We’ve not done masses of work on the plot over Christmas, but we have finally got all the raised beds assembled and in place. The last ones to go in were in the polytunnel.
Ready for spring
As usual, there is less actual room than I thought. We won’t be putting in shelves and for winter there is just enough room for the table and chairs to go in for when we want a break or a cup of tea. Next week I’m going to sow some leeks and sweet peas and those pots will end up resting on the beds, for a bit. We’ll find space somehow.
After we did the raised beds, we were talking about the blueberries and which ones we needed to repot, when I noticed that I was missing one of the blueberry bushes in the grey pots. This is one of the harder things about allotment life, there are over 100 plot holders on site, I don’t know all of them but someone has walked to the back of the plot and stolen an entire blueberry bush. The two in the grey pots were the oldest ones and I’ve waited years for them to be really productive, so it sucks.
I have posted on the site’s Facebook page and asked them to give it back but I think it’s gone, I am so cross about it. It’s horrible to think that there is someone in our allotment community that steals things, not just the bush itself but all the work I put into growing it. I can buy another but it won’t be as productive for a good long while.
The winter plot
The work list is growing and spring is almost upon us, but these are the things I’d like to get done over Jan and Feb. Some of that is going to be money dependent (compost and raspberry cages) but I’m confident that we’ll be in good shape for Spring.
weed paths not already wood chipped and wood chip them
cut back and transplant various roses
weed rose garden and pond area
weed and clear iris garden next to herbs
sow leeks and sweet peas in the polytunnel
sort out planting in the new flower bed next to polytunnel
sort out boysenberry/gooseberries next to new flowerbed
sort out caging for raspberries so they have support and don’t take out anyone’s eyes next year
top up compost on beds that need it (all of them that aren’t actively growing anything!)
I used to try and set goals every year but I haven’t for a while, especially over the last couple of years, the plague and peri menopause have sort have driven everything else out of my head. Having said that, I’ve radically changed my attitude to how I source my food and I’ve worked to try and do less damage to the environment.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve struggled a bit, it’s working from home, it’s SAD, it’s peri and I’m a bit less in control than I’d like to be and that gives me some low level stress. The thing about this feeling is that I know I need to kick it out and I know how to do it (which is annoying because why can’t someone wave a magic wand?)
Yesterday I was saying that I had a good rest over Christmas so now is the time to take some action. This is not going to be be a veganuary, or dry January thing, I’m not going to be doing something radical and a bit harsh for a month and slump back into my bad habits in February (which, with the exception of November, is the worst of all months). I also remember back in 2013, I had a revelation about how attitude follows action and that this is a lesson that I often need to remind myself.
This January, I’m setting some intentions to help me with that lesson, so I have a couple of things to do this month..
Self Care and Exercise
Self care is different things to different people, I need a little more structure, I’m great at unwinding, not saying yes when I should say no, protecting my space. That’s fine, I don’t need any reason or feel any guilt about staying indoors and reading all day. Self care for me is more about giving myself a kick up the backside and doing the other things to show care for myself, the exercise, the care for my body and mind. So my goals are more rule based than yours might be…
Yoga – I’m going to do yoga every morning, I’ve signed up to this year’s Yoga with Adriene 30 Day Yoga thingie and I’m just committing to turning up every morning, even if I don’t want to and end up doing it in my ‘jamas
Walking – I’m going to aim for 70,000 steps a week
Bedtime – I’ve been so slack about this so back to being a bedtime nazi and being in bed at 10pm Sundays to Thursdays
Drinking – I’m going to save the big cafetiere for Fridays, drink two litres of water a day and cut out the booze on school nights, I’m not too bad at that but Christmas and work from home has sort of eroded that!
Homeand Food
I’ve done my annual furniture change to the house which I’ll talk about next week but I know how much better I feel when the house is tidy and I know where things are:
Weekly Chores – I do the laundry but I need to clean floors and hoover, every bleeding week
Declutter and the cupboard of doom. I need less stuff, I need to work out what to get rid of and what to keep.
Low spend January – I’ll talk more about this on Thursday but the bones of it are don’t buy anything. No clothes, books, cosmetics, toiletries. Obviously I will need to buy food but (and this ties in with the declutter) I want to use up the food already in the house, so I’ll keep my Oddbox deliveries on the 9th and 23rd January, eat from the allotment and then give myself £5 a week for essentials like eggs and milk and stuff like that. There is one exception and that’s the allotment, we have money for allotment spending budgeted and spending planned, mostly for compost, so that will happened.
No treats I don’t make myself, this was such a good idea, so it’s time to put down the Minter Wonderland and do this again.
I think that’s enough to be going on with for January. None of it is all that burdensome, it’s just a case of giving myself the gift of discipline, I also promise that on the 1 February, I’ll report on how I did and talk about what I’m going to do in February.
