Back from Spain

Back from Spain

You will have noticed my absence for the greater part of this month. Well my wife & I went to Spain on Nov 5th to be present when our first Spanish granddaughter was born. The doctors had given our daughter-in-law the 7th Nov as the probable birth date but she took her time & wasn’t born till the 9th! They had known for months that it would be a girl & they also had a name for her as well long before she was born. They had decided to call her Ainara. We had never heard of this name before but her parents told us it was a name from the north of Spain & meant something like Dove or Swallow.

Let me present my wife with Ainara in her arms. I’m Quico. Our English granddaughter couldn’t pronounce the Spanish word for “Abuelito” (granddad) so she transformed it into Quico (sounds like Kiko in English) now both our English grandchildren call me Quico. We expect Ainara will also call me Quico!:

Quico & Nanny with Ainara at King Cross Kafé:

The birth was quite straight forward & without complications & took about 8 hours. Mum & babe had to spend the weekend in the hospital in Cuenca, the city in central Spain where our son & his wife (and now their daughter!) live. It is my wife’s home town & where we met & lived for the better part of 30 years. They returned home on the Monday & the babe is doing well!

Proud Dad with Ainara at King Cross Kafé & mum in background:

We got home on Wednesday evening 21st around 9pm. I started up my computer & downloaded MS updates & the computer was working OK but on Thursday morning the monitor refused to start up so now I’m having to share my wife’s computer till I get a new monitor!

Thursday morning our daughter brought her son for us to look after during the day. As I got up just after 7am & we expected our grandson around 8am I didn’t turn the PC on. When we went to their car to pick him (James) up they said they had a few things for us & gave us a flat screen monitor for my computer. I’ve wanted one for years. They also gave us a keyboard (brand new, never been used) & a mouse, also new. There is nothing wrong with my current keyboard or mouse, nor was there the day before with my monitor!

Before switching my PC on for the day I thought I would connect the new monitor. I disconnected the old one but when I went to plug in the new flat screen monitor I discovered that the cable connecting it to my PC’s tower was missing! When we told our daughter she said they didn’t have one as her partner’s brother had given them the screen & keyboard & mouse. They said they would get in touch with him & see if he had the cable. He told them it was a universal connector & we should be able to pick one up for a couple of quid on eBay. We have had look but can’t seem to find the kind of cable we need. I shall have to visit a couple of shops here in Huntingdon to see if they have the kind of cable I need, till I get a cable I’m more or less disconnected from the internet. :-((

I’m sharing my wife’s laptop but it obviously doesn’t have all my photos or contacts & all the other bits & pieces we all gather along our journey around the internet & our computers.

I also have a smartphone that allows me to read my email & write emails but it is a slow, tedious task! I can read anything on the internet but again it is extremely frustrating having to enlarge webpages that quite often shrink to be come almost invisible if you put a finger in the wrong place while you are scrolling through the page!

I could write on it but it is so slow & tedious an operation that I prefer to wait till my wife’s laptop is free for a couple of hours. I’m nearly a month behind with the 3 gardening forums I write on as well as my own forum. Even though we took the laptop with us to Spain much of the time over there we were away from home & in places without internet connection. The son with whom we stayed has broadband as well as the other one. My mother-in-law doesn’t have internet nor even a computer.

Our youngest son, whose 1st daughter we went over to see being born, has opened his own cafeteria, King Cross Kafé this year but struggles to find help he can afford.

King Cross Kafé in Cuenca, Spain:

So we spent several hours with him most mornings & again most evenings. He doesn’t have a Wi-Fi hotspot yet though he says he would like to set up one next year – if his business is still running! So again we couldn’t use the internet!

The weather over there was almost as bad as here! We also had a lot of rain & some very cold days!

Lotties in winter

Lotties in winter

At long last I found time to do the promised blog of our allotments at the end of the year. Today is Boxing Day & it’s a very quiet day, in spite of the strong winds forecast! We began the day with a fair amount of sunshine though this only lasted a few hours before the clouds came over. No rain though. In the late afternoon we had a little sunshine once again before the night time pulled its veil over the evening sky.

Beetroot Bolthardy harvested:

This first photo is of the last of the Beetroots that I had been growing at the top of the plot. They’re in the bag because I forgot I wanted a photo with them just taken out of the ground.

All in all I’m pretty pleased with the way they have gone this year & will again sow them at intervals in coming years.

Broccoli Purple sprouting:

The Broccoli was given to me by a guy on the conjoining plot. I happened to read about their anti-cancerous properties just before going down to the plot. This guy was planting something, I didn’t know what, when I asked him if he knew about the anti-cancerous properties of Broccoli. He said he did & that he was planting his Broccoli at that very moment! He offered me the last half a dozen he had left over & so I planted them here. Mine have done better than his!

