Murder on the Flower Bank

I made a grisly discovery at my allotment yesterday. Sorry to say it looks as though there has been a recent murder up on my flower bank. The first sign was this...

...then I noticed this......and finally the true horror was revealed...

It looks as though Cheeky Fox has been enjoying a pigeon dinner, and I have a particular dislike for pigeons, or flying rats as I consider them, so despite my longstanding vegetarianism and life-loving pacifism, I really hope he enjoyed his feast!


However, it’s not all death-ridden gloom on the flower bank. Just inches behind the murder scene, the purple hollyhock is still making new growth and flowering prolifically, bringing some cheer to the grey-sky autumn day.




Life & Death
Love Life
XXX

A Tudor Trip

My sister and her family were visiting from Edinburgh last week. Sheena’s children are learning about the Tudors at school so we went to Hampton Court Palace, where she and I spent many a happy day out with our family when we were little kids.

It’s funny what you remember from childhood isn’t it? Then as now, we especially loved the maze, and found our way to the middle

and the wonderful architecture and brickwork, some of if lovingly restored to the original

and the beautiful clock

in its beautiful tower

and Henry’s gloriously egocentric stained glass windows

Hunting animals was a big hit in Tudor times. It must have seemed quite tame compared to the punishments and grisly deaths that were meted out to humans! Hunting is certainly not my thing, but this display of horns is nonetheless very impressive to look at.

We remembered the big Yew tree on the green outside the cafe by the old jousting turret, and we remembered the fabulous kitchens. We also remembered the grace and favour homes at the back where, in our childhood naivety, we dreamed of one day living, and we remembered walking up the gravel path with the flower borders on one side

and the trees, sculpturally clipped into domes, by the fountain on the other, where last week we saw plenty of geese hanging around.

When I was a child it was free to visit the grounds and some of the palace including the kitchens and the chapel, but these days of course you have to pay for everything. Tickets are not cheap, but worth it.


Love a Tudor palace
Love Life
XXX

When you can't say it with words

Increased pain in my arms has meant no typing recently, hence no posting here for a while. Since I’m still severely limited with the words I can offer you (there are plenty in my head but pain-racked arms prevent me from sharing!) I’m hoping that the pictures will tell the stories.......

Most of the butternuts have rotted off, as predicted. Except for this large one

which, as you see, was larger still one week later!


I sowed broad beans for overwintering, and started making a little frame, to remind me where they are (for I intersowed between already existing swiss chard) and to help support them when they grow next spring.


The weather here has been mixed. Last week provided some warm autumnal sunshine on a windy day. I love the trees at this time of year, and the ever-changing colours of their leaves.

I took this pic of the trees while sitting up on the bank at the allotment.
And from the same spot I took this one of my plot of plenty below


Bear with me and my knackered arms....More pics coming very soon!


Hate pain
Love posting
Love Life
XXX

AK at RA

Damian treated me to a ticket for the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy. He knows I am a big fan of this genius artist.

Here is the glorious sight that greets you in the courtyard – wonderful!

And here we are, reflected in the enormous baubles.

Of course you can’t take photographs inside the exhibition. I do understand this in terms of security (on every level) but it’s nonetheless a huge pity because that’s the part I always want to share.

Damian did take a couple of covert images on his phone though......

Can you see my bizarre reflection in the mirrored work on the left?

Here I am enjoying ‘Slug’. Enjoying Slug? But I can’t stand slugs, for they eat my vegetables!


Check out the website where there’s a live webcam on his work ‘Shooting into the Corner’, and plenty more info. It’s a must-see show, especially if you’re a Kapoor fan. On until 11 December at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD.


Love Anish Kapoor
Love Life
XXX

Herbal Tea

After a bit of gardening we always enjoy our tea-break when volunteering at Culpeper, and on Monday were treated to this wonderful herbal mix concocted by Culpeper member John, a fellow Reiki healer.

Freshly picked leaves and flowers including lovage, hollyhock, geranium, mint, bay, mallow, rose and passion flower went into the pot, producing a mild but flavoursome afternoon beverage.

Nature gives us what we need.


Love Tea
Love Life
XXX

The great Freecycling strawberry plant giveaway

Last Sunday I held the great Freecycling strawberry plant giveaway, an impromptu allotment event arranged after I realised that, despite already having given away about 50 strawberry runners, the bed was still so choc-full with new plants that they would probably be too close to crop next year.

