Hot August days

Monday. I've been listening to Terry's allotment podcast blog while I've been working on the allotment this week. I like his Welsh sense of humour - makes me laugh out loud sometimes. There's also some great tips for better crops, which I can sometimes make use of straight away. Like 'leave those onions in the ground till the tops are no longer green, let all that goodness go to swell the onions even further'. Imagine that in a Welsh accent! Terry was talking about his Butternut squash growing 'like a trifid'. Well mine is growing like that too. It's completely taken over the raised bed, and then some. I've been searching lately for some evidence of little squash, without much successs. Plenty of flowers but no fruit. Until today that is! I found three small squash growing away under the enormous leaves. I'm surprised the bees managed to find the flowers to pollinate them. This allotmenteering never ceases to amaze me.
I'm still working at reducing the amount of weeds but it's a hot, thirsty and back-breaking job. I picked up a bottle of bitter lemon to relieve my thirst today. Also needed to buy a bottle of cheap gin on the way there to make my sloe gin with later. Then realised I had a good combination for a drink should anyone pop by. Sadly, no-one did. Probably just as well! Is there a charge for being drunk on the allotment?
I finished weeding in between the raspberry canes today and planted one sturdy looking new cane over in Kev's corner. Hope he doesn't mind. Mind you, I don't have much success with trasplanting raspberry canes so it probably won't grow anyway. I took out some very overgrown irises from the long border. They did flower earlier in the year but the flowers were very small and insignificant. They just weren't worth the space they were taking up so they have to go. I tidied up the front of the plot - cutting down some of the long grass and the brambles. Must have been in a tidying up mood today as I gave the shed a bit of a clean up and also sorted out the boot of the car.
I met Jenny and John on the way home and we arranged to meet up for a chat tomorrow. They gave me a couple of their courgettes. Jenny said she has some good courgette recipes - one is for a cake so I'll have to give them a try. They told me about the squash plants having male and female flowers so that clears up the query about not all of the flowers producing fruit.

Tuesday. I got the fire going easily today and burned lots of the rubbish which has been drying out over the last couple of weeks. I found an old rhubarb root at the bottom of the fire bin, which was sprouting! They do say you can't kill rhubarb. I decided to rescue it and give it a new home. Did some weeding along the long border and in the old onion patch. I'm hoping to grow some green manure there as I'm told it keeps the weeds down and adds nutrition to the soil. I picked more beans, some of which I gave away to friends on the way home. I don't like letting anything go to waste, so if I can find a good home I'm happy.
Jenny came over for a coffee and we sat on our 'new' bench and looked at my photos of Uganda. We seemed to have such a lot to catch up on that an hour soon flew by.
I met Francisca today - she's the one who keeps bees. She's going to give me a jar of her local honey tomorrow. She promised Peter some when he gave her some of the apricots. She told me how she came by her swarms and said that there is to be a talk about bee-keeping at the gardening club next spring.