Two weeks hard labour

It has been two weeks since we were handed the keys to our new allotment and we have been doing ALOT of digging, weeding, planting, watering, lifting, shifting, causing trouble and getting excited.  I'll start with the getting excited:

The sunflowers that we were going to plant at West Town Farm are now in the allotment (59 in total) and when we arrived yesterday we saw the very beginnings of our sunflowers (not very clear from this photo, but trust me they're on their way!).  Not just sunflowers are finding their feet or more appropriately roots at the allotment:

We have beans (in the foreground), next cabbage, then sunflowers, followed by a row of courgettes and squashes (the first row with black mesh), then a row of pumpkins, next tomatoes and more courgettes, two rows of strawberries, and today I added a row of radishes and a row of beetroot nom, nom, nom!

There is something very important missing from the photo above......the shed!  We've moved it from the front to the back of the plot where it is shadier and is going to be a challenge to grow things.  The plan is to sit out between shed and apple tree, drink cider and watch the world go by.  The other day we discovered a crate of beer had been left in the shed by the people we are sharing the plot with :)  After moving the shed we discovered a mass snail graveyard, as far as the snails of the allotment were concerned under our shed simply was THE place to die, there were 1000 plus empty shells that when we shoved them into rubble sacks crackled like bbq charcoal when really hot.  Odd.

The strawberries are making a good start, we've had one ripe fruit so far which was tasty, tasty nice (the other was eaten by a creature boo).

To continue with our new found Good Life theme Sam and I were out harvesting elder flowers ready to brew elderflower champagne.  Removing the flowers from their stalks is an arduous task and the pollen is a nightmare but we did manage to collect enough to brew 5 gallons of champagne:

Large mixing bowl of elder flowers ready to brew.

Barbara or Anna?

Working the Barbara look with me new specs, geek chic is ok though right?

Back to my roots?

It shouldn't come as a massive surprise to discover that I be a proper Devon maid tho innim.  Mum has been researching our family tree and as it turns out I am from Chagford farmer stock, which is perhaps why I feel a massive draw to grow veg.  I can't take all of the credit of course, last year my soon to be sister-in-law took us to her allotment and I ate peas fresh from the pod, and oh. my. god were they tasty nice.  So here it is: our new allotment...

Man inspects his first shed, happy, happy days!

Spot the frog:

We've been told that the plot will be hard work, it has bind weed, it's overgrown and man alive we have been doing some crazy digging today.  I hurt, I mean I REALLY hurt, but what has made it all better is that the previous tenant had left some potato plants behind so on day two of owning an allotment we dug up our first harvest, as I write this we have roast potatoes and homemade pie cooking, nom.

On a different note, mission confetti is ongoing, last week at the car boot sale mum bought me some tulips with ragged edges, a variety of tulip I had never seen before so when it came to removing the petals to begin drying them out I was struck by how feather-like they are:

Should make for some interesting confetti.