Meet Wallis

Wallis thinks he is the big man (he weighs just 14 ounces full grown) and he struts like he owns the world.
We called him Wallis because when those beautiful feathers came in they reminded me of a Tiffany lamp and so (hoping for a hen) he was named after 30's icon Wallis Simpson.
Sadly, Willow then named her hen 'Gromit' thus forever tying the pair to 'Wallace and Gromit' the ugly clay figures from a cartoon.
Ah well, my mum reckons Simpson was tarty strumpet anyway!

The Autumn jobs continue here. Today I'm harvesting the last of grapes for jellies and jams. The crop suffered with the strange weather we've had this season, hot and dry spring followed by a damp, grey summer and we lost quite a few to mould.

Still, there's enough for jam if not for wine and the chickens are loving the pulp from the jelly bags.
There's going to be lots of weird purple chicken poop for the compost next week!

A Rose by any other name....

Just look at these weeds!
Does the fact that I love them mean I'm not a serious grower?

My allotment neighbours are perturbed by my love of weeds. They tolerate my quirks because I diligently mow my paths and any communal areas near my plot and because I always pay my rent in cash and on time but I know they think I'm very strange.
Last week a new lady took over the plot next to mine and I heard the allocations officer explain that I 'garden differently' from other folk. 'It takes all sorts' she added.

 But I am no botanist and I don't really understand the difference between a weed and a wildflower so I have come up with my own definition.
I have decided that a weed is a plant that hurts me with prickles or stingers, hurts the plants around it by strangling them or growing enormous very quickly and is of no conceivable benefit to either.
Very, very few plants fulfil this criteria! Stinging nettles for example, hurt me but not the surrounding plants and they are very beneficial to bees and to compost and to me when cabbage whites lay eggs on them instead of my brassicas.
Must be wildflowers then!

Any really pretty unidentified plants that are 'in the way' get carefully transplanted to the amaranth bed (because amaranth simply doesn't care)   
I think this yellow one is called birdsfoot trefoil. It makes beautiful pillows of yellow and red.

And I think this one could be the elusive Scarlet pimpernel! I'm not at all sure though and if anyone could recommend a good book to ID these with I'd be everso grateful.

I especially want to know what this lovely purple flower is.
It's popping up all over the place this month. It wasn't here last year and I suspect it's one of those whose seeds lie dormant for decades untill the ground is disturbed again.

A less welcome flower springing up all over the plot is the ragwort.
Ragwort is so poisonous and horses who ingest it die slow and painful deaths. There is no antidote.
I recently discovered that small children (like mine) who pick flowers for their mum (like mine)  can also die if they ingest the milky sap of ragwort....the stuff that gets all over their hands when they pick it.   So that one's going in the fire pit.

As for the actual veg on the plot it's rather a mixed bag this year. I had my first ripe tomato last week, earlier than ever before but the cucumbers on their big healthy plants are just refusing to swell. And judging by the slime trails on that leaf, I'm not the only one impatiently waiting
Plus, to my great shame, my courgettes are not even
flowering yet (surely any fool can grow courgettes) 
nor are my runner beans.

 But the grapes....ahh! the grapes are doing splendidly with literally hundreds of bunches swelling by the day....think of the wine! jam too and fresh black grapes for eating but mainly...think of all that wine!!!!

 

Season of mellow fruitfulness

John Keats called this the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' and that is the very best description of English autumn I have ever heard! Today my garden is bathed in glorious, golden sunlight. The chickens are happily free ranging while our old dog dozes and Wurzel is up a ladder harvesting the last bunches of grapes from atop the pergola.

I say the last of the grapes because we've been picking them for weeks now and there were so, so many! Little flower has taken a bunch to school each day, we've given great bowls full to family, friends and neighbours. I've juiced mountains of grapes to make jellys and jams.





and of course, I hardly need say,
there is a gallon of red wine bubbling away in the kitchen.


And Wurzel is out there, picking yet more! Even the chickens are growing weary of grapes now! (They are fickle those hens, shortly before the grapes ripened they had begun turning their little beaks up at cherry tomatoes!) and we will know soon whether there is enough for another gallon of wine.

I love this time of year.