Yep the junk mail delivery has landed again. Early this morning there was a young lad delivering the usual armful of flyers from a well loaded bag. I don’t want a new bed thank you (and still less with two flyers from the same firm). Neither do I have room for a showroom clearance sale Steinway piano or even a pre-owned one.

I don’t want to know that my GP’s practice has extended it’s opening hours yet again or that budget blinds are having their biggest sale ever (going out of business and getting rid of their stock perhaps?). There’s a war on between the two Asian restaurants down the street with prices and no I don’t want to pay £5 for the new £5 coin post free – I’ll get one when I get one.

My insurance isn’t due for renewal and I’ll be checking that firm for prices too anyway. and thank you Mr Postman but nope I don’t want to go all the way to Hexham on the bus to load up a trolley from the food hall in the big department store – it’s only Nisa after all – to rush back on the next bus to be ahead of the delivery. I can go down the street, do a shop at the Co-op and walk home before the delivery more easily knowing that if I spend £15 it will be delivered free. Price difference and stock difference? Not a lot.

I suppose that The Advertiser is vaguely useful if you are looking for a local trades person. There’s a new on this time mind you. The website doesn't appeal to me but it’s not cluttered. I’m a little surprised at the idea of a rural area such as ours wanting or needing a consultant to visit to help us to declutter our houses. I’ve never thought of us like that in this town. But maybe some of the other villages locally would be upmarket enough to call on such a service.  Who knows? The lady can only try it and see. Must consult the daughter and see if she thinks her neighbours would be interested – her village is much more upmarket.

Hey ho – so there’s a whole heap of junk for the recycling bin then.

I’ve had my beady eye on a bit of destruction all gardening season. And yesterday I got down to it.

I inherited this construction that looked like a cold frame but which turned out to have a floor and to be no more than a container for pots, rubbish and a hosepipe.

It’s been on notice ever since as the space between the floor and ground was a haven for rats attracted by amongst other things the adjacent pigeon lofts. It’s the time of the year when the rats come down off the hills as the grain harvest is in and the fields ploughed. The pigeon men have had a clean up of their act so I thought that a little destruction of this last haven would be fun and good neighbourly.

Even the woodworm had left the flooring and it came apart within the hour with the use of no more than a cheap Woolworth’s hammer. The sides are still standing as these are sturdier and it was hurling down the rain a treat by the time I turned my attention to them – yep they came away from the base whole with one swipe of the hammer.

The flooring will make a nice fire once the brazier is delivered. I’m far too near the road and houses to have a normal open fire – it upsets the neighbours. After it’s all burned I shall have some nice wood ash to add to some compost heap.

But what to do with the cleared space? The soil below said contraption looks as if it has never seen the light of day for many a year – well at least the last five so far as I can tell. It’s pure clay, full of pebbles, and has possibly been under pavings or pigeon loft for many a year before container was built.

If I worked on the soil and kept the sides I could have a decent cold frame if a proper home made top could be invented. Or the sides could just be used as a container for a compost heap till it rots (either the heap or the sides). But the base soil still needs a little help first for that – I suspect no drainage at present as it looks to be very solid and unpleasant.

So many options and another winter job! There seems no end to the work on an allotment.

Usually the council sends a man with the little tractor that is barely bigger than a sit on mower with a large container of weed killer on the back in the early part of the summer around town.

He sprays weeds on pavements, around the frontage of out of town shops and on paths in parks using the hand controlled sprayer attached to the container.

This year his first appearance was mid summer when all the first crop of weeds had gone to seed. Very useful and a second unsprayed crop appeared as soon as he drove off of course.

Last Friday, said man with tractor appeared in the road outside the allotment and proceeded to spray under the hedges on both sides of the road despite the high wind that probably blew the spray everywhere except onto the weeds in question.

Now late on the last Friday in September when plants have stopped growing and the weeds have gone to seed doesn’t seem the best use of council taxpayers’ money.

But I suppose that if the darned things have gone to seed it keeps the man in a job as he will have to come back next year and spray again. And we shall have to carry on paying for this inefficient service.  Unless we are better served next year because the weed spraying programme starts early in the season.

After the first 30, family and friends are beginning to wilt in the face of a marrow glut. There are still about eight in the garden shed awaiting attention.

