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!

maybe tomorrow…if not…then…

have a good weekend!

Happy birthday Glo (Porcelain Rose) !

Flighty  xx

The relatively good, and warm,  weather lately has certainly provided a final flourish thanks to some pot marigoldsand the rose Valentine Heart blooming again!

Plot neighbour George likes growing flowers such as these Michaelmas daisiesHe’s very kindly given me a small clump which I’ve planted near the shed.

The pallet patio window box has been planted up with mini daffodils and white crocus, and under the wood chips is wire mesh to stop any wildlife having a dig!As you can see the hydrangea  is now looking somewhat faded.

As I walked towards the site gates during the week a grey squirrel scampered across in front of me and climbed up the willow tree. That’s the first one I’ve seen there although Trevor at the other end of the site has had problems with them in the past.  Glo’s not the only one with a mouse as twice recently I’ve turned back the compost heap cover to see one scoot out of sight!  Both bird feeders were hardly touched for ages but the one with peanuts has started to be used again and I stood watching a magpie pecking away at it the other day.

I’m sure that you’re all wondering how I got on with the Jerusalem artichokes. Well I have to say that I’ve eaten a small amount twice and I really found them rather bland. Thankfully  I wasn’t blown away by them either!  I think that I’ll just dig the rest up, keep some of the tubers to replant next year and enjoy the plants and flowers.

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!

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!

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!

is what this clump of plants on the bottom, southern, edge of the plot wereintent on doing all summer and they’ve ended up around 9 feet tall!

They bear  yellow flowers which being way up therecan’t really be appreciated.

This is what they look like, and yes they are sunflowers!

They’re actually Jerusalem artichokes (helianthus tuberosus), and now that they’ve started to die back I’ll  lift some of the tubers to cook and eat.

That should be an interesting experience as I’ve never tried them before!

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!

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.