Morning! I hope you are all ready to start another week, I’m always ready and never quite ready, there is always too much to entertain me at home! Which is probably how you should feel about where you live, I love my little flat!
Anyway, miscellany….I bought tulips this weekend, they were 75 pence a bunch so it felt like I had to buy them…
My current netflix obsession is the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries, they are like Australian 20’s Agatha Christie and I have just a crush on Miss Fisher’s bob, I know from bitter experience that my hair won’t do that but I really admire other people’s perfect hair. I notice that everyone seems to want their hair to do the opposite of what it does, people with straight hair want curly hair and blondes want to be redheads and so on. Overall though, I like my hair which is pretty much like my mum’s, the only difference being colour!
This weekend Ma and I ate our Easter lunch, for Easter we were at Ben and Lu’s and that was lovely (if I do say so myself!) but Ma and I are creatures of tradition and the anchovy roast lamb is an Easter tradition, so we did it a week later…
When it comes to maths, I am the family dud, Ma, Ben, Oli and Laura are all freakishly good at it (I have hopes of Joe but he counts better than he speaks, so those hopes are probably in vain!), which is why I’m not surprised that Ma did a cost analysis to work out whether the compost from Wicks or Homebase was cheaper. It was Wickes….so we went off to buy 580 litres, which is a lot to wheelbarrow to the plot, but I managed it. It also seems much nicer compost than the Homebase stuff.
I finally got all the potatoes planted and gave the shed another cost of paint. We’ve had two sunny days but the weather forecast predicts rain every day this week except Wednesday, at least it’s not snow but I am ready for proper Spring now but the signs are there
On Friday, I came home and really did not want to be dressed, so I took my jeans off and wondered around the house with no trousers on for a bit. My dad used to do this too and Joe is at the stage where he takes his trousers off at any given opportunity. Genetic inheritance right there….
The rhubarb isn’t the only sign of spring, the grape hyacinths are appearing, there are buds on the plum tree and blueberries and leaves on the raspberries and gooseberries, tiny leaves but leaves nonetheless.
Remember I said that I’d solved the mystery of the additional roll of edging, and that the benefactor had been my lovely allotment neighbour, as she was helping clear an abandoned plot. She also found six fixed edging thingies (the type that we’ve been using to surround some beds) and left them on the plot. Ma and I bought two more and lo instead of one big salad bed that everyone walks on, we have two smaller ones!
On the bits that aren’t fenced in and aren’t paths, I’ve sown some herbs (coriander) and I’ll sow some flowers. That was my first job, then we planted out some of the potatoes. The anyas. I’m not sure that it isn’t too early but they weren’t so much chitting as becoming trees, also weird cold weather aside, they need planting. We are growing them in bags so I’ve also covered them in fleece, which should protect them from frost. We also sowed two rows of peas (early onwards) and covered them in fleece too. You can see them in this photo.
That done, I also split the mint and it went into the green container, two terracotta pots and a bucket.
It’ll need another couple of coats and then we’ll just do another every autumn.
The rhubarb also had leaves…
Nic Dempsey 