An up, down and up week!

My week started well enough last Monday as the sun was shining and I spent the morning working on the plot.

A couple of weeks back over on Allotments 4 All Betula had made this suggestion and the idea of donating to my good cause Thrive was agreed on. On  Tuesday morning I set up this JustGiving page for her, and as you can see we’ve raised £120. With the extra donation that I ‘ve promised and  added GiftAid amount that will take the total to over £150, and needless to say we’re well pleased.

Wednesday was the real down day! I spent much of the time on the phone on various  personal/family/business matters and basically got nowhere.  On Allotments 4 All a member who’s an  internet troll decided to try and cause mayhem with endless pointless topics and offensive remarks.  I ended up going to bed early with a headache, then woke up in the middle of the night realising that I’d not only not done a draft for my Thursday entry here but also lay there wondering what the heck to write about anyway.

Thursday morning I walked to the library and on the way met Tyson who’s a wonderful fluffy white, blue-eyed Huskie just like this one. He’s a youngster but getting noticably bigger every time I see him, and as his owner said thankfully less boisterous as well.

That lunch time Daffy phoned me to see if I was okay as she’d noticed that I not been commenting on blogs, including hers, for a couple of days nor done my Thursday entry!

Yes I’m okay I told her…I’m just having one of those weeks with too many minor niggles!  No, niggles not giggles! Chatting with her always brightens up my day.

Yesterday was a so-so day but the real plus point was that Allison@a tasteful garden has given me a honest scrap award! You’ll see that she says that I’ve got gardening prowess which made me smile somewhat quizzically.

Glo (Porcelain Rose) emailed me and listed several of what she thought were my minor niggles.  I would quibble with her over the suggestion that my running out of tea and biscuits is one as that would definitely have been a major catastrophe!

Today was a beautiful sunny day so I spent a very pleasant and productive morning on the plot.  More about that in a forthcoming post.  Whilst there Joe kindly picked and gave me this bunch of chrysanthemums

So it’s been a bit of an up, down and up week, and please don’t remind me that it’s Friday the 13th next week!

Not today…

maybe tomorrow…if not…then…

have a good weekend!

Autumn Fires

As we’ve had a couple of rather good bonfires on the allotment site recently I thought that this poem was rather appropriate.

Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!

This poem is from the collection A Child’s Garden of Verses, which first appeared in 1885.

Have a good weekend!

Tomorrow I’ll be 5…

as last year it was my 4th birthday!

Thanks to Glo (Porcelain Rose) my birthday celebrations started a month earlier than expected, and if you want to hear the frogs singing Happy Birthday then click here.

The past year seems to have flown by despite, or perhaps because of,  me nearly being a full-time man of leisure.  Much of  my time is  now spent allotmenteering and blogging which give me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction.

Thanks to my friends here,  especially Daffy,  Glo and Nikki,  recent birthdays have been especially enjoyable and it looks like being the same this year!

And if you’re wondering about the picture above it’s not young Flighty!

Ups and downs

Mrs K is one of the few people who regularly comments here who doesn’t blog and a while back I found out why not when she made this comment. I always admire people like her who freely give their time and effort to do more than just donate to a charity.  As I promised in my reply to that comment I said that I would mention her good cause PMR-GCA UK North East.

With the clocks changing this weekend it starts to get colder and darker which means that I’ll feel my aches and pains more in the coming months.  One way of brightening up my days is looking at good blogs, and especially ones that put a smile on my face. Here are a few that have done just that over the past week.

Carrie’s post The Duality of Autumn really highlights the ups and downs of this time of year, whilst Daffy likes to go to the movies.

Perhaps you’d prefer to stay at home looking at Re’s lovely illustrated book, which would surely be accompanied by a cup of tea from the teapot wearing  Disgruntled’s snazzy gentleman’s tea cosy and a plate of The Homely Year’s delicious looking chocolate brownies or Allison’s pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Our pets seem to be obvious to it all as you can see with Alison’s cat Kiki finding a suitable hot spot or like Uphilldowndale’s puppy Spud zonking out on the sofa!

If, like me,  you find that it all gets a bit too much some days do you wish that you could just do what the animal is doing in Nic’s terrific photo!

Some of you may wonder why I’ve not included a certain hilarious post that had me laughing out loud on Tuesday morning, however rest assured that I will do so,  probably in the post after next.

Have a good weekend!

Autumnscapes

October is such a colourful, and mellow, month as you can see from these Lawn loungers posts and other links.

Allison’s autumn in northern new england really does exemplify this time of year as does this superb photo, which is one of my favourites both for the aeroplane and the stunning background.

Daffy’s delightful October Song poem and Ellie’s thoughtful Autumn notes listing both tell us what we associate with this time of year.

Earlier in the month NiC took a photo of the  LDNP oak golding, whilst yesterday Uphilldowndale wrote about the wider autumnscape in her terrific post Beautiful Day.

Yolanda reminded us that we should Let It Be in our gardens,  as doing so will really help wildlife as we head into winter. I’ve done just that on the plot  by leaving  a couple of areas alone.