The weird time between Christmas and New Year is nearly at an end and I’m back at work tomorrow. I didn’t realise how much I needed the break, I feel better for having a rest, hanging out with my family and friends and having time to get to doing things at my pace. I fully accept that in the winter, my brain is slower than is idea and peri menopause has made that worse, so it was lovely to get around to things at my own pace. (This is hard on my mother who thinks at 1000 miles an hour and didn’t have any brain fog that I could see when she was going through peri!)
Hampton Court Kitchen Garden
Ma and I had a second Christmas dinner (beef) I got to hang out with the Gaulds at Hampton Court, go for a walk with Sue, there was some home improvement and general shenanigans. It was a good break and I’m heading into 2022 feeling refreshed if not entirely ready!
Today is a Bank Holiday here and I’m squeezing the last bit of fun with a visit to see Christina, Fred and Edie. There will be cocktails and baked goods and lots of admiring baby Edie and if I’m very lucky, seeing Tom, Yoey and Ivy and lots of admiring baby Ivy!
All in all I was thinking that 2022 was off to the best of starts given the circumstances. Yesterday there were two slight clouds on my horizon, my missing blueberry bush at the plot and last night’s encounter with a mouse. Goddamnit. It was running across the kitchen floor from the area around the fridge to the area around the washing machine, which is where I think they are coming in. It’s always January, they make themselves known. I spent this morning bleaching everything and redoing all the traps but I’m very, extremely unhappy about this.
Perfect Yorkshire Puddings (again)
The rest of the week will be working, we’re still working from home, so at least I can sleep in a bit later than if I was office bound. Obviously, the COVID/Omicron situation is fluid, but I’m expecting to be at home for at least the next two months, we’ll see.
Other things for next week, yoga everyday, sleep and getting back to a 10pm bedtime, getting the house tidy after the tree goes on Wednesday night and taking the first lot of decluttered stuff to the charity shop (it’s heavy and it’ll need to be done in sections!)
I hope that Christmas/New Year’s was kind to you and that you are able to head into this week and the rest of 2022 with enthusiasm and joy. Have a good week.
I hope that everyone that celebrates it had a good Christmas and that if you don’t celebrate it, you at least had a good break!
Manhattan and decorating the tree, a Dempsey tradition
We were at my brother’s and had a lovely day. We did wonder why the youngest nephew was so hyper but the discovery that he’d been running upstairs to demolish an entire chocolate orange and half a selection box, sorted out that mystery…
the nephews love a blanket
We’re very lucky and a good time was had by all, even the dog had fun.
the dog
Plans for this week, LFT’s permitting, are to see Jo and Ms T, go to Osterley House just chill out!
After a couple of weeks off, we were back to the plot.
“where are the worms?”
We were there for five hours and although we didn’t get everything we I wanted to get done, we did get a fair amount done.
Firstly, emptying the bokashi bins and turning the compost! Our big plans for the day were to replace the two beds between the flowers/wild area and the herb and fruit beds with three new square raised beds. The two beds beings replaced were two of the first beds on the plot
July 2016 – first enclosed bed
For these ones, I’d laid down weed fabric and put bags of compost on the beds and sowed salad in one and courgettes in the other. We made the decision to put the lawn edging around them because that August Oli was coming and it was a quick and dirty way of preventing him from walking on the beds. There they have remained. We made one of them a square to give us a path to the back either last year or the year before and they’ve always been productive. One of the side effects of topping up the paths with woodchip every year is that it’s been breaking down into brilliant but shallow compost and the flowers self seed into it prolifically, so the beds get surrounded by the flowers and the raspberries that are intent on world domination, we noticed this year that the sides of the beds are breaking down a bit and we’d made the decision to replace most of the lawn edge sided beds this winter. We’re leaving two, the flower bed at the front and one more which will probably go next year.
I laid down a lot of weed fabric around beds in my first couple of years and there are absolutely places I would still do it, like under the shed. I wouldn’t do it like that now (which is why we going to be pulling up bindweed at the back of the plot for the rest of our lives). So I knew that pulling up as much of the weed fabric that we could was going to be part of putting the new beds in too. Ma and I harvested the last of the carrots that were in that bed, I sowed them late summer and just left them and there were so many carrots. That done, we pulled out the lawn edging and as much weed fabric as we could and the state of the soil underneath was instructive because it was barren. The composted down woodchip was full of worms and seeds and underneath nothing.
I have learned to garden from the internet and trial and error, most of the time I still don’t know what I’m doing. I will always love Joe (who had both halves of my plot previously) and Dennis, who works the plots next door to me because they were allotmenting before it was fashionable and the allotments wouldn’t still be here if they hadn’t. And loads of people on the site have inherited terrible overgrown and full of rubbish plots, (I think about Dionne’s plot, nearly 10 years later, she’s still struggling with the building site she inherited and doing a bloody good job), in comparision, I got a really good plot to take over (metal poles and sheds not withstanding) but each time, the soil was exhausted, lots of use of chemicals and minimal feeding of it.
