Bonfire Night at the allotment

A photo of my allotment! That's me in the center, Nov 2020

We're back in lockdown, starting on Bonfire Night (5th of November), so what better way to celebrate/commiserate than take our bonfire to the allotment!

We had a good view of the our neighbors' overly large fireworks, being somewhat central to the village but just on the edge where it meets the fields, so no pesky streetlights obscuring the explosions, but also far enough off for it not to be overwhelmingly loud (which they were as we walked both to and from the allotment that evening). 

I expected to see a few more bonfires than just ours there, as they are permitted after dark except in high summer, but the only other one we saw was not on the site.  

That morning, the son (and daughter in her buggy) and I carried three plastic garden chairs up to our allotment, and after he had cared for the chickens and gone on to school, I collected some discarded sunflower stalks from the communal waste area, along with a very large branch with a lot of smaller branches and twigs on it.  These I broke up and separated into kindling and wood.  After digging up a few clumps of grass for the chickens (which I try to do every morning when I visit), the daughter and I went home to prepare there.

I put together a sack of newspapers with matches, and another with hot dogs and marshmallows--and hot chocolate in a thermos later on.  When the son got home from school he collected one more sack of small cut wood from our woodpile plus three green bamboo lengths (to skewer our dinner on) from the Perennials section out back.  We were ready to go!

And go we did.  When the husband got home from work we walked straight out and started the fire, toasted our hot dogs and marshmallows, drank our hot chocolate, and enjoyed the night.  Even the daughter at eight months was content to sit and watch the fire and have a bite or two of hot dog.  We stayed until the fire was down to embers.

Speaking of embers--that was my main motivation for celebrating with a bonfire (well, it was more campfire size than bonfire) this year.  I had a bright idea that burning one at the allotment would put a check on the grass and weeds there.  In fact, I've suggested we have a little fire there every weekend this winter, in a slightly different spot, and maybe that'll knock back the grass long enough to get the vegetables going next spring.