Continuing the ‘this day in history’ theme I started last week, today 357 years ago, Charles II was crowned at Westminster Abbey, which is the perfect place to post this from Horrible Histories…
After last week’s sunburn I have found the sunscreen of my dreams…Altruist, made in Germany and developed by a dermatologist. It comes in SPF 30 or 50, it’s designed for sensitive skin, not perfumed and less greasy than anything else I have used and at £7.50 for 200ml of SPF50 cream or £9.99 for 200ml spray, it a total bargain. Even better they donate 10p for every purchase to a charity supporting children with albinism in Tanzania and the rest of Africa. (I’m not being paid, I’m just really, really happy about this!)
Last year, all my summer clothes and sandals pretty much gave up the ghost. A couple of weekends ago, Ma and I did some shopping and this weekend we’ve did some more. I now have 4 new pairs of linen trousers, 4 new tops and I’ve ordered 3 pairs of summer shoes and bought a pair of sandals for work. I feel very poor and now that I have summer clothes am expecting it to start raining any minute now…
Yesterday was a year since my lovely friends came and put my shed up. The shed has made having an allotment much easier, although Ma would still like it to be more tidy!
Plans for this week are very few, keep on top of the greenhouse in the living room. I’m waiting for the courgettes, summer squash, cucumbers and basil to put their heads up then I’ll sow more tomatoes, winter squash, kale, chard and sweetcorn although possibly not all this week. On Thursday, we’re going to see the Avengers movie but other than that I’m going to work at getting more sleep!
(If you realise halfway through that your stick blender as died, then what I did was transfer everything to the small bowl of my magimix and pray. That worked!)
I much prefer it to the stuff you buy in bottles and I will try it in potato salad when summer comes around.
Remember the list from last week? Here it is, with what I got done crossed off…
I also weeded the raspberries and pulled this one up from the broad bean fence
Check out the leaves on the blueberries…
I sowed peas and hopefully protected them from the foxes
I also built the cloche and sowed carrots and radishes in buckets
I also sowed beetroot and salad and spinach in the salad beds and covering the beds in fleece more because of the foxes than because I think they’ll need it this week!
I was shattered at the end of the day but it looks really good and if the weather stays good this week, we’ll be doing alright.
I went home happy but dirty…
I don’t use bubble bath much but I do use bath oil, I make it myself. Four fl oz of almond oil, with 10 drops each of clary sage, cedarwood and lavender essential oil. Added to the water when the bath is running and a soak of at least 15 minutes.
Yes I’m aware that my feet in this photo are filthy, my top tip for clean feet is not to spent the day on the allotment in your Birkenstocks, how not to have ugly feet is not a thing I can help you with (maybe not have my parents!), I’m just grateful they still work and you can hardly see the scar on the left one!
Fortunately, 70 litre bags are easier to carry than 120 litre bags. We put a bag in each of the beds that haven’t already had compost and covered them until we are ready to start sowing things which should be very soon.
Ma and I also worked out where the squash bed at the top of the plot would go and she forked it over. My eventual intention is to build a bed but for this year I’ll raise the bed with compost and we’ll plant squash there. 
This also gives a good picture of the state of the soil, it’s wet underneath but dry and cracked on top, having a bed there will stop us walking all over it. Ma set up the last flower circle at the front of the plot. We’ll get to sowing some seeds in there shortly, we can already see the self seeded californian poppies coming up and I’m happy for them to do their thing.
Nic Dempsey 