Made new 'friends' down on the allotment...

My Favourite garden centre opened this week, with the winter vegetables all ready for me and my trolley, however I needed somewhere to put them once I got them...

I had a section of the lottie where my dad had put some lettuce and cabbage, but there was loads of room there and it seemed perfect so I started to get it cleared (between coffee's on the neighbouring plot and much idle gossip about the 3 new tenants on the plots this month). The lettuce and cabbage that had gone over I decided to put into bags for Les to take to the tip for the council's recycling as my compost heap is overflowing at the minute. It was during one of my chats that Kevin, one of my neighbours noticed the bags, he told me I'd make friends for life if I tipped them over the fence that runs along both his and my allotment.....

so I did....look who came running.....




And I do mean RUNNING! From the first thud, the heads shot up and they ran at my fence, I half jumped and hoped and prayed that they'd stop in time..

I've got to say, I'm over the moon with my new recyclers, they seem to be quite happy too :)



Although one of them seems to be a little over friendly, My phone got a lovely lick as I took pictures... you can imagine the noise they made too as I walked away.



Apparently I should look forward to a visit each time I'm down from now on, waiting for an old cabbage or cauliflower. Well it could be worse I suppose. And I have a lovely clear plot ready for my winter vegetables. :)

(Not so) Rotten Raspberries

I've hit a glut...of raspberries. I have so many they are coming out my ears, (not literally.) Each time I pop down I'm greeted with the sight of hundreds of ripe raspberries waiting to be picked. Our resident scarecrow, Charlotte seems to be doing her job well because the birds are coming no-where near them. It takes me at least 45minutes each visit just to get the rasps harvested.

They are so worth it though, sweet and ripe, yum, they are devine. I went to the lottie last night for a quick look around while Jessie was at her Gymnastics lesson. Me and my 7 year old son Daniel went down. I thought I'd show him how to check if the rasps were ripe and he could help me with the harvesting..... he's now known as 'Dan, the fastest raspberry muncher in the North East'. He tells me that he did put 5 of them in the basket though, however as last nights harvest came in at just under 1kilo, somehow I dont think he got the idea fully :)

So now I'm looking for rasperry recipes, any ideas or links would be fully appreciated, I dont just want to go down the jam route, although I probably will. I have 4lb of them in the freezer, I gave 1 1/2lb to my mam and dad and another 1/2lb to my friend. I'd say there are at least another 2-3lb waiting to ripen up, so as I say any ideas would be greatly appreciated :)

Right, off to pester google, for some more.....raspberry recipes.....