What a gloomy week.

What a gloomy week it was last week! The weather kept us away from the allotment. Will the so called showery rain ever cease?  I say 'so called' as the forecast showers would be more aptly described as persistent rain.

To add to the gloom, in the middle of the week, we found out that, from this Monday, our area would be placed in tier three lockdown, which to be honest would change little for us as we are already voluntarily complying with most of tier three requirements.

Then, even before we officially entered tier three, on Saturday it was announced that from Thursday the whole country would be placed in a new national 'sort of' lockdown. It's not a complete lockdown as schools and universities are to stay open.

Mostly, things will not change for us as we haven't been out shopping or for a meal out since early in March. All our shopping has been done online. We can still visit my sister as she is in our support bubble. The one thing that will affect us is that we will no longer be able to visit National Trust properties or Yorkshire Wildlife Park as they will have to close. It's a shame as they have protocols in place that mean we have always felt safe during our visits. The animals will no doubt be able to get their heads down undisturbed by noisy visitors.

I'm disappointed that we can't visit Nostell Priory as I was hoping to take more photos once the trees had a bit more autumnal colour. Although after last night's gales I expect that there are few leaves left on the trees. I wanted a photo to have made into an acrylic print for the dining room and I'd earmarked these two locations. By the time the restrictions are lifted the trees will definitely be bare!

The trees at the allotment had already lost their leaves.

At least the lockdown won't prevent us from visiting the allotment. On Sunday we managed a short visit to collect a few fresh vegetables. There was a very small window of brightness on an otherwise dull and drizzly day.

Doesn't it look bleak?

We only just managed to collect a few flowers and vegetables before it started to rain.

We decided to strip the tomatoes from the plants in the plot greenhouse as they are hardly likely to continue ripening on the plants. Maybe we can get a few more ripened indoors

We picked an Autumn Giant cauliflower and a Kalibro cabbage. I also picked the last of our Safari French beans and the last few peas. The remaining peas just refuse to swell. The cosmos and dahlias are still providing us with a few cut flowers and now we have a few chrysanthemums to add to the posy. The chrysanthemums were bought as pot mum house plants which were planted on the allotments once the initial flowering period had ended. Once planted out they grow into larger plants.

So how did we use some of our vegetables last week?

On Monday we used some Uchiki Kuri squash and sage in a chicken and roast squash pasta bake. Unfortunately I can't find the recipe to link to but basically I roasted cubes of squash and sage. Half of the squash was then popped in a dish and topped with cooked chicken and penne pasta in a cheese sauce made using gruyere and parmesan cheese with wholegrain mustard to flavour. The rest of the squash was popped on top and sprinkled with a mix of grated gruyere and parmesan and then baked in the oven. The original recipe also added bacon but we don't eat bacon so this was left out.

Later in the week I made a vegetable pie. Our onion, carrot, potatoes, cauliflower and green beans were used in this. My version just had a pastry top. I also added tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce in place of the soy sauce which we don't use.

Of course some vegetable are just served 'neat' as an accompaniment to other meals.

I wonder what this week will bring? We are supposed to have someone complete our bathroom update this week - I may have mentioned our problems with this in an earlier post. The work was started over a year ago and we finally had to find someone new to complete the work. I'm not sure how lockdown will affect this. At least we have all - including Ruby - had our hair cut recently.

I do, however, feel lucky to be only inconvenienced by lockdowns and really sympathise with those who are struggling to keep their businesses going or are losing their jobs. Let's hope people are sensible and we can get back to some sort of normality soon.

As always stay safe and well

As usual, I'm linking to Harvest Monday on Dave's blog

Our Happy Acres,

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Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett