Despite having walking issues this morning (heavy day at the plot yesterday!) The Spring Equinox was on Saturday and next week in the UK the clocks go forward. Spring is on it’s way!
Not my dog!
Last week wasn’t great, no major drama, just a bit blah. I was due to have the afternoon off, but we had deadline that stretched a tad and I decided to move it to this afternoon. I was ok but it threw me a bit.
I spent the weekend with a headache. Not a migraine, just a headache, but as I’m in my monthly migraine window, I decided to have a lazy Saturday and an early night. It didn’t work so on Sunday, I took myself and my headache to the plot. It didn’t help the headache (it’s still with me) but I felt better about myself!
I also got to have a chat with Jo and Ms T, modern technology is amazing, there they are in Keyna and we get to have a real time conversation while I’m on the allotment!
So plans for the week, well it’s still lockdown and life is unlikely to change until it’s not and I’m vaccinated and honestly I’m not holding my breath! So the usual – plot, house and lots of work. I’m stretching the Easter Bank holiday a bit so I won’t be doing a full work week until the mid April, which means I need to spend time now, so I can go on leave with a clear conscience!
I’m also counting down to the end of Lent, I want to eat all the sweets right now but I shall resist until Easter Sunday!
Why can’t Britain handle the truth about Winston Churchill?. Because overall, it can’t really stand the truth about itself. It’s hard to think of yourself as an oppressor, I don’t feel that any of my ancestors particularly benefitted from Empire, but rising tides do raise all boats. Did my working class family struggle, yes, did we starve, not in the last couple of generations. But it’s hard to look at your efforts and struggle, and see privilege. It’s much easy to be a victim, if people would understand how hard you’ve worked. That also means that everything you have, you worked for, it’s not as a result of your privilege. So you cling unreasonably to the ideas that are about your greatness, about what makes you right and hard done by. If Churchill was racist, what else about what you think of yourself is wrong? It’s not right and I’m not sure that I have an answer for it but it’s pretty easy to understand.
What Happened to Christian Pulisic? The last couple of weeks, the reaction in the US to the Sussex drama and this article have really highlighted how culturally different the US and the UK are…
Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up. This is one of the many reasons I’m single. I carry that kind of labour as part of my job. Living alone means that if my house is a mess, it’s down to me and I’m the only one that can fix it. Having to do that work at home for other people would drive me demented.
There she is, the lesser spotted weeder. She’s was back for a brief time on the plot. She decided it was too windy to weed so we finished woodchipping the main path and topped up two more of the beds.
I also finished edging the rose garden/pond area. I’m happier that this is done as it’s a marker between the woodchip and the bed, eventually we’ll put a table and chairs up here so we have somewhere to sit and entertain or at least to admire the view! Though I’m hopeful that the thyme, campanula, eryngium and centaurea montana will take up some space, I’ll probably sow some other annuals in that bed to fill it out a bit more.
Edged
This coming weekend I’m on my own again because Ma needs to rest her knee, so I really need to sow broad beans and peas and get on with sorting out the squash bed and it’s next door weeds. They are the only things on my list because they really need doing. I have some time off over Easter so the aim is to have the plot ready by then because that is the weekend that the potatoes (all 12 pots of them) will be planted up and the start of my seed sowing extraganza, Easter weekend will be tomatoes, two weeks after that, I go mad with the summer and winter squash! To say nothing of the things that need to be sown outside…
Hopefully, we are all starting this week full of the joys of Spring and if you celebrate it, Mother’s Day was what you hoped for and not too painful. We celebrated on Saturday, and it was the first time I’d seen my mother in the flesh since January, so it was lovely to have a hug! Gin was consumed, because I know how to make my mother happy!
This week is just like last week, but with my great Aunt’s funeral, which I will be watching rather than attending and some Spring cleaning because once there is more daylight, either it’s easier to see the dirt or my brain is more awake and notices the dirt. Whatever the cause, I need to do some cleaning!
I also need to identify who has my copy of Sprig Muslin, which I wanted to read this weekend and couldn’t!
I generally start collecting links for this the weekend before it’s published and last weekend, they were looking for Sarah Everard. This week they may have found her body and they have arrested two people (one of them a serving police officer). She was just trying to walk home. This week the hashtag #notallmen started trending as women started to talk about being harassed and assaulted.
I have dealt with men approaching me at night to tell me I’m pretty and then been called a bitch for asking to be left alone, more than once. At school when all the girls started to wear bras, the boys in class pulled our bra straps and I remember a bunch of them trying to look up our skirts with mirrors (upskirting was a thing before digital cameras). I didn’t mention it to my parents, girls are conditioned not to complain about this behaviour, we’re told that it’s just boys being boys.
When I was 13 or 14, I was punched in school by a boy who’d been bullying me because, in a very typical Nic move, I told him that if he was going to call my names he should at least use the right grammar. It happened in school, I was bleeding, no one thought to call my parents, or even give him detention, I was expected to spend the rest of the day in school, with him and was told I had provoked him. He had spent a month calling me names, I answered back once, he punched me. Clearly my fault! I can’t remember if he was suspended, I do know I was concerned that I would get in trouble for wearing a non-uniform jumper the next day (mine had blood on it!) and asked Mum to write me a note because I was worried I would be told off for it (I was).
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please watch this…
On Saturday morning, I was facing a stack of compost to wheelbarrow to the plot, but my lovely friends Sue and Richard came and rescued me with their car and by 10:30 all of the compost was at the plot.
1800 litres of compost
I used three bags topping up two beds, and then another two and a half bags, mulching the rhubarb and the flower beds.