The daughter sat here at my computer looking for recipes last night. She’s done all the vegetarian and vegan recipes in her cookbooks – she’s allergic to all diary products so finding marrow recipes is even more fun.

She didn’t fancy marrow custard for some reason! Neither did her husband. She decided that marrow with tomato and onion might be a possible idea though. Marrow soup didn’t appeal though I made a very nice one.

I’ve decided to pick the last marrows small and use them as courgettes. Yes there are still marrows growing on the plants but there has to be an end to the season with the weather turning from summer into autumn.

So that’s ten courgettes to use then!

There’s a nice downhill walk to the allotment which has added to the exercise ever since I took said plot which is nearly three years now.

Recently you could play hopscotch round the potholes on one length of pavement. Not so good if you were coming up the hill pushing a child in a buggy mind!

Over recent days there has been a council employee with a wagon load of asphalt and a shovel going around town inspecting potholes such as these and doing a patching job. On the length of pavement down to the allotment he’s been patching the patches.

Do you think it will last the winter? Show me three good frosts and methinks that the potholes will return in force, bigger and better than before.

Good old Pothole Pete – he used to be found on motorway signs! “If you find a pothole ring Pete”. It seems that Pete’s become fed up with the dangers of the motorway working environment and come inland to the local town to get rid of his load of tarmac.

It’s been a lovely late summer Sunday, warm and balmy with a pleasant light breeze. But there’s many better ways to spend such a day than turning compost heaps.

When I arrived down the plot with my bag of crumpled up newspaper for the newest compost heap, the nice pigeon men had left me a big bag of droppings from the lofts. So there was no escape from compost making. Ends to middle with the newest compost heap, add pigeon droppings and newspaper and mix well.

By this time I was really dirty, smelly and warm. So nothing to lose, open the other compost heap and turn. It’s a job that has been put off for a number of visits. It’s certainly well on the way to being good compost if somewhat full of sticks. It was also rather too wet so I added some newer, dry material from elsewhere. 

I’d just cleaned the spade, shovel and fork ready to go back in the shed and secured all the covers over both heaps when a lady from over the road came along carrying a really large bag of grass and said “do you want some more stuff?” Well my motto with offerings for the compost heap is never say no. She then said that her wheelie bin was very full and very heavy too. That has to be the understatement of the month.

Open one end of the newest compost heap, add donations cover, clear up quickly and go. Still managed to miss the bus and had to walk up the steep hill home.  Went into the supermarket for a sticky bun and a loaf of bread then came home and put all the clothes in the washing machine. Best dirty for a long time. But a gardener should never be too proud to make compost – it’s an essential in the toolkit of running healthy soil.

Next visit is more housekeeping – shed cleaning time is here again.

All of them must have been empty in the local family house. I had thirty tee shirts and twenty pairs of trousers to iron. How can three people have so much in the ironing basket and still have clothes to wear?

The local teen is on a protest – he doesn’t think that he should have his clothes ironed. However some of his clothes turned up in the ironing basket because there wasn’t room for him to put them in his wardrobe.

So he just had to have a turnout to prevent this happening again. Of course none of what he turned out was ironed!! I’ll swear some of the things that he found hadn’t been worn for the last four years! They came from the days when he accepted that his clothes would be ironed but they had been screwed up and stored in corners at the back of the wardrobe for some long time.

Another pile of sorting and ironing then. You want to see what there is to go to the charity shop! No not the school uniform which was beyond renovation due to age and many football matches (and that was not the games kit either).

Funny but at the same age I ironed my clothes if the ones that I wanted were creased. But then – I’m not a bloke so that could explain things. Mind you he no longer has to wear school uniform as it’s not required in the 6th Form so things change and peer pressure counts I suppose if his friends are all of the same persuasion.

I thought that this was easy. I’ve been doing it for years. Anyway the order of the day is one day in London for a reunion of school friends, travelling from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

Discussing which way to travel economically with the local friend who suggested that I go too was when things started to get complicated. She is prepared to sit on the National Express coach down to London, stay overnight and come back the next day. Now I’ve done that within the last twelve months and it doesn’t exactly come comfortable. Now I appreciate that £37.70 is an excellent price if price is all that counts. However, that doesn’t include an overnight stay which bumps up the cost considerably in Lon

Now, being a difficult person yours truly has a committee meeting the evening before the day and doesn’t want to miss it (on the subject of the local bus and train services). So that means that it’s there and back on the day for me. Guess who managed to book the last cheap return ticket on specified trains for the sum of £61.75 between London and Newcastle because we spent some time discussing the matter. There is still the small matter of crossing London but that’s easy and also the getting home from Newcastle in the middle of the night – more difficult.

