On Monday, Ma and I got up early and did some serious hard graft on the allotment. We used all of the compost that Christelle and Mike bought.
Slug bait was sprinkled and the whole place was beginning to look like an allotment instead of a wasteland with some fruit on it.
After a good three or so hours, we called it a day and went home. After Ma went home, I picked up my new phone and after a detour to the plot to pin down the weed fabric, went home to sort myself out for the next three days at work.
Richard dropped off some tools that he and Sue had rescued from her mum’s house and I am now the proud owner of a hand mower and a soil sieve among other things. In a month, I’ve gone from no garden tools to a flat full and I’ve only actually bought a small fork because my friends are amazing.
On Tuesday, it rained for a bit and I wasn’t sad about this because I need the rain to soften the weedy bit of the allotment so I can dig it over. And yes I am obsessed with it, utterly obsessed.
Thursday was my last day in the office, thank goodness because our air conditioning is broken and it’s like working in hell its so hot. I stayed at Ma’s on Thursday night so the very hot office was good practice for Ma’s super heated flat!
Friday started with a little lie in and coffee and a pastry before a haircut. It’s nice to be able to see again! Then I got home, went to the library and met Kathy and her two imps. We caught up, ate pizza, tidied lego and it was absolutely what I needed from a Friday night!
Saturday was allotment volunteer day, we started at 10am and from that point until about 7pm, I didn’t stop. The tasks for the volunteer day were to tidy and get the site ready for the Open Day on 25th June, if you’re in the area, come along, there will be tours, you can have a wander and I’ll be manning the cake stall at some point in the afternoon, we like cake and are keen bakers so all the cake is good! Photo by Simon, I remain unphotographed…
Then Kathy took me to Homebase because she is marvellous and I bought compost and plants.
From there, I did food shopping, cooked dinner for Ma and I and mentally prepared myself for Sunday. We were on the allotment from 9:15-ish until about 1:45pm. We achieved loads, Sarah came to visit (and brought fizz!) but in addition to the work done on Monday, we made three new beds and mulched all around them and the old beds. We put in two roma tomato plants and some tiny marigold seedlings, an aubergine and a sweet pepper, and the other (smaller) courgette plants. We also planted sweet peas and sowed peas (and put up netting for them), sowed salad, spinach, rocket and nasturtiums. We dug up the french bean seedlings that did not survive the windy weather this week and sowed some others straight in the ground. Now we’ll see what survives the weather and the slugs this week.

Plans for this week are work, it’s my busy week at the office, sleep, and watering the plot, what are you up to?



to this

The beans are not looking so great right now but we’ll see how they do, I just about have time to sow straight in the ground if these don’t work!
The plan for next weekend is to get some more dug over and under cover, weed the raspberries and get some runner beans and peas in the ground. Maybe there will also be time (and energy) to get another bed going for salad and wildflowers.
There is still lots of work to do but I’m feeling better about it. And I picked some flowers…




But look at the amazing poppies! Later on, I had to go back to the allotment to pick up the spare tomato plants that Ian (another allotment holder) had given me
Tuesday was back to work. I was up early all over the weekend but that 6am call on work days is soul destroying.
My week didn’t get any worse, in fact it was significantly meh. There was no reason for this, work was fine, home was fine, even with the living room looking like a greenhouse! I was fine. I was also stupidly tired, frazzled and generally out of sorts. By Thursday morning, I was pretty much resigned to getting through the week feeling that I had gotten out of the wrong side of bed and I just needed to get the hell over it.

FINANCE
BODY AND MIND