Changing from allotment to Art, Watercolour.

Still have the allotment, not a great year for it this year but it is doing ok. Have been spending more of my spare time practicing watercolour painting, I have been doing watercolour for about a year learning mainly from you tube and books and I have a long way to go. I love watercolour  and find it the most exciting and frustrating medium. When I find how to put the pictures on here I will do so.

Growing crazy.

well finally we have had some rain, not a lot but at least enough for the plants to notice it and things are going crazy, our squash, corn and bean bed has turned into a jungle maybe I did get carried away with the squashes but I love it when it looks really lush. I must take some pics at the weekend the squashes are growing up over the arche. already I have made courgette chutney, dried courgettes , courgette salads, baked and grilled and passed them on to the nieghbours, really should write a book 1000 and one ways to cook courgettes. It is the allotment barbeque next saterday so hoping for good weather for that, our allotments were entered for south east in bloom competition last week but have not heard how it done yet. these pics are in the greenhouse at home.

well we've just spent the afternoon cooking after picking bags of stuff from the allotment, just as you think things are getting easier everything is in and growing, but now it's all the picking cooking and preserving, I'm not moaning though it's great we are already making meals for winter and putting them in the freezer, after picking 4 cauliflowers and some broccoli we made Jamie Oliver's cauliflower riggotoni , 4 trays of, and 2 trays of cauliflower cheese, tommorow it's onto the cougettes, am going to try courgette chutney, also try drying some in our new dehydrator they can then be used in soups or something in the winter, also going to make strawberry and bannana fruit leathers so hope that works ok, things are really taking off at the lotti now, we even had 3 ripe tomatoes yesterday, will be happy when we don't need to buy any more for a few months. I noticed on our potatoes green berries growing up near the leaves I've never seen this before does anyone else know if this is normal? It's soo hot this weekend and we have had no rain for what seems like months now so watering takes up a lot of time at the moment. they are forecasting rain for monday so I hope they are right for once.

Hi, Welcome to my blog, this is all new to me but thought I'd have a go and chat about the allotment , the garden and our girls,' Dora the explora' and 'Betsie boo' our two new chickens, they are two younge buff orpington hens. well the allotment this is our first year to use it properly we took it over about this time last year and had lots of clearing up to do, it was a mixture of weeds grass, flowers and shrubs. we started clearing right away and made deep beds digging all the soil out to make pathways, so they are like raised beds without wood or anything to keep the sides up, and so far it is working well, we have harvested out first garlic and onions, the courgettes are starting to come thick and fast, we've had the first handfull of green beans some cauliflowers, beets and kholrabi, already starting to get overwhelmed with veg and need to start finding lots of things to do with them, did make strawberry jam today so thats a start,