Before.....

I had to have a major clear so I posted an offer of free organic strawberry runners on a couple of my local Freecycle sites. Within 24 hours the response was so enormous I had to co-ordinate a plan so arranged the giveaway afternoon inviting those wanting plants to pitch up at my plot and help themselves.

....and After! A bit more space at least.

It was great. I met loads of interesting people, many of them local, and of course meeting other gardeners is always a joy. Some came alone, some with friends and some with family and children. Everybody went away with bagfuls of freshly lifted strawberry plants and I was able to clear 3 wheelbarrows full of my overabundant but very healthy strawberry plants without one of them going to waste. I totted up a mental total of about 300 plants passed on to new homes.

A win-win situation – my favourite kind.



Love Freecycling
Love Life
XXX

Better late than never

I’ve been ploughing through the same over-complicated job application form for the last two weeks, trying to stick to my regime of a little at a time so as not to hurt my arms overdoing the keyboard work, which has meant no extra keyboard time to keep up with the blog. Some of this will be fortnight-old news then. Forgive me my lateness please.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the bees, who are STILL busy at it!

Keeper of the backpackers hive, Farokh, tells me their honey won third prize from the North London Beekeepers recently. He brought us a jar to share at our working party barbeque a few weeks ago and it was exquisite, and very healing; I’d had a bad headcold following the lurgy and a few spoons of the honey worked wonders. Farokh is particularly delighted with the progress as it’s only his first full year of beekeeping. Next year he will install another hive at the far end of the site. Then we will have honey galore!



Autumn is a busy time at the plot as there’s lots of clearing and tidying up to do before winter sets in. I have been spreading our now fabulously well-rotted manure from Nat’s endless free supply. It’s full of worms and goodness

and the brassicas love it. Look at those lovely cabbages!

Lots of beetroot still in the ground, interplanted with cabbage seedlings in various stages of growth. Swiss Chard is all around the place.



The butternut squash have been a bit hit and miss, as seems to be their way.

My experience has been much the same as many allotment neighbours. They grow well and tantalise us with promises of delicious winter treats, then overnight they can rot off the plant, but I still have some good sized fruits ripening.



With the nights getting colder I picked plenty of these cayenne peppers which are now sitting on my windowsill at home. I’m hoping they might ripen and redden, a bit more at least.

Nice big clumps of land cress have appeared. Sometimes known as winter cress, it will crop right through the dark months if I’m lucky. It’s tasty, and with a stronger flavour and much tougher leaves than watercress, a good addition of flavour and vitamins in winter.

This week I planted Autumn Gold raspberries, given to me by a neighbour at the far end of the site.

My Red Pear tomatoes were plentiful but still green and were suffering in the colder weather, so they joined the peppers ripening at home. I cleared the frames and canes that supported them and spread more manure.

The mysterious ‘maybe Turks Turban, maybe not’ pumpkins have grown all they are going to grow, so they have also been harvested this week.

Courgettes have been dying back over the last couple of weeks. I’ve cleared them as and when. A couple of days ago I cleared one single yellow courgette plant whose growth was so huge its corpse filled this entire wheelbarrow. I kid you not, this is one plant.



This funghi is growing on an old tree stump at the top of the bank.

It grows fast – only 3 days passed between taking these photographs. I think it’s very beautiful.

Here’s some of my plot - still full of food.



Love Autumn
Love Life
XXX

Those Fabulous Binnie Sisters

As always, time is passing extremely quickly. It was a week ago that my friend Christine Binnie, together with her sister Jennifer, transformed her flat into an art installation with events planned throughout October. It is the first time that they have exhibited as sisters, and according to their statement, “draws on their upbringing of creativity, spirituality and resourcefulness, nurtured in a bungalow on the edge of the South Downs by their artists parents – Kenneth, a printer, painter and follower of Rudolph Steiner, and Beryl – a weaver, spinner, Guide Leader, church choir member and pillar of the community”.

As well as paintings and objects by Jennifer, there are also Christine’s ceramics, of which I am a big fan

and this rather wonderful portrait of Christine by her father Kenneth.

There were performances too, the first of the night a collaboration between Christine and her mother Beryl, who had chosen these particular tea towels from their enormous collection, which Christine laundered and hung in the bathroom.

