Elaine & Keith's moestuin's Page

It's Saturday, the house is a mess, no shopping done, my hands look as if they need a manicure, it must be the planting season once again. :)

Six hours today at the allotment, the first full day, since Easter was a wash-out, spent more time in the shed dodging the rain than working on the plots. 

Something ate the broad bean seedlings, or rather the bean at the base of the seedling, a mouse I think, so had to start again with a new sowing.

Familiar faces are drifting…

Last week I wrongly blamed the birds (sorry birds) for devouring ALL of my gooseberries, but I have now found out it was the ducks. My allotment neighbour told me he saw the ducks jumping up to reach the berries. Maybe we should re-name them duckberries.:)  

Having said this, the birds are not quite out of trouble, they ate my young spinach seedlings this week and now I a sure it was the birds that ate the beetroot seedlings and not the slugs. 

We should have picked our gooseberries on Wednesday evening instead of sitting on the allotment drinking rose wine with our neighbours and feeling pretty smug while the neighbours oh'd and ah'd over the growing produce.

We saw a blackbird swallow in one gulp a gooseberry, similar to a cormorant swallowing a fish but alarm bells didn't ring.

Having decided on cooking gooseberry crumble tonight, our first job, harvest the gooseberries. NOT ONE LEFT!! The birds had stripped the…

Harvested our first potatoes of the year, and onions today, not to mention the seven yellow courgettes and a row of beetroot.  What a colourful basket we bought home, no wonder we were stopped along the path by an elderly lady, who thought I looked like the zeeuws meisje. 

Dinner: stuffed marrow with quorn, brown rice, masala sauce and a french batavia lettuce with courgette flowers and shallotts.