Czech Trek

Destination Litomyšl!  My husband spent this weekend in the Czech Republic, staying in a UNESCO world heritage site, for a conference.  This is for him.

The route was:  London, Amsterdam (one night), Vienna, Litomyšl (three nights), Vienna (one night), Amsterdam, London (one night).

Donderdag to Dinsdag:  three countries in a very long weekend.

Highlights reported thus far include:
Amsterdam:  the mini-Rijksmuseum in Schiphol Airport and lots of Edam
Vienna:  the Esperanto Museum
Litomyšl:  the sgraffito façade of the castle.

Here we have a collage of all three places, with their national flowers, the national, regional and city flags and arms and a few prominent or relevant sites.  The jazzy-before-jazz roof of Stephansdom is irresistible and Schiphol's control tower makes great aesthetic sense, jabbing heavenward in a Dutch landscape.

Plotting The Plot

The crop of 2016.

Fifteen minutes away by bicycle, the allotment is almost completely cleared and covered for winter (the last thing to prune down will be the raspberry canes).

That means that it's time to plan:  what to grow; how to arrange it; crop rotation; a steady stream of produce; what worked and didn't; what I would rather not grow anymore.

What that really means is combing through the tins of seed packets and flicking through the catalogues.


Now I have a plan of the plot, all verified by lengthy pacing-about on site.  Next is to work out what to plant when, and what to start off on the windowsill at home.  Then comes procurement.  It's the onions, shallots and garlic that may need to start before the end of the year.

That gives me time to dig manure in, tidy and weed the messy edges and get my sheds in order.

Planning like this is addictive.  I broke away to translate the excitement into a page of drawings.




Oh, and here is my haul of squashes, now mostly lining my kitchen windowsill.

I look into my near future and I see a lot of soup - but only after a lot of diligent peeling of those fiddly pattypans on the left.

For now, that's shallot!