We’ve had lots of fun and lots of delicious food from our allotment over the years but the time has come to move on. We have four raised beds for veg in our garden and can get fresh veg from Community Roots so at the end of the month we will hand over the plot to a lovely and very enthusiastic young family.
This morning we dug up a lot of our leeks and have spent the day processing them all. At £1 each from the shops, they are a very valuable crop! We now have some pots of leeks in white sauce as a ‘ready’ veg, prepped leeks for the base of a risotto and four bottles of leek and potato soup – a very productive and pretty tiring day. 
The current book from The ShelterBox Book Group is ‘Scattered’ by Aamna Modhin. This is a powerful and gripping story told by a journalist who visited Calais as she was reporting on the refugee crisis and here begins to come to terms with being a refugee herself. It is a wonderful mix of personal history and journalistic detail, all told in a very readable style. I really cared about Aamna and her family and I learned a great deal about the whole refugee situation which the media doesn’t really show. There’s an excellent glossary, notes section and bibliography. It seems a perfect choice for the ShelterBox book group and I’m looking forward to the Q&A with the author next week.
utesmile
February 14, 2026 at 5:33 pm
Fantastic leeks wow. Love leek. Should come for a dinner to you 🙂
mybeautfulthings
February 14, 2026 at 5:58 pm
You would be so very welcome! 🙂
nrhatch
February 14, 2026 at 12:31 pm
It’s nice that you know who will be taking over your allotment . . . and it looks as though you put your leek harvest to good use!
Ark
February 13, 2026 at 9:04 pm
Believe it or not, we never grew leeks… until I saw my brother in law grow them in his garden in France.
My sister made leek and potatoe soup and that was the clincher.
I bought seeds the first weekend back in Johannesburg.
They are now a firm favorite.
mybeautfulthings
February 13, 2026 at 9:16 pm
They are a firm favourite for us too. We’ll be making room for some in our reduced growing space. 🙂
Ark
February 14, 2026 at 9:53 am
I am trying to organize our growing space this year to make it more efficient and focus on growing more of the things we all prefer to eat. So, more beans and spuds and less artichokes and turnips
Emily is part of our local WhatsApp community and one chap has suggested a get together for a seed swap. Sounds like a good idea.
I suggested to Ems I would love to swap seeds for a new lawnmower if any of the neighbours were interested. She wasn’t impressed!
😊