We're under quarantine!

Last Thursday saw the last day of Little P's first year at school, but in the early hours of the morning the little poppet woke up covered in itchy red spots...........yes, you guessed it, Little P had caught the Chicken Pox!!

It was inevitable really as the virus had been circulating in her school for over a month and little P had managed to avoid it previously, but in a small school environment these germs seem to get shared around quite readily!

So the first few days of the long Summer holiday have not been a barrel of laughs. Poor little p has been quite poorly, but we have had one very enjoyable afternoon's activity. You see about a year and a half ago one of my lovely brothers bought little P an amazing craft set and we have been waiting for the best time to use it, a time when we could devote at least a few hours to concentrated cutting, glueing and pasting loveliness. Chicken Pox has given us the perfect opportunity to make this amazing 'Three little Pigs' craft set. It kept us entertained for a full five hours!! We loved it so much that we looked up where to get another set in the same series, but sadly it's no longer being made. It's such a shame as this is easily the best children's art and craft set I have seen in years, complete with a brilliant instructional DVD designed for children. All I can say is, "Thank you Uncle Mark, you've made a little girl and her mum very happy!"

Little P gets a new bag

About a week ago I made a reversible summer bag using some remnants of material from our local curtain fabric shop. Here's the link in case you missed it. Well, ever since then, Little P has been badgering me to make her a reversible bag too. So this morning I planned cut and sewed her a little bag ready for taking to school at pick up time later. I t was surprisingly easy to come up with the pattern and as I was using thick fabric there was no need to use any interfacing which made it a lot quicker to cut out. I'm going to work on a larger version for me now, as you really cant beat a tote with long handles to put over your shoulder when going shopping!

Sunday's harvest

Another beautiful and very hot day today. I spent a good few hours down at the plot, digging up the broad bean plants as they've now stopped producing and planting red cabbage, red salad bowl lettuce seedlings and sewing winter cauliflower and Kohl Rabi seeds.

I was joined after about an hour by Mr B and little P and they planted the five little lavender plants we bought yesterday and we dug up about 4 of our salad potato plants. The picture above shows the booty we gathered today. Unfortunately the potatoes are hidden in the photo by two enormous beetroot, but we have white and red salad potatoes and we cooked some for tea,......delicious!

Lavender day

We had a fantastic day today and discovered an amazing place to visit (provided they have an open day). As recommended by one of our fellow allotmenteers we travelled down to the sleepy Sussex village of Lordington and attended one of Lordington Lavender's open days.
What an amazing place......the Lavender in this field was planted back in 2002 as part of a diversification programme. The field was initially hidden away, we parked our car by the farm buildings and walked down a little track and through a glade of trees, and as we turned a corner this immense field of purple opened up in front of us. It was a truly awesome sight!
Visitors could walk up and down the rows of lavender, take in the gorgeous calming scent and listen to the gentle hum of the bees as they buzzed around the crop. The owners had also set up a little tea and coffee area aided by a Chichester ladies charity group who had also made a selection of Lavender biscuits and cakes. All the proceeds from these sales went to charity.

Inspired by the awe and wonder of the crop, Mr B bought 5 little lavender plants to plant on the allotment so that next year we'll be able to harvest our own lavender for cakes and biscuits. I bought some lavender essential oil that can be used for cooking, I'm going to be experimenting with making Lavender ice cream!

Wednesday Musings

I was just starting to think that I should re-name my blog as all the posts recently have been about plants and our allotment. Well, there has been some crafting going on behind the scenes, more of that later. But first here is a little glimpse of my new acquisition of which I am very excited. You see it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and my parents very kindly bought me this fantastic trolley! I now have no excuses for driving to the allotment as I can transport all my seedlings, tools....and little P up to the plot in style. Here is little P showing us just how much she's enjoying her new mode of transport. It's great exercise for my arms I also discovered the morning after pulling little P the 1Km to our plot! As I mentioned earlier there has been some crafting going on recently. I made little P her reversible blue gingham/flower hat for school that I talked about here, and then today I made a quick and simple little summer bag. I bought the fabric from a remnants table in a local curtain fabric shop so it was very cheap to make too! I'm really pleased with the result and the bag would make a great gift idea.

Finally for today, it's back to edible plants again! We have strawberries and raspberries in abundance in our garden so much so that we can't eat it quickly enough at the moment, so I have ventured into the world of jams! It's brilliant fun making jam and again pots of jam make great homemade gifts. I have already given two pots away! This evening though I made my first batch of 'Summer Fruit' jam using a mixture of strawberries and raspberries as I didnt have enough strawberries left for a single batch of strawberry jam.

I took a photo of the jars of jam I made and couldnt resist including my vegetable 'booty' from a visit to water our plants at the allotment this morning. We're now eating courgettes, french beans and beetroot (although I'm just looking at the later, not eating it!). We might dig up our Charlotte and Red duke of York potatoes at the weekend too.

cutting patch harvest

You might remember a while back I mentioned that we were going to trial a cutting patch at the allotment. Just a small bed, about 2m x 1m, and after Mr B kindly dug it for me back at the beginning of May I set about planting it up with Sunflowers, Nasturtiums, Cosmos, Asters and Calendula. Well today I went to water the plot and thought it was about time to pick my first bunch of flowers from the cutting patch.....and here they are!
Not very prolific at the moment, granted, but I was very proud of my little bunch of Cosmos and Sweet peas. The sweet peas are in fact so uneventful that you can hardly see them in the vase, but they are there all the same, smelling beautifully and looking very pink!

I love the colours and shape of the petals of Cosmos, and they're so easy to grow and keep on flowering for ages (as long as you remember to dead head them!) I remember when I was little my Grandma used to have a collection of swimming hats adorned with cosmos like plastic flowers hanging in her poolhouse. These flowers always remind me of her, they're fast becoming my favourite hardy annual flower.

Having now picked the flowers the alotment plot is looking decidedly less colourful, I think a bit of work is needed down there this weekend.