Disturbed while I was weeding the garden, this little fella deigned to pose for its close-ups, but its purposefully outstretched front leg suggests it is definitely seeking to move on and continue its own day.
Agricultural records (i.e. this blog) of the loganberry plants on our allotment date back to 2018. Lately they have started making regular appearances in July. They are welcome on the plot: they do produce edible, nice fruit and require almost no time and attention whatsoever in order to do this. The latter characteristic is a definite plus.
The whole flower-in-pub theme appeared a few days ago, but let’s return to it: it is, at least, a different pub, different flower, different day. Limited horizons this week but that ends today as 10 days off work now beckons, so let’s see what trouble I can get into.
For various reasons St Helena is no agricultural paradise. Some types of fresh fruit and veg can be picked up fairly easily (tomatoes are currently easy to find, for example) but others are never seen. Potatoes, particularly. Ask for potatoes in a shop and you will either be laughed at or, as happened to me once, the shopkeeper will mutter, under his breath, “try me on Monday”, with a wink, as if you’ve asked for cocaine.
However, these beauties are currently growing happily on the tree in the courtyard outside my apartment. The landlord told me not to pick them off the tree, and I honestly haven’t. But they will, at some point, fall to the ground…. and at that point I consider them fair game.
I forget exactly how much our plum tree produced last year but it was at least 20kg (or more than 44 pounds): its all-time record for a single harvest. It won’t do this again in 2024, simply because it never does have two glut years in a row. But the blossom’s out, at least.
Among the activities booked in for this weekend in Milton Keynes was another County Top walk, which was a perfectly OK walk to do but turned out to be not all that exciting photographically. However, I quite like this one, if only for the way it seems to head back in stages through the landscape, starting with the allotments occupied by a mysterious single figure. This is the village of Woburn Sands, where I finished the walk: note that whatever it is named for, it’s not a beach — we are nowhere near the sea here.
My ability to summon a robin now does not even need to involve any digging. Just go and sit down in the garden for five minutes and he turns up anyway, just to check things out. With largely frozen soil at the moment, though, I guess he’s probably hungry. This may well be the same bird as depicted here or here: the photos are all taken in the same place (our allotment) and robins are territorial beasts.
Those of us in exile in the beer garden must have our reasons…. perhaps just misanthropy, in my case. The two women doubtless have their own thoughts on this. But the weather was OK so why not? Is that even a bit of light in the evening sky? I believe so.
On opening the lid of the allotment’s compost barrel this afternoon a whole nest of earthworms was revealed, some four feet up. These two decided they would take the opportunity to return to ground level. The one on the right had a clear head start but the other was catching up. If I was a gambling man…. but instead, I like their translucency. And at least the sun was shining for a little while today, the first sight of it for a few days.
Seeing as the garden in question is on the roof of Big Hands, the micro-gig venue round the corner from my office — and no, I’ve never noticed them before — perhaps Roof Garden Dummies is to be the name of some emergent punk/student band, to be appearing (possibly) on a digital feed near you at some point in the second half of this decade. If I was in The Zone, I might consider founding them myself. But possibly Kraftwerk already did it.
Being 42 