Then an outdoor performance with audience participation where Jennifer played violin and Christine sang, in the lovely raised bed garden she has made in the forgotten corner of the forecourt outside her block of flats.

No blight in EC1, her tomatoes are enormous.

She won a prize for this garden – quite right too!

For more information and to see what’s on and when, contact 07727 817 934 or 07940 859 485.


Love Creativity
Love Life
XXX

Happy and Blessed

It was Olga’s birthday so we met on Hampstead Heath to join her for a celebratory picnic.

There was an absolute feast of delicious Peruvian food that she and Aravec had made, a real treat for all of us.

There were lots of lovely friends enjoying sharing in the sunshine.

There was a thoroughly luxurious chocolate mousse birthday cake,

followed by home-made chocolate treats – YUMMY!


There is nothing I like better than relaxing in nature on a hot, sunny day with plenty of good food, prepared with love, and sharing the afternoon with lovely friends. How lucky I am.


Love Days Like These
Love Life
XXX

Autumn Blessings

It’s early autumn, and although the last week has felt like late summer, there is joy in knowing that autumn brings its own rewards,

like Nerine lilies, which Gaynor tells me are known as Naked Ladies in her native New Zealand, due to their lack of foliage and therefore 'naked' stems,

which sit happily alongside the new growth of the hollyhocks

and the flower bank backdrop (or bankdrop, perhaps?) is changing again.

An increasingly rare and always joyful sight at my allotment is that of tomatoes ripening on the vine, NOT decimated by blight for the first time in years.

The camomile path is standing up well as the seasons change. The plants are getting larger and stronger and I am very excited about what might be a full path in a year or two.

Check out Kate Magic’s blog, A Good Look, for some gorgeous allotment photographs taken during her recent visit. They are lush!


Love Seasons
Love Life
XXX

Sunset Shades in September

What a week of golden weather! We’ve been very lucky here in London and are enjoying a nice spell of late summer sunshine.

September is a lovely month, full of changes in nature, the end for some plants and the beginning for others, and the sun is low and warm. There’s loads to do up at the plot as old foliage is cut away and cleared, vegetables and fruit continue to crop and of course there is always weeding to be done. I found myself alone on site in the afternoon sunshine yesterday, while sitting up on the deck enjoying a well-earned break I noticed this little spider, camouflaged in the purple foliage:

Can you see it? Look closer....

I cut back the old, dead stems and leaves from the hollyhocks that backdrop the fence right at the top of the bank. While doing it I noticed this tiny snail

nestling in one of the hollyhock’s new flowers

Then on to a good couple of hours hand weeding between plants, strong and delicious scents wafting around me in the leek bed, where I also removed one of the green courgette plants which was looking very sorry for itself and on its last legs. The other plant is still going strong though,

as are the golden courgettes

and the beautiful yellow chard, just one plant which self-seeded.

The (allegedly) Turks Turban pumpkins are growing very well. They are golden orange, some with green stripes. They definitely came out of a packet marked ‘Turks Turban’ but is that what they are? Any suggestions as to their true identity would be welcome.


Life is Golden
Love Life
XXX

How to deal with a creep on the London Underground

I’ve just got home from the first of Andrew Logan’s jewel sale evenings in London Bridge where I’ve been selling my Love Life tees. I travelled home on the tube, a straight journey on the Jubilee line taking about 20 minutes maximum, and a journey I make often. I got on the train with a friend and a couple of stops along I noticed a rather hideous man with a pot belly, bad teeth and hair, and a horribly lecherous look staring right at me. It made me feel uncomfortable so I mentioned it to my friend and we both stared back hoping to shame him into averting his gaze elsewhere. It didn’t work. My friend got off at Oxford Circus and the train filled up.

“Will you be OK?” my friend asked before alighting, “perhaps you should move into another carriage”. I considered it but the train was full so I would have to stand, and I was tired and already had a perfectly good seat, and anyway, I have every right to travel safely without feeling uncomfortable.

When the train pulled out of Oxford Circus station the vile man, who by now must have thought he could creep me out to his heart's delight since I was now alone, made a truly repulsive facial expression, one of lechery in the extreme, as his staring continued. I was cross that his behaviour was making me feel so uncomfortable and knew I had to make him stop so I announced in a very loud and even voice, while looking straight at him

“Why do you keep staring at me?”