I don’t think someone loves me!

The marrow sat smiling at me and definitely wanted using this morning – too big for the fridge and taking up a lot of the small kitchen work surfaces.

A visit to the fridge produced two cooking apples, the ends of two leeks, some white summer turnips, some celery, some French beans and a couple of small potatoes and mild green peppers all in need of using up.

So – first things first, all the jars of chutney that had been left to cool where labelled and stored on the shelves in the hall. That meant a little reorganisation to say the least. That left room to peel and chop the vegetables. Thrown into the stock pot, water added, vegetable stock cubes added and then bought to the boil and simmered for half an hour. I discovered some tins of black eyed peas sitting on the storage shelves that were added to the mixture which was then simmered for another five minutes.

Hey ho – there’s a version of the famous back of the fridge soup.

It works just as well with swede, potato, celery, onion, leek, pearl barley, red lentils and vegetable stock cubes.

You just need to get to know which vegetables mix well together for flavours. Swede and marrow are not a good match. If the onion is strong that is not a good mix with marrow. Courgette, apple, marrow, summer turnips and celery work together too.

It’s all a matter of trial, error and experience.

Once a year the day arrives when the runner beans sit looking at you on the sideboard. And preserving runner beans becomes an issue once again.  You look back at the runner beans tidily piled up and think “oh no – not another plate of them – there must be more to life than runner beans!”

Last year I was the unpopular mother who completely filled the freezer of the nearest and dearest family with runner beans as a means of keeping them. The supply lasted from September till March despite our generosity to friends, neighbours and passersby at the allotment. This year there are fewer runner beans growing on the plot and I’ve bought a freezer for myself. Better my own than the family refusing to speak to me!

Also the gathered supply of jam jars allows me to actually make the runner bean chutney that was only theoretically possible last year. Needs must make chutney as my freezer is full to the brim. I’ve just stirred the mixture that is bubbling in the saucepan and nearly ready for bottling. It tastes rather delicious.

Perhaps even the daughter who dislikes runner beans could be tempted by this chutney. But better not offer her runner beans fresh or frozen this year.

The local gardening association storekeeper cleared off on holiday leaving a friend with 50lbs of plums last week. 50lbs or nearly 23 kilos! No wonder he and his wife went on holiday for two weeks if this was just part of the crop.

However the friend had made plum jam, every sort of plum pudding for the freezer, plum chutney, sold plums for funds for her community allotment – she still had plums going begging. Now would I refuse 3lbs of plums? Never! So on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon it was slaving over a hot cooker with a plum chutney making session!

The cupboard shelves are groaning under the weight of beetroot chutney, marrow chutney, marrow and ginger conserve, green tomato chutney - and now plum chutney. So much to eat! But whatever will the next electricity bill will look like? Oh err, Missus.

The harvest months of August and September are the months of gluts when all the gardeners suddenly become cooks and spend more time indoors preserving than going down to the allotment or garden to do some serious growing. And so many of us have gluts of the same things – courgettes, cucumbers, marrows, runner beans, plums ………

In Prudhoe 2009 will be remembered as a very good year for plums as everyone here is saying that their trees have been weighed down with fruit.

I’m beginning to feel like a member of the traditional Women’s Institute in the days of jam and Jerusalem. Well and cakes and home baking.

Let us talk of green tomato chutney firstly. I bought green tomatoes at the auction of produce at the Gardeners Association Show on Sunday. Yesterday I made the first batch of chutney using up the last of the apples from the allotment and Demerara sugar.

Today I’m making the next batch using up the rest of the green tomatoes, cooking apples I had to buy and some Muscovado dark brown sugar. The recipe merely states brown sugar.

It should be interesting to see if the different sugar makes any difference other than in colour.

I have other recipes for green tomato chutney and may well try another one next year as this one does not seem to be the most thrilling. Rather like the marrow chutney last year was not good but the recipe this year is lovely.

Today it’s been the first ever attempt at making jam. It has been a case of needs must come up with recipes for using of marrows and this recipe appealed rather than more chutney.