The soil, dug over and weeded in May 2016
I know that my approach is not perfect and lots of people don’t like how I garden but I’m determined that when I leave this plot (in about 25 years time) the soil is going to be healthy and full of life. The woodchip is free and yes, it does encourage woodlice but five and a half years of topping it up is working and returning life to it. I can’t do all the things that need to be done to save the planet but what I can do is look after what is put in front of me, which is this plot, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Long story short, we build the beds, put them in, put down cardboard and woodchip on the paths around it.
New beds, new woodchip
Other things we did. Ma did weeding and we both did harvesting, as well as the carrots, we pulled up the parsnips and harvested chard, turnips and kale. We also cut back the raspberries because it was time. They were still trying to flower though, in December.
We have a task list for the rest of the year and January/Feb.
put beds together in polytunnel
weed paths not already wood chipped and wood chip them
cut back and transplant various roses
weed rose garden and pond area
weed and clear iris garden next to herbs
sort out planting in the new flower bed next to poly
sort out boysenberry/gooseberries next to new flowerbed
sort out caging for raspberries so they have support and don’t take out anyone’s eyes next year
top up compost on beds that need it (all of them that aren’t actively growing anything!)
I’m really optimistic that next growing season, we’ll just be growing and weeding and not building anything!
I have five days to finish all Christmas related jobs! Over the weekend, I bought a tree and bought a lot of Christmas presents, I’m close to done with presents, so I’m sure it’ll be fine. I have today off, I was going to have a haircut but Jane’s husband has covid so we’re hopefully going to go after Christmas. I could have given the day back but instead decided that I would spend the day finishing presents, tidying the house and catching up on housework (I don’t know why the bathroom has to be cleaned before Christmas but there you have it!). The idea is that with most of my people at work now on holiday, I’ll be able to crack on with some things I’ve been meaning to finish and then I can break up for Christmas on Friday and not think about work until the New Year! We’ll see how that goes.
Booster
Last week was pretty low key. I had my booster on Tuesday and my body decided to have a lovely flu like reaction, I basically had two and a half days of feeling rubbish. I was at home anyway so I mostly worked and slept. We had a virtual Christmas party on Friday afternoon. I often get credit for these things but actually the person doing the quiz and his team are the heroes, for something over screens, it was fun.
Mostly, like everyone else in the country (and beyond) I’m wondering if and/or when I’m going to get covid and hoping to God it’s not before Christmas, I will absolutely cope if I had to be home by myself for Christmas, but I want to be with my family. The nephews are 12 and 6, my mother is 73, there is absolutely a time when I’m not going to spend Christmas with other people but while I can and the boys can communicate in full sentences (and it’s touch and go with the eldest!) I would like to enjoy that!
when you get focus completely wrong
Have a good week and fingers crossed that you all get to have the Christmas you want…
Why America Can’t Test Like Europe. Here’s the thing, the only time I find the NHS rigid and invasive is when the Tories are trying to privatise it and sell my data. I’m not saying that everything is perfect but come on…
This weekend, I went to Sarah and Justin’s for a visit, I was loved by Fred and made stuff with Sarah’s grandson.
Fred
There was also some Christmas tree decoration going on.
It was lovely.
I am glad to be at home though, I like being home.
This week, is WFH and Christmas prep. Last week, I booked my booster for Tuesday, so I will go and do that. But mostly, I need to write Christmas cards and buy and make Christmas presents.
It’s been a week! I’m not back in the office now until whenever the Govt changes the advice to work from home if you can. Given the advice, our company has decided that the responsible thing is no in person meetings, so the Christmas party next week is off.
The worst thing is that this all feels like a reaction/distraction from No. 10 party scandal. They fucked around and were found out, I’m not sure that it’ll make much difference but when Ant and Dec start having a go about it things are bad
I’m not sure what I find worse, that they did it or that they weren’t clever enough to ensure there was no evidence, there was a tape of them talking about it after it had happened. If you are going to lie and cheat at least be good at lying and cheating, did Johnson’s education include any Machiavelli because if it did, no learning happened.
Why adoption isn’t a replacement for abortion rights. I’ve had an abortion, but there is absolutely no way I could have given a child that I literally grew in my womb up once it was here. That’s not to say I don’t have huge admiration for women who do that, that I don’t have sympathy for women who are unable to look after their children and have the choice taken away from them or that I think that adoptive parents aren’t ‘real’ parents. I’m saying that would not have been a choice for me. Abortion is just one choice someone who is pregnant can make, I don’t believe in taking any of their choices away.
Why we’re so obsessed with nuns. I feel that this should be retitled ‘Why non-Catholics are so obsessed with nuns’. If you’re a certain age and acquainted with Catholic Church or school, you’re not obsessed with them, you know them. In fact spotting plain clothes nuns in a skill, I still have!
Nic Dempsey 