgie keepers). I have a favourite wild plant which adores my plot, but it is wind pollinated I think, as it is green. I know its not Good king Henry, Chenopodium bonus henricus, I wish it was, I wasted seeds every year and still not managed to get even one to germinate .This is an annual relative , Fat Hen, but my Wild Food Book says it can also be eaten. The leaves are a lovely gray green and this  amongst my 3 sisters planting of Sweetcorn , Sunflowers and Mangetout managed to sneak up to 3feet high in as many weeks.

Echium is 12ft tall , still covered in bees, and cucurbit  flowers are beloved by tiny pollinators. I have succeeded , she says proudly of having something to attract pollinators during every day of the year, letting my brassicas go to seed, allowing dead nettles to grow through winter, and never hanging on for the bulbs, as there is always a wild flower arriving to fill in any gaps.

Have bought you a crab, Mum!

 

That picture was taken in June , the last time I managed to get a crab. Today on August 11th Ann and Graham have brought me one from Scarborough from the shop where Gary fillets fish sometimes. That shop is only open  first thing in the morning. 

Our lovely Filey wet fish shop closed down at Easter just as we were all planning our Good Friday meals. No, I'm not complaining.There is always another way . We do not have to eat Crab. We , if go by the media are going to have a job to afford food at all . Yes, I am working out a strategy to save Gas and Electricity, and I'm taking positive steps to change our lifestyle.

Colin's Carer Chris suggested that I should unplug all the chargers around the house until I need them. Ive just counted, there are 6. For the first week I did indeed switch them all off, but my intentions have been thwarted by my butterfly mind. 

Martin Lewis , who I admire from his easy manner on MoneyBox Live is profuse in great ideas for coping with the current Media Circus and scaremongering re Price Caps on fuel and direct debits of hundreds a month. I am reminded that he wants to be an MP too, (I think)and wonder for how long he can remain the impartial voice of reason. I hope he will join the Green Party. (I have just followed grandson no.1 and joined).

I am going to start cooking on the top of my Log burner again, and put a kettle on it, before its illegal to burn the Kiln dried Ash logs we use in winter, and the stove warms all our small cottage. I have the national Collection of candles still from the Millenium Scare.

I'm doing all I can to cut down on my plastic waste. This is not easy as spouse has so many medical items that are made of plastic, I have to use them .

Yesterday , however I disposed of 4 food containers that declared they are not recycled yet, Soft prunes, ground coffee, Truvia and yellow split peas. None of these items could be sold in paper packets. Son in Brighton and daughter in Sussex , where the green awareness is very high, are able to go to scoop shops   taking their own containers. I am pleading for another one to open in Filey. Twenty years ago we had one , which I used as often as I could, but it was ahead of its time and lasted only less that a year. 

Filey is a poor place to shop anyway as it is  demographically client led, catering for the Caravan trade,  the Geriatric ready meals trade , and  Yorkshire's idea of a good diet. ( Thank God for our Greengrocer and butcher). We have 3 friends who eat no vegetables except peas. These are nutritionally ok, being second class proteins, but for us there are only so many Pea, mushroom  and Paneer curries we can eat in a month.

Our chiropodist  Ann has recommended a champion of eating cheaply , Jack Monroe oka  The bootstrap cook. Her Cook Books are great, and her out of the box ideas for recipes helpful for everyone.

I stopped , or tried to stop, buying foods flown in to the uk, except for Avocados , grapes and oranges. I have tried to grow pulses on my allotment and have succeeded with chick peas, mange tout, and sugar snap peas. If we are going to get through winters more economically, I am reminded that dried peas kept people going before potatoes came to the uk. 

My allotment neighbour Brian grows enough peas to see him through the year . I imagine him sitting and shelling them for days, for the freezer. Broad beans too are easy to grow, and so are that other neglected staple Butter beans. WE just need to find better ways of storing and using them . I remember my mother  soaking butter beans to use them . We could do that easily. I make a great soup with yellow split peas, coconut milk , onion and Red Thai paste, easy to freeze when very thick , and just water down to serve. 

