Wednesday 21 April 2010

Huzzah! 1st BBQ of the year (and some jobs)

Sunday was allotment day for me over the weekend. Saturday was spring cleaning day at home. I am prepping for visitors so I've been busy with jobs whilst I have time. What lovely weather we had this weekend. Sun, and just the right amount of heat. Bliss!

Here's a snap of my chitting 'Rooster' potatoes. Not too many but I'm looking forward to eating these. I had planned to plant them out but I didn't get time in the end. A job for another day.


I checked the seed progress about the allotment and spotted this teeny tiny pea making an appearance. Currently it is the only one but I am hoping others will follow its lead. This shoot is about 1cm high!


The four pics below show the flowers I planted in some of the mini-beds I now have. I wanted something pretty I could cut and take home to my flat. I am particularly looking forward to the Ixia.


This photo shows the mini-beds. The 3 on the right are where I planted the flowers. Nearest to us is two rows of Ixia, the middle one is Gladiolus in the centre (maked with 4 little sticks), with the mixed annuals and Californian poppies around the edge. The furthest bed is the Dahlias. There are currently 12 mini-beds dug. There will be 15 soon. I was thinking this would be a nice size to work with, about 1m x 1.5m. Makes everything a little less daunting! I need to plan what will go in each bed but I reckon some more flowers could be in order, even mixed in with veg.


We had a fire. With MASSIVE flames!


Then, as the weather was good, I had my first lottie bbq of 2010. My friend Claire was chef. We made use of my big bbq as a stand for a mini one. Less bending down. Already it is asparagus season so I picked some (bottom right of the photo, on the shelf) and steamed it with a little water in foil parcels on the bbq. SO tasty. I love asparagus, me :) You can't get any fresher than that.


We celebrated with a bottle of bubbly, just because we could. I love this pic of Nick watching the cork fly into the stratosphere!


So, this is the tasty meal - veggie kebabs, fresh bbq-steamed asparagus, salad, bbq prawns and bbq-steamed salmon with lime and coriander. Yum! Trying to be healthy you see.


After dinner we released some pigeons... (!)
'Bob' the plastic pigeon, and his new friend 'Boo' went into the ground.


And Nick's bike got attacked by an alien! It is actually a left-over parsnip he found. I am sure it tasted revolting. :) He must've looked odd with this wedged on his bike as he cycled home.


So, they are all the snaps I took but I also popped in a 2nd trellis for sugarsnap peas next to the normal peas and cleared more dead raspberry canes away. I also planted the honeyberry, goji berry and blueberry I got from Suttons, but the pots were full of slugs and the plants look sad, so I am not holding my breath they will make it. Claire weeded the asparagus and Nick did lots of digging.

I hope you had a great weekend and the weather was kind to you too.

3 comments:

Jo said...

Sounds like a great weekend, well, apart from the spring cleaning, I'm in the middle of that too. The barbeque meal looks delicious. I had decided this year to make my beds bigger, but I think I'm going to go back to smaller beds. I had thought 10X10 foot might be a good size, but I can't get used to having to walk on the soil, so I'm going to make them smaller again in to 10X4 beds like I had last year. That way you don't have to walk on the soil and can reach the whole bed area from the path.

Kella said...

Hi I'm just catching up on everyone's blogs that I follow.

What a great day you all had and that lotty meal looked well tasty, I have another year of waiting before I can harvest my asparagus.

I have also planted some flowers for cutting, your selection will certainly make your plot beautiful.

Like you I prefer the more managable beds of 4ft x 8ft and like jo i can't get used to walking on the soil either.

Christine @ Grub, Sweat and Cheers said...

Great looking food. I'm envious of your little pea seed - I'm still waiting for my first few seeds (kale/lettuce/onions) to pop up.

That parsnip looks like a squid!