Adventures in Food

The days of the weed growing are numbered as I am moving to Stroud (of Rupert Burdock fame) and I will have to abandon the anotment after three years of adventures (or is it four, I am useless at tracking time).  I have been so excited by working with the land and the girls that I am looking for ways to pursue the same interests in Stroud once I can get more settled there. A Pensford Field committee member spoke to me after the recent work day and explained the plans for the back of the studio. I was sad to hear it will be lost in their plans to build a shed, but I am hopeful that some of the learning can be brought forward into the planned garden for the front of the space. He said it would likely be winter before anything actually happens. If this is so I am in contact with someone who may be able to continue monitoring the patch over the summer. I had a lovely send off from the fantastic Girls Art Club, who threw me a leaving do recently. I have seen them learn a g...

We had another wassail at Pensford Field where the camera battery ran out (Twice!) so I only got one picture. I was going to go back to get some pics for you of the notment in snow but Then my own battery ran out and I got a horrible flu. If the snow holds I will report on the state of the plants in this delicious snowy blanket, which I learn might be helping to suppress virulences of various kinds, in the earth if not in my own weary body. Pensford Field are asking for votes in a Bovril competition so they can win a grant - they would be very happy if you would click to vote .

At Pensford Field there is a hut (the studio) and behind the hut is a bank of earth with a lot of nettles on it. I am amazed to find that I am offered the opportunity to grow things on this bank. I am allotted, not an allottment but an aNottment. I went there yesterday with Graham from the Alpines in Kew Gardens, you could say he knows a few things about native plants. We had a look around and got together a list of plants growing on the patch. Of course it is mostly nettles, but also Alexanders, burdock, green alkanet, horsetails, Black HoarHound, a type of wild lettuce and a mustard, some pretty grasses and a wild barley, mugwort (allegedly useful in clairvoyancy), a buddleia and some buttercups. I may well have forgotten a couple of things too. We also have on the site a pile of breeze blocks, some rubble, a few black plastic tubes and a bird box. With this highly promising collection of assorted plants and objects I want to intervene as a concious and conscientious agent of ecologi...