Spot the difference

March 2009


May 2009

Mint and potato frenzy

This has rather turned into the allotment blog at the moment - blame the fact that (a) as ever work has taken over my life, and it's nice to post pretty pictures of vegetables (b) I'm avoiding the knitting as it's lurching from one crisis to another with rows having to be painfully unravelled and (c) it's allegedly summer. Normal service may resume around December...


It was fantastic though, coming back to the allotment after a week in France - everything's grown, especially the mint and potatoes (which will hopefully taste fabulous together).


In fact, I'm feeling rather pleased with myself gardening-wise, as yesterday we managed to use lettuce, parsley, mint and bay leaves from the back yard and front garden, and planted some dwarf broad beans and nasturtiums. Let's hope the evil slugs leave this lot alone - our tactics so far at the allotment seem to be working:

Days out

The woods near Durham Botanic Gardens were carpeted with bluebells.

Manors car park

It's a timewarp in Manors car park in Newcastle - and the 1960s signage is wonderful (unlike the photo, which is pretty terrible. I promise to return with a proper camera soon).

Inspirational stuff

A couple of links for you, on a grey and chilly Bank Holiday:

• Andrea Scher, on being good enough
• Matthew Childs' 9 life lessons from rock climbing

(Thanks to Brian for the last one.)

It's fruit-tastic

Lots of nice things happening on the allotment today - currants (above - not sure if they're black or red) are starting to form, the gooseberries are inflating by the day, and the strawberries are flowering.


On the down side, my spinach is being nibbled by the evil slugs. I've covered it with those plastic cartons your tomatoes etc come in at the supermarket (I don't have enough plastic bottles), so we'll see if that helps.

The rest of the weekend has been spent in the depths of North Yorkshire, which was equally sunny. We trooped off to Filey on Saturday, to marvel at the 1970s-ness of it all (actually, a lot of it probably hasn't changed since the 1950s). There were shops selling sticks of Filey rock, endless tea shops full to the brim with elderly ladies, more buckets and spades than you could shake a stick at, and a rather natty giant lobster in the middle of the crazy golf. M had a donkey ride on the beach and came back with a grin a mile wide. It were good, like.