Today I picked the first of this year's blackberries - and lots of them too. I shall have to get into jam making mode soon. And I dug up a few rogue potatoes (ie the ones that were in the raspberry patch). As any of you who have ever grown potatoes will know, they never quite go away, there will always be the odd tiny one you missed that grows next year.
I went up to the allotment today because it was sunny and there is rain forecast for tomorrow.
It 's the weekend of the Bristol Balloon Fiesta and I'm usually up at the lottie on Sunday afternoon during the Fiesta. And at about 4 o'clock you hear them coming. They're a few miles away when you first hear them, but before you know it they're overhead. It's the Red Arrows coming to put on a display at the Fiesta and they always fly directly along the length of the allotments. It's one of those moments that make you proud to be ... whatever.
And then they're gone, but you can still see them in the distance, doing their loop the loops, swirling in and out, smoke trails all over the place. The display lasts about 20 minutes and it's a good excuse to stop weeding and just stand and watch. You can't see the bits near the ground, or when they fly off south and then come back, but you still get quite a good show. And then they go, sometimes flying straight back over us, the way they came, and sometimes off to someplace else.
I don't think they're doing the Fiesta this year, which is just as well as there's rain forecast.
We've got lots of wild brambles around here so I've never grown them myself. It promises to be a good crop but they're nowhere near ready yet.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, the Red Arrows used to fly over Oulton Broad, right outside our house, it was a brilliant display. Then it occurred to someone how disastrous it would be if there were a crash landing, so it was moved to Lowestoft, over the sea.