Godetias flowering:

The Godetias I sowed originally in the greenhouse to later take home & put on the balcony but which I put in the plot have been flowering for some time. I must say this has surprised me as I expected them to die at the first whiff of frost! They have survived at least 3 frosts – one of which was forecast to be 3 degrees C below freezing!

Lettuce Tom Thumb:

These miniature Lettuce, Tom Thumb, are still going strong after several frosts.

Lentils & Calendulas at top of plot:

This is the top of the plot where I sowed Lentils & Pinto beans. I had potatoes growing here a few months earlier. After lifting them & raking out the soil level I sowed some rows of Legumes. The Pinto beans didn’t survive more than one very, very light frost but the Lentils are not fazed by a few degrees of frost! The Calendulas have been there all year! They came up with the spuds & I left them after lifting the spuds.

French Marigolds in flower:

I sowed these French Marigolds in a seedtray with the intention of pricking them out into bigger flowerpots hoping, with the protection of the greenhouse, to get some flowers from them during the winter. I was so occupied with the digging of the allotments that I never got around to doing it! So, here they are flowering, still in the seedtray!

Annual Chrysanthemums:

A guy from Spain sent me some seeds of these Annual Chrysanthemums last year. I grew them on the allotment & some seeds fell into the ground & survived the winter/spring/summer to come up amongst the Carrots I sowed there. As they still hadn’t flowered when I lifted the Carrots I decided to try & save the plants. I put them in the greenhouse, in the growbag where Tomato Mallorquin had been growing all summer. They are flowering at the time of writing this blog!

Garlic sprouting:

During November I put in a few Garlic cloves from a head of Garlic one of our sons brought over from Spain when he came to spent a couple of weeks holiday with us. He said they were probably the best Garlic you could buy in Spain! I told him at the time it was far too early to plant them but I would do it when the time was right. So here they are just poking through the ground right in front of the greenhouse.

Peanuts at an end:

Many of you following my allotment blogs during the year will remember my experiment with growing Peanuts on the allotment, well I can report that the experiment has been unsuccessful! Not surprising to anyone I suppose, but I did get at least ONE (1) peanut!!!

You must realize that I also started them very, very late. I’m determined to have another go next year & will start the seeds off much earlier, I may even give them some protection from the elements as well.

Pinto beans harvested:

Here are some of my Pinto beans as I was removing them from their seed pods in the greenhouse. I left them to dry for a couple of months before I removed them from their seed pods. Really I was too busy, & lazy!, to do it earlier! They had been picked more than a month before.

Pinto beans bagged:

Here is a bag with some of the beans once I took them home & put them in a bag. We have had a meal with some & there are still some waiting for me to remove the beans from their seed pods!

Tomatoes Mallorquin in Greenhouse:

This is the last photo of the tomatoes Mallorquin. I sowed them in January 2011 in the greenhouse. They were from the packet of seeds my wife brought me back from Spain in September 2010.

Tomatoes Mallorquin harvested in Greenhouse:

A few days later I decided it was no use keeping them on the plant any longer so I picked them & here they are laid out on the bench in the greenhouse.

Runner beans

These were the last of the runner beans for this year. I collected the last few seedpods to save for next year & I’ve now cleared the ground of them. We had a huge crop from them!

Fig trees with frost protection:

These “wigwams” are the winter protection for the two Fig trees we have. After two year of losing the fruit in the very late spring frosts I thought I would protect them this year & see if we can get something to eat from them. I shan’t take the fleeces off them until the middle of May next year. The two previous years we have had frost as late as the first week of May!

Tomatoes Mallorquin in greenhouse just harvested:

These are the very, very last of the tomatoes Mallorquin. I harvested them on 5th December. I then removed the plant from the growbag & threw it away.

Godetias at top of plot:

I showed you a photo of these Godetias at the top of the plot further up but this photo was taken several weeks, & several frosts later! Even on Christmas Eve they were still flowering!

French Marigolds & Cosmos on Christmas Eve:

The French Marigolds I showed you a few photos earlier were still flowering on Christmas Eve & there were a few Cosmos amongst them! They had been affected a little by the frosts lately but, as you can see, continued to flower!

Sweetpeas Royal Family just sown:

I finally sowed my Sweetpeas. I had tubes & compost all waiting in the greenhouse but I had no seeds till the 15th December! On the 20th I sowed about a 1/3rd of the seeds. The tubes are placed in a standard seedtray in which over 20 tubes fit.

Onion Alisa Craig sown on Christmas Eve:

When I spent an hour or so on the plots on Christmas Eve I sowed a few of my Onion Alisa Craig seeds in a seedtray. This is a little later than last year I think when I believe I sowed them a week or two earlier. I was quite pleased with the results of the sowing when I lifted the bulbs in July. I want to sow more this year as our stock ran out about a month ago!

Well that’s the last from the plots I share with Gerry for this year. I have to make up one last one with what I’ve been doing on my very own plot (12A) which I got from the Town Council on 1st September.

Wishing you all a happy end to the year 2011 & a fantastic New Year 2012.