Dhal can be made so many ways too, with so many different  spices 

and additions. Its such a cheap staple too, as a 500 gm pack red lentils cost 99p In Aldi, add onions and tumeric and optional hard boiled eggs and feed 6.

Martin Lewis says It's more economical to boil a kettle on stove than use an electric kettle. I have a 3.5 ltr one , its taking us a while to dovetail the timing and the amount of water to put in the kettle, but we've only had it a week. 

The Microwave might have to go next, although spouse remembers all those childhood dinners kept warm on 2 plates over a saucepan  of water. 

I'm not good at Jam  but I've managed this year with a thermometer and before the birds broke through the netting to the blackcurrant bushes. The redcurrant jelly took 2 boilings using the cold plate set test, but the thermometer did the trick . I use the ancient Marguerite Pattern book of recipes which is dropping to bits and yellowing .

Grandson no 2 is always trying to get me to listen to Podcasts. Every one is listening to them these days he says  as he reels off the names of good ones. I must listen to the younger generation now I'm classed as one of the Olds. But I still like to put actual words down on virtual paper  like this blog , and read the constant stream of Library books that daughter no1 brings from her workplace, a great  library in the East Riding 10 miles away. I get plenty of updates about the World on Radio 4, (long may it continue), and the Music world form Jess Gillam on Radio 3.

I'll go now and get the lunch. Spouse has to have main meal at lunchtime now, following strong medical advise. Ive just read in todays Times that they recommend that too now for a Healthy lifestyle. The trouble is that this Old is exhausted by 2pm after preparing food from scratch, washing by hand(until machine is fixed on Tuesday) , watering the plants first thing because of the heat, fielding phone calls, and callers, so that when I sit down to read , I drop off. By 5pm I'm ready to prepare a meal from scratch, so perhaps I'll have to prepare tomorrows meal today, and recycle my time as well as my wrappers.

Theatre of the not absurd

I would like a posh one , but at present am not able to wield a saw , a plane  or even a hammer really. My theatre will do for me , cobbled in a corner of my backyard using bricks, bits of bricks and sitting resplendent atop an ageing coal bunker.

My start of the day  has an updated routine now

• feel if I'm alive
• take life prolonging meds 
• do Lectio 365 
• see if spouse is alive
• make us both a cup of tea
• do ablutions
• collect daily washing ,start washing machine
• GO INTO BACKYARD & LOOK AT AURICULA THEATRE
•  peg washing on line
• make porridge for spouse
• prepare breakfast for self
• go to Wydale  or Filey Parish on Zoom (weekdays except Tuesdays)

Daughter no1, son in law, friend Liz  and I have been discussing the collecting and displaying of Primula auriculas.  Though recorded in Elizabethan times, and popular in the 19th C when specialist Flower Societies were formed , son in law tells me Geoff Hamilton popularised them , but for me Chelsea Physic Garden first brought a Theatre to my attention. 

An aside

Spouse and I love the Chelsea Physic Garden, we went every time we were in town , and in the days when members got in at the front door and had to sign a book, and the gardens were more or less free from the hoy palloy. Now its open most days, and spouse knows he might not be able to visit again. We will have to put the membership in my name. I think being there  without  spouse might be one of the hardest visits I will ever have to do.

I can appreciate why P. auriculas were popular with the working classes in Victorian times. They are easy to cultivate,  tolerant of afternoon shade and take up very little space , are mostly kept in pots and are just displayed once a year when they flower, April and May . 

In our last holiday together in 2019, and with family who are seasoned navigators and bargees, on the Staffordshire and Worcester canal  we passed a famous garden centre, Ashwood Nurseries, which I unashamedly recommend  for Primula Auriculas. I am going to buy only 4 new varieties a year, on the phone  of course, so that my delight doesn't become an obsession or I a frightful bore.

This year my favourite is called SVR. I had to ask the salesperson what that meant . Guess it !   *see bottom of post

When daughter No 2 next visits from East Sussex she is bringing me some more P. a's from the nursery she works in. They are all different again, not doubles but more 'edges'.