The Daily Telegraph’s Autumn colours around Britain is a wonderful selection of autumnscapes.

Enjoy the rest of Chocolate Week, and have a good weekend!

Three good days

There was some much needed rain for a few days early last week which meant that the ground was easier to dig when I was plotting last Thursday. My main task was to transplant the clump of rhubarb that Joe had kindly offered me earlier in the year.

Saturday started rather dull but by mid-morning it was sunny and warm. I continued digging over the area I’m going to use for next years potatoes.  There were plenty of bees buzzing round making the most of the still flowering  nasturtiums and the tall clump of michaelmas daisies (aster novi-belgii)(photos right and below) which are in a large pot next to the shed. I was given the latter at the end of  The Show and decided to leave them in the pot until they finish flowering when I shall cut them back and transplant them out on the plot.

This morning was sunny again, but slighty cooler. I transplanted one of the perennial cornflowers (centaurea montana) and some of the crocosmia , both of which were in the area I’m going to grow vegetables on next year.

These three good days mean that I’ve now done the bulk of what I wanted to do before we head into late autumn/early winter and the weather changes as it undoubtably will.

Starting tonight on BBC1 TV at 9.00pm is a new ten part wildlife documentary series Life narrated by David Attenborough. Tonight’s programme 1/10 Challenges of Life is being shown again on Saturday BBC2 at 7.30pm.

More Heroes and Heroines

As always it was good to see friends, and fellow bloggers, join in last Thursday’s National Poetry Day.

Here, in no particular order, are the ones I read with a wide-ranging selection of self-penned, or quoted, poems about Heroes and Heroines.

I was pleased to see that Daffy, always a keen participant, managed to support the event with this very personal poem.

Veg Plotting choose some lyrics rather than a conventional poem for a rather interesting take on the day.

Blog.co.uk has it’s fair share of poets as I came across these three terrific entries. La Spice’s welcome contribution was  Unsung heroes,  Jenray’s Ghosts is a powerful thought-provoking poem and Banana did the rather more unusual Heroes/Heroines.

Two people who decided to join in this year were Chrisb who quotes a very familar poem and Carrie who choose this wonderful favourite one.

Nikki’s God’s doors was a most welcome, and thoughtful entry.

I wish that I could have included one more that I read but it was a for friends only post. The friend who wrote it has been seriously ill and recently had a major operation, which I’m glad to see appears to have been completely successful. The poem is about her surgeon who she understandably considers to  her personal hero.

My thanks to you all for your heroic contributions and I look forward to seeing you again next year!

If I’ve missed anyone then do please let me know by commenting here and I’ll happily edit the post to include you.

As a footnote over on Allotments 4 All I asked if anyone had any gardening heroes and heroines!  The responses included a blackbird and robin, Geoff Hamilton,  grandad and Bill and Ben (the Flower Pot Men)!

Heroes and Heroines…

is the theme of today’s National Poetry Day.

I like that and feel that this poem,  about one of aviation’s most famous heroines Amelia Earhart,  is a good choice.

Amelia by Gill Robb Wilson, 1938

Somewhere a fin on a lazy sea

And a broken prop on a coral key,

Somewhere a dawn whose morning star

Must etch dim light on a broken spar,

Somewhere a twilight that cannot go

Till it kisses the surf with afterglow;

But here, only silence and weary eyes

And an empty hangar and empty skies.

Somewhere the toss of a tousled head

In the secret of the angels overhead,

Somewhere a smile that would never fade

As the score reversed in the game she played,

Somewhere a spirit whose course held true

To do the thing that it wished to do;

But here, only silence and weary eyes

And an empty hangar and empty skies.

On this  Sofa flying blog I’ve linked to the poem Antoine by Dave Nicholls which is about the famous flyer and writer Antoine Saint Exupery, and on this  one I’ve done Ode to My Hero by David A.Morris.

Over the weekend I’ll do a further related post More Heroes and Heroines here mentioning and linking to friends, and fellow bloggers, who have joined in the fun today and did a post, and maybe even a poem, of their own.

Gardening Blog of the Week!

I’m sure that you’ll remember that I mentioned in Up, up and away that Flighty’s plot had been included in the post More Gardening Blogs We Love on the Dobbies.com Gardening Blog.

Even more gratifying is that it was the Gardening Blog of the Week there nearly three weeks ago! I read it within a day or so of it being posted, made a note to comment later to say thanks and then completely forgot about it!

Yesterday I was sorting through some paperwork, found my note and realised that I hadn’t done,  nor mentioned it here!

As I’ve now commented I’ve always tried to make this a light-hearted, and informative, blog and judging by Ian’s kind words I’ve succeeded, which I have to say I find highly pleasing indeed!

Just a reminder that Autumnwatch starts tomorrow at 9.00pm on BBC2,  followed by Autumnwatch Unsprung at 10.00pm.  Both programmes are being repeated Saturday at 6.15pm and 7.15pm on BBC2.

Have a good weekend!