Everybody looked, first at me and then at him, and as they did he blushed red and flustered around as he started to say that he wasn’t staring but I cut him off, again very loudly,

“Please stop staring at me now because you are making me feel very uncomfortable”.

With the whole section of the carriage looking at him he stopped his lecherous staring immediately. He spent the rest of the journey looking at his feet and didn’t bother me, or any other lone female, again.

If somebody is bothering you in public then oust them loudly. My silent attempt at shaming by staring back at this creep didn’t work, but the moment I made everybody around me aware of what he was doing he stopped.

Don’t be silent, be vocal. And be safe.


Loathe lechery
Love loudness
Love Life
XXX

Flower Gardens

A few weeks ago I began volunteering at Culpeper Community Garden in Islington. I’m really enjoying it a lot and looking forward to getting more deeply involved.
It’s a lovely garden, a little haven of calm in the middle of the city madness, and it’s open to the public so if you live in, or are around, the Islington area do pop in and enjoy the peaceful energy.


Meanwhile up at the plot my own flower garden is changing again as the last sun of summer warms and autumn approaches.
The hollyhocks are all making new base growth which are already producing new flowerswhich the bees loveand the white and pink morning glory that I planted at their bases are flowering daily, although not always in the morning. This photo was taken mid-afternoon.

Marigolds, such a wonderfully simple and cheerful flower, continue to flower and flower and flower......

The plot itself, full of veg!

Love Flowers
Love Life
XXX

Love Food

It’s a grim and rainy day and I’m still not quite recovered from ‘the bug’ that seems to have been going round recently. I lost my appetite completely until last night, when I craved green veg so I made an enormous bowl of rice with garlic, broccoli and cavolo nero, all from my lovely allotment, nourishment from the best source to my mind.

I’ve been cooking a bit recently though. Two weeks ago Damian and Brian presented me with a large pile of vine leaves harvested from their garden grapevine so I made dolmades for the first time in my life.

I adapted the recipe from the fabulous Moro East cookbook, a birthday present from my friend Jenny Selden a couple of years ago, perfect for me as all recipes are allotment-based. Substituting grated courgette (what else?!?!!) for meat I also added a wide selection of herbs.

They worked well, looked great and tasted delicious!


With the cooking apples on the communal tree at the allotment ready to use, a favourite pudding I’ve made a few times recently is rhubarb, apple and raspberry crumble.

Yummy!

There’s a lot to look forward to in autumn and winter too. Butternut squash are forming all over the bank.

They have BEAUTIFUL yellow flowers!

There will be plenty of chilli peppers available, if we can just get a wee bit more sunshine to ripen them from green to red.

And, despite the dreaded blight wiping out most of the tomato plants, the unsung heroes are Red Pear, a heritage variety which has so far been completely blight-resistant, providing small, sweet and tasty fruits.


Love Food
Love Life
XXX

We Love Visitors

We love having visitors at magic plot number 7. Nature lovers, magic lovers and lovers of life are always welcome.Sara and Rob brought Lucas along for a little bit of gardening in the September sunshine. It was his first trip to my plot and he enjoyed helping with the work, showed particular skill digging and filling up his bucket with soil, and although he found the wheelbarrow a bit too large and tricky to handle, he did an excellent job assisting me with the composting too.


It was a real treat that my friend Kate Magic came up from Brighton for a visit with her three fantastic boys. Kate and I have been online friends for about a year but this was our first meeting in person, and what better place to entertain the magic one but on the magic plot!

I’ve been taking home an enormous quantity of raspberries every 2 or 3 days,so I had made a point of leaving plenty on the bushes for Kate’s boys to enjoy. They moved fast and within minutes all ripe berries had been consumed and thoroughly enjoyed.

Reuben, Ethan and Zachary impressed me enormously. Well-behaved, bright, intelligent and funny, without a doubt they are the most well-balanced children I have ever met, just living in the vibe of life and having a marvellous time. It’s unsurprising really for they have a wonderful mother.

Kate is a raw fooder, as are her children, and a pioneer of raw eating. A well-respected author, she has written several books on the subject. She brought me some of her Raw Living raw chocolate bars, Hi Lovers and Be The Change, so delicious I may never eat regular chocolate again!

She also posts a regular light-hearted pictorial blog, A Good Look, which is always worth a look.


Love Visitors
Love Life
XXX