Winter squash update & a trip to St Benet's Abbey

So a while back I mentioned that I was thinking of growing squashes in the garden of a friend's elderly mum. She lives out in the Norfolk Broads and has a really big, lovely garden but the far end isn't really used for much these days as she can't look after it very well. My friend Liz and her fella had sown lawn seed the last couple of years to make it easier to keep tidy, that the neighbour kindly mows.

When I said I was looking for more land to grow food she offered up her mum's bit of garden up the back (very generous!). As it's quite far from here I knew I wouldn't be going over very often, so decided to grow squashes and hoped they would look after themselves.

 

Here's the strip of garden, which Liz's mum did actually use as a veggie patch in the past

 

I'd sown loads of squash seeds 'cause I wasn't sure how much space there'd be and managed to fit in 8 (I ended up with some spare squashes that I gave away plus also used as spares on the allotment to replace ones eaten by evil slugs)

 

To keep things simple and neat I used a spade to make the edge of a circle for each squash then used a fork to remove the turf. There was a lovely big pile of compost up the end of the garden so I forked over the bottom of each hole and then added compost and watered each hole.

Then I replaced the turves back (upside down so the grass would die) and planted in each squash plus some more watering...simples!

I don't have a car but Liz goes out to her mum's regularly so we got a lift out with her at the weekend to see how things were going...

Much better than I expected, especially as they haven't been watered apart from rain! And they all survived (better than mine at the allotment)

These ladies and their siblings live next door and pop into the garden all the time (much to the dismay of Liz's mum who doesn't like them scratching around her flower beds). They're full grown now and I love seeing them run around (sorry Liz's mum!). Also, there has been virtually no damage to my plants and hardly and weeds have grown, so I put that down to the chooks.

The garden is full of wildlife too, including this lovely dragonfly that stayed in one spot in the sun for ages, whilst we sat next to it and enjoyed eating some of the rhubarb &gooseberry flapjack I made (see last post)

And for anyone interested, jan and I also took a walk down to St Benet's Abbey, that neither of us had visited before. Jan's started to feel better now (from her thyroid condition) and managed to walk there and back the whole way, yay.

The walk there included a lovely green lane

This is what the abbey would have looked like, there's not much of it left now

The abbey site

Someone a while back thought they'd build a windmill in the remains of the gatehouse...huh!

Bizarre but cool. And a lady went in to the mill and started singing an aria which sounded beautiful (though at the moment all I can think of is the mysterious cities of gold theme tune)

Over where the abbey was, a cross has been erected to mark the location of the alter

And down on the river was a paddle steamer ! The site was actually really busy, we didn't realise that the Bishop of Norwich holds a service there the first Sunday in August each year - the paddle steamer brought lots of people up the river from Norwich

And a lovely sail boat went past (plus there was a Norfolk Wherry on the river and a red biplane flying over....it was all happening at St Benet's!)

Well, I probably should have split that into two posts but what hell eh.

Thanks for getting to the end!

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