Happy Monday! We are currently in the midst of a cold snap and there was snow this morning and a fire drill. The snow didn’t really settle, it’s stopped now but they are predicting more and I expect that all of London will lose it’s mind and transport shortly!
After a weekend that was almost totally torpedoed by migraines, it was not the return to normal that I was hoping for!
In other news, theatre on Saturday, the one thing that I felt I did manage, was brilliant. For a play set in 1981 in Northern Ireland (The Ferryman), it felt very topical and with the government about to go back to direct rule, a good reminder of how it could be if people don’t sort themselves out!
Not much else to say, I finally last week, managed to clean the carpet so even though I feel like the flat is a pit of filth, the carpet is clean!
This week, I’m finally making it to a Grace Lent dinner, I need to catch up on laundry and housework, Ma is coming to dinner on Wednesday and I’m finally catching up with Christelle and Mike on Saturday. I still haven’t planted any seeds, but may do that at the weekend!
Once the heavy work was done, we got on with the fun stuff. I took the wobbly sides off the brassica bed and Ma made ‘circles’ at the top of the plot for flowers.
Because we are going to plant squash at the top here, I thought it would be a good idea to have a separate area for flowers that hopefully won’t get over run by rampant squash! We took up the kale and I put more stable sides on that bed. Here you can see the new square bed, that has been filled with compost, the bed of chard and kale that overwintered (with it’s pigeon protection netting and the new straight sides of the bed. Which will need more compost in preparation for the courgette and patty pan plants that will go in around May time and Ma chopping up old raspberry canes into the compost bin!
I planted up my blueberry 
I also got on with digging up the raspberries and sorting out the frames, we are going at some point soon, take up all the metal and replace with tidier, less hazardous posts but meanwhile, I stripped out the stuff that wasn’t helping matters and dug up the canes that I’ve been saying need to come up for the last year!
The netting came off the broad beans (taking some of the tops with it and I put poles that will eventually be supports for them!)
Because I didn’t want to be the only one with sticks in buckets, some of those canes went in a bucket for my sister-in-law and we’ll take them up in March!
So as a consequence I hadn’t been to communion for an age. I did think about St Mary’s but it’s not happened yet, but I’m working five minutes away from 
Then in the rain, we put the raised beds together, which was just as much fun as you’d imagine. When somebody tells you about the joy of growing your own food, remember that 95% of the work you’ll do will be digging or building. I’m getting to the time when I’ll be properly no dig but in the meantime a lot of of what I do on the plot seems to involve a hammer!
However, they are done and covered and awaiting compost. That done we sorted out the shed and I picked up pots and seed trays for the seed sowing that’s coming soon! We didn’t get to the other bed, or the raspberries because we were wet and cold and muddy.
Next week we have hired a car, so a trip to the dump and buying all the compost are on the agenda. I also really want to get the sides of the kale bed sorted and make my little round flower sections on the top. Also on the list, the raspberries and clearing that space out. This is the time of year before it gets really busy, March, April and May are going to be about sowing and planting out and trying to keep up, so it’ll be good to have more of this list crossed off before then…
