EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / BYE BYE SUNFLOWERS / SEPTEMBER 2020

Hi everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. If you're new around here my name is Emma, I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel, look back on my old videos and see my journey. This is my first ever allotment plot so a lot's gone on since I took it on last year. I started vlogging in January so you can catch up and see the progress from being a complete overgrown nightmare to actually getting crops that I can take home to now where I'm just basically trying to figure out what to do for autumn, basically. It's been a really hectic few days that's why I've just not been around, I've not been on Instagram, not been on YouTube, it's just the kids have gone back to school basically and we've still got building work going on in our house so it's just been really stressful. Kids have been quite emotional, especially Tommy. Tommy's been quite emotional about going back to school because not only has he not been there for six months but he's also started a brand new school so you can imagine it's like double stress for him. So I've been pretty stressed over the last few days actually and I haven't really been here, I haven't had much relief from the craziness of family life so I said to myself when I got here today I was just going to sit for half an hour and enjoy the plot and listen to the birds and all the rest of it so I'm going to do that first for sure and then I've got a couple of autumny jobs to do so, autumny jobs, I'm going to take up sunflowers, they've got to go, they're all dead, it's time for the sunflowers to go which is quite sad but in a way it's good because the next thing I want to do is start planning where I'm going to put spring bulbs and what kind of flowers I want for spring. So those are the two jobs I'm going to do today, I'm going to keep it quite light, quite easy, I'm going to feed the tomatoes as well, some of them have started to turn yellow, I haven't got any red ones yet though, I don't know why, I don't think I'm going to get any red ones guys, it's just too late in the season now, it's like September, but yeah so that's what I'm going to do today, so the first thing I'm going to do is just sit and I would definitely encourage you to do this too, I'm terrible at it, so even the birds know, I'm terrible at it, I just get here and I'm just hands-on, I'm just like go go go and sometimes it is just nice just to sit and relax, so that's what I'm going to do this morning. I'm by my pond, I say sitting, I'm sort of kneeling very uncomfortably, just to see if there's anything in it, there's not by the way, there's not, but what there isn't is there's not any pond weed anymore, so I don't know what happened, if it just dies out or something, but there's none in it, look the water is just like lovely and clear now and these are doing really well, I think the ones that survived. I've been watching the birds as well, they've been like flying around, there's lots of parakeets here today, I don't know if you had those where you are, they're like these green parrot bird things and they're really noisy, lots of pigeons too, but that's pretty normal isn't it? I'm quite interested, I'm getting more interested in birds, I don't know if it's like a sign of getting older, but I do find myself more and more fascinated when I like watch birds, I never thought I'd say that like ever, but since having the allotment, I'm definitely like more interested in nature and wildlife than I've ever been before, mainly of how like insanely crazy it is, it's like another world that's living within our world that you don't think about. A lot of people I think, you're all right, I'm talking about you, I know, a lot of people would like find birds quite boring, I don't, it's all right, yeah a lot of people find birds boring, I think it's because there's so many of them around, but so like because like birds are everywhere aren't they, like you're everywhere aren't you, birds, and like because they're everywhere and you see them all the time, all the time, you just don't take a second glance at them and you just think oh there's a bird, move on, or you don't even think that, you just walk past and like don't even think about them at all, and I think that's quite sad really, because there there's so much about them I don't know, and there's so many different varieties and stuff, I find them really fascinating, and I find it really weird that I've got my whole life just walking past birds and not thinking about them, and all of a sudden I'm sort of seeing them in this whole new light of like there are these flying creatures that live among us, like it's weird, isn't it weird, and like they fly around and they like eat in our garden and they nest and they like have babies and have a whole life, and we don't even think about them, like they're just there, they're just there just doing their thing, and I just find it really weird that something that I've never thought about and that has just been around me all the time throughout my whole life, suddenly I'm like it's just really weird that there's just these flying creatures everywhere, but yeah, so I don't know if it's like a sign of age this whole thought process, but I do feel more interested in birds, I'd like to know more about them, I might get a bird book actually and read about them a bit more, look they're just there, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know what they're doing, they're all just like going over there, it's just weird that they've got like their own mind and they just like go places and stuff, like where are you going, what are you doing, anyway I don't know if this is a random ramble, I'll put some fancy music over and make it look more deep than it is, but yeah I was just thinking that when I was sitting here and I thought I'd share it with you, yeah random thoughts of the day by Emma, I do a little segment every week, random thoughts by me, right I'm gonna rip all these sunflowers out now because they're just there and they're dead and it's just depressing isn't it, seeing them all dead there and they need to come out and I'm kind of dreading it because they're like the pride and joy of my plot, but it's time for them to go so I'm going to rip them out now, hopefully this will be very very easy and non-eventful, who knows, you're balanced a bit precariously there so I suspect you're probably going to fall down in a minute but it's all right, I've got to get my gloves on, everything is prickly, like you don't think it's going to be but it is, if you don't wear gloves every flower has got some kind of defense mechanism, it's another fact I've learned stupidly I thought I could just pull them up but I can't, I've got to like, I've got to dig them out, I've got to dig them, dig my back in, I know it's just part of having an allotment like growing things and then they die and then you let them go and grow something else but that just looks like a sad sorry sight to me, I was really hard to say goodbye to those, I just feel like they just grew so well, they're just so big and also they're such a symbol of summer aren't they, it's sort of like accepting that summer really has gone and autumn is really almost here, just a few more to go and it's cleared, so I was just doing a google as you do at the plot and apparently sunflowers are not good to go in compost because they're quite acidic and they can poison like the rest of the compost so I'm not entirely sure what to do with them now because they're like massive, some people say they chop them up and use them as mulch for like weed suppression, I might do that, I don't really know what to do with them, I might put them in a separate pile and let them dry out in a separate pile, yeah I might do that and chop them up, bloody massive though it's gonna take me hours to do this, not that I'm complaining but I sort of am as well, because you know, work what I might do is just use these canes for the for my teepee and just add some more teepee canes, I can't bloody chop that, it's like chopping through like iron, bloody came from a seed, can you believe it right there we go, I've added them to the teepee thing, obviously I'll tie them in properly and stuff, I think that looks all right, they seem pretty strong and sturdy, the rest of the leaves are in there, don't ask me to chop them up, not going to do it now, bloody knackered, that took a lot longer than I thought it would, but it feels good, looks a bit empty now my plot, look, looks a bit sad without sunflowers there, but there you go, they had to go, you know, oh right, hope you enjoyed the vlog today, if you did subscribe to my channel, I'll see you next time guys, hopefully it won't be too long before I'm back here, see you soon, bye