My readers will know that I love Echiums, as I have written about them several times.You may not know I also too love to grow Coleus from seed, just so that you know I have an eclectic taste. Daughter no 1 loves to grow onions. She has 82 on her allotment , and counts them every day. I grew Loofahs  last year,  but have decided I don't love them. I am growing lots of sweetcorn this year, of the coloured  heritage variety.  I'll let you know what I think in October.

Meanwhile enjoy my Coleus....

*SVR Severn Valley Railway

Little Gidding, Pete Greig , and Mental Health

 

My friends all know that I love Poetry. 

We had a huge cull of books when we moved back into the cottage 10 years ago , and left a room which was furnished from floor to ceiling with bespoke  bookshelves made by the craftsman  Malcolm Johnson .Colin loaded up Mother's sholley with books several times a day and walked to the Charity Shops with the load until we were advised they could not receive any more. I kept all my Poetry books, most shelf space now after my Botany books.

Little Gidding is my Adlesdrop place, as I did pass through it unwontedly on the way to Yorkshire from London avoiding motorways. I always knew it had been  a religious community of the strict High Anglican sort , but not having ever read the Four Quartets  that pleasure was  to come.  Pete Greig always surprises me with his rhetoric , his writings and his vision,and I value his contribution to the stability of my mental health. He writes on 4th Jan

 that

 Reading today's headlines, I'm reminded of a line from T.S. Eliot, who died on this day in 1965: ‘Christ is the still point of the turning world' .....

it has become my necessary daily practice simply to sit in silence and stillness each morning for a few minutes,......

But I believe that God’s quiet invitation to each one of us at the start of this year is this: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ (Psalm 46:10). We know ‘of’ God through the bible but we actually know him through the practice of silence, stillness and solitude. Good doctrine is dead without doxology. This was something I experienced deeply and cumulatively during my three week solitary pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne in October. ..............

in 'Little Gidding' - a poem named after a small monastic community - T.S. Eliot captures and conveys the spirit of precisely this kind of silent praying;

'You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid.

And prayer is more

Than an order of words,

the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind,

or the sound of the voice praying'

For two years now I have been doing LECTIO 365 , a free app on my mobile . I don't read it, I sit quietly after my initial quiet sit , and I listen. Since Colin has been more himself and able to listen , we have done the evening Lectio too , and listen together , like doing the Compline of the Daily Office.My friend Tara first told me of it, and my friend Pam further up my road, and I have told many friends of it.

Throughout lockdown and to this dayI have also been in a parallel world as reluctant carer to infirm beloved. THIS life is dominated by the truly boring tasks in life , and may be accompanied sometimes by the temptation to run away, to cry, to moan, to cook and eat ready meals, to wear the same clothes for a week, and to feel sorry for myself. I want to .. I want to.... and even if all the Art Galleries and days of sunshine, and Beautiful music and meals out were possible , I would still be completely out of my comfort zone , my head space would still be in need of still ness, balm and thankfulness. I now appreciate that Brother Lawrence worshipped during the washing of pots, and just how saintly are those who can truly live and not count the cost. For me I am with Pete Greig, and find stillness does wonders.The busiest of days need the stillness first for me.

I Wrote in a previous post, the one that has had the most hits [ from the data] that Gardening had kept me sane. Five years on I still cling on to my sanctuary that is my allotment, but things have changed there too, as the fast daily walks to the mile away plot are no longer practical as my HIP is paining and I cant walk fast at all , so my cardio work out is missing from my routine. I cant be bothered to do sit ups or any other exercise, its as much as I can do to walk to the chemist for beloveds prescriptions. BUT I can take the car and I can still do my no dig gardening with joy and satisfaction and am planning my rotations and my potato order.

Last year I grew LOOFAHS and got seeds for the whole of Filey for this year seemingly. Our Christmas lunch at Kiaora included Red Cabbage from the plot cooked with apples and onions also from the plot. I am still picking Broccoli and Chard and my rare Echiums are still alive , just.

It warms my heart that I am not the only person to have heard of and employ 'no dig' and my joy will be complete when Mike and the rest of the Allotment association buy NO Peat compost for the site SHOP.

NEW YEAR PROMISE OF SUNNY DAYS AND FASCINATING SKIES

Some Sunshine please now O Creator of it!

May you all enjoy GOOD MENTAL HEALTH this year.