I’m trying to work out exactly where things didn’t go quite right. The end product looks much more like another version of marrow chutney rather than the jam that is supposed to be. Oh dear.

Two things that come to mind after consulting the cookery forums on the internet – one being that the marrow was not mature enough and the other is that I boiled rather than simmered when waiting for the consistency to be right for setting. It seems that other people have had similar problems. I know that there’s a knack in picking the moment when jam is ready to go into jars. Mother made jam for all the years of my childhood and teenage years. Yet I can remember her sometimes having moments when the jam in the pan wouldn’t set easily when I was well into my late teens. So why should I expect perfection on my first attempt – that would probably have been beginners luck.

Tomorrow after time at the allotment it’s a case of dealing with a rather large cabbage from the same auction!

It’s the winning that counts.

First and second with the marrows, third with the red cabbage and first with the marrow chutney.

Right then next year – I’ve looked at your entries you competitors and noted what the judges looked for when awarding prizes.

Carrots, parsnips and leeks may be out of the question but we’ll see about peas, beans, beetroot and rhubarb just for starters then. And swedes otherwise known as summer turnip. And we’ll net the cabbages against those butterflies!

And I’ll drop in at the supermarket for a proper summer next year too – they might have them on offer 2 for the price of 1 about Easter!

Sure there are no cups and the prize money will cover a packet of seeds but that’s not the point is it? It’s the winning that counts.

It’s on Saturday you know. And the weather this week has been most unseasonal with rain and gales that would make winter proud of itself. So of course many of us will have – well not a lot to show.

My onions started to bolt weeks ago so have been dried and they have either been eaten, given or used in the recipes in the freezer. The same is the tale of the shallots. My leeks all have rust so can’t be shown. I have eaten all the white summer cabbage. My lettuces have all bolted, my rhubarb is all spring cropping, my parsnips are not yet ready and my turnips are too small to show. Tomatoes and cucumbers were not a success outside and went to the compost heap some time ago. The wind would have written them off if they had still been growing. I will have a look at my beetroot tomorrow but I think that the ones that remain are all too woody to show.

The few potatoes were eaten long ago and the last carrots were frozen as the carrot fly was getting into them. All the courgettes have been eaten earlier this week, the pea crop was an early one and frozen long ago. The runner beans are all bent and twisted due to the high winds. The calabrese is on it’s last legs and all small heads, the dwarf beans are behind with themselves themselves and bent due to the wind. The fennel is a funny shape so not fit to show (but quite fit to eat). I didn’t put enough manure under the sweet corn so it did not grow and was sent to the compost heap long ago. Celery and cauliflowers I did not grow. There is no class for pears or plums so there we go.

But I have a marrow! And a red cabbage that is not going to win as the outer leaves have been eaten by the cabbage white butterflies so I have cut them off. Oh and I have four (very small and not matching in shape) apples. And two pots of chutney. A sorry tale indeed but I have to enter something I’m told. As I don’t grow flowers, no longer keep up with the handicrafts and can’t make a decent cake to save my life – well the committee is just lucky that I have something in hand to show. All this is only because I’m helping at the event! The moral of the story is – never volunteer.

It has been seriously windy this week which is not at all good for the allotment. And the forecast for the next few days is no better. Heaven help all the gardeners’ shows this weekend – there will be very little in the produce sections methinks.

The runner beans were looking seriously unhappy yesterday and after the intense windy showers of last night I’m concerned that they may not be standing this morning.

Over the weekend I picked all the apples, ripe or not. This was for the good of the eating apple tree is still young and slender. One branch has broken but with the removal of this the tree now seems a little more able to withstand the storms. New stakes may well be helpful so long as overnight no further damage has been done.

I also picked all the pears though they will need a long time at home to ripen – but better a pear in the hand than a tree on the ground.

I’ve also tried out a recipe for soup using beetroot. It hasn’t made much of a dent in the number of beetroot to be used but it has made a dent.

Really I need for a recipe using beetroot and marrow both together that can be frozen. Mind you, the wind has done no good for one of the marrow plants. It could be a case of coming home with rather a lot of marrows and wondering what on earth to do with them.

I was hoping that I might have some runner beans fit to show and also a marrow on Saturday. Forget the runner beans.  Unless I get some more chutney made – in which case it will be beetroot chutney, marrow chutney and runner bean chutney. Oh well.