Tempus Fugit!

Now you must be thinking that SOMETHING happened between the Hill Show and the AGM last week, and you would be right - but clearly, blogging was not that something.

So things grew, things were picked, and eaten, and given away, and frozen.  Mostly beans, which did very well this year, and courgettes, of course (guess how many there were in total from my two plants and a runty one - tell you later).

And all of a sudden it is time to go off on holiday, and then back to start the winter clear up on the plot, and dig winter root vegetables, and - oh - and if it isn't the AGM upon us!

This year's AGM was excellent fun, for a number of reasons

• I picked up Chris from the bottom on the way, who had brought with her the tiger's eye earrings that she had made for me.  She had a sale of the jewelry that she makes back in August, and when I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, she kindly made something bespoke.

• The meeting was well attended - better that I can remember previously.  Lots of new and friendly faces, including Colin and Jane who spotted me and came across to say hello.  'It's Hazel, isn't it?' beamed Colin. 'We recognise you!  It's you! We read your blog - it's so entertaining!'.  I've never had a 'rock star' moment before - it was very flattering! 

'Oh, yes, we love it!' enthused Jane, 'Colin reads it in bed!'.  I apologised for the last couple of months radio silence, but the last few years' posts seem to be giving them enough bedtime reading to keep them going for a while yet. I will have to pull my socks up - oh yes!

• The meeting clipped along to the agenda at a reasonable pace - striking an excellent balance between information fait accompli and interminable discussion, which resulted in us all being concisely aware of what's going on at all levels with the site, and why; and with room for suggestions and discussion from the floor too. Marvellous.

• There was a display of photographs which had been taken by a photographer friend of one of the committee members for a project, and were there for us to collect our photo as a memento.  The A4 photo display captured the allotments and plotters from one sunny weekend in August, and were of incredible quality.  When I took the one of me picking beans and showed it to mum at the weekend she pronounced the it best photo of me ever - it certainly was of my hitherto unregarded crow's feet, but I'm sure they give me character.

• The buffet afterwards was excellent - all contributed by the committee members.  Star of the show, man-sized sandwiches from woodchippings Paul who had made the bread that very afternoon.

So that was that for another year - and plans are already afoot for 2014.  The thanksgiving/harvest festival (which I missed) was a great success and will be repeated - maybe with a recipe book compiled; it's the centenary of the start of the Great War which we are thinking about commemorating; the scarecrow competition is set to be repeated - Grumpy George came second - and who knows what else we will get up to!

Oh - and the total number of courgettes for 2013 from two plants and a runty one? 132.  That's one heck of a lot of ratatouille!