I’ve also made the decision to remove the sides from the gooseberry beds and to use them to edge the pond and the rose garden.
That done I started to collect woodchip for the areas that hadn’t been woodchipped yet.
It was a lot, I did about 12 loads before my back had enough and I stopped.
This was the list last week:
Mulch the rhubarb and weed and mulch the flower beds
Raise the kale bed and top up with compost
Divide the squash bed
Weed the area next to the squash bed and cover with cardboard (and woodchip if any has been delivered!)
Close and move the chard bed, raise it a bit and top up with compost
Feed the onions, garlic and shallots
Top up beds that need it and sow broad beans, peas, beetroot and carrots.
As you can see I didn’t get much of that done. Fortunately there is always next week!
Can you hear that noise? That noise is the sighing of relieved parents that have either got their children back at school or know they are going back this week. This morning my Lent prompt was to pray for teachers. Which was apt, they have been under so much stress trying to arrange lessons online and for the children that have been in school and they are going ‘back to normal’ often without being vaccinated, to deal with children that have not had an easy year. It’s not going to be easy and they aren’t getting any kind of pay rise, in fact, they are taking a pay cut as they don’t even get the rate of inflation.
The news is either talking about the schools going back or the Royal Family, I’m not anyone’s side, I think everyone has behaved badly and I think a period of silence from all of them would be welcome. I also still think we should get rid of them and be a republic (and I’m not advocating public beheadings but think of the tourists it would bring in!)
As none of the relaxation of lockdown rules will have much of an impact on my life although I am extremely pleased that my friends with children get them back to school and those with family members in care homes will be able to visit them again, my plans for this week are pretty much the same as they were last week, work, sleep and try to get out everyday for a walk.
Oh and prep for Mother’s Day next weekend (Ma says that she’s not bothered, but I am!)
Happy Friday! I feel like I’m in a strange world where time moves really quickly but also very slowly. Things happened this week but at the same time, it feels like everything is exactly the same as it was last week. Here are this week’s links…
Tory London mayor hopeful says basic income would be used for ‘lots of drugs’. Shaun Bailey just can’t help himself. He’s so keen to prove that he’s ‘from the streets’ and all he ever manages to do is show that he’s as thick as mince. He’s a couple of years older than me, from roughly the same area and looking at his wikipedia entry, I realise he was at the same school and in the same year as one of my cousins. My feeling is that he’s a liar, who tells stories about where he’s from that are slightly based in truth but which he feels make him look good because he ‘got out’. It’s easy to do, when you lack critical thinking skills and you want to be exceptional. He’s not, he’s just (and I cannot emphasise this enough) not very bright…
Creating a charity to pay for PM’s flat refurb would be ‘an outrage’. Seriously, Carrie Symonds can’t live with the furniture in her 4 bedroom house in Central London and needs to be rescued from the ‘John Lewis’ nightmare. They need to go and fuck off into the sea and then fuck off some more….
Although it’s not quite spring, it’s getting lighter and warmer and it’s time for me to resume work on the plot. So last weekend, I spent 4 hours on the plot.
Trips to the plot always involve carrying something, this week it was the last of the blueberry/potato pots, shredded paper for the the compost bin, the allotment bag with various bits and bobs, and the bokashi bin.
First job was compost, emptying the bokashi and paper and consolidating all the bins into one. It took quite a while but I got there and everything is in bin one and looking pretty compost-y. I’ll leave it there for three months and then sieve it. And yes, I’m going to need to buy one of these before I do otherwise I will break myself.
Having done that, I moved the other wooden compost bin and the black bin, which I will fill with woodchip to compost down more slowly.
That done I did some tidying, I took down the kale bed, took the netting off the onions and shallots and weeded that bed. I also weeded the cabbage beds and cleared the last winter lettuce bed, and weeded the rhubarb.
Finally, I gave the shed a bit of a tidy so that I don’t get shouted at when Ma comes back next week and I went home with a bunch of pots to wash and a bucket of kale.
In other news, we ordered half of the compost we’ll need for this year. I think I said this last year but I’m hoping that next year, we won’t need to buy quite so much compost, because we shouldn’t be making any new beds and I hope to have enough to top up the beds. Although, I’ll probably buy compost for mulching the flower beds and for the potato pots. Ma and I also made the executive decision to order some plugs for autumn planting because I don’t have the capacity for sowing them in April when I’m already up to my ears in tomato, herb, and, summer and autumn squash plants. So in July we’ll get 40 leek plants, and 10 each of broccoli, cavolo nero, sweetheart cabbage, savoy cabbage and cauliflower. We can harvest from August but my feeling is that we’ll probably get caulis and broccoli Sept/Oct, cabbages, Nov/Dec and then cavolo nero to Feb. The leeks, I would hope to make it to January but they do get rust so we’ll see how we go.
Lots of wheelbarrowing in my future!
There is a list for next week and it’s all about beds and compost for me.
Mulch the rhubarb and weed and mulch the flower beds
Raise the kale bed and top up with compost
Divide the squash bed
Weed the area next to the squash bed and cover with cardboard (and woodchip if any has been delivered!)
Close and move the chard bed, raise it a bit and top up with compost
Feed the onions, garlic and shallots
Top up beds that need it and sow broad beans, peas, beetroot and carrots.
There’s lots more to do, I need to build another six beds, there is so much weeding to do and the shed probably needs painting again! But one thing at at time…
I’m not in the best of physical health right now, I had a migraine yesterday and today my head hurts and I’d like to be in bed. However, I’m going to soldier on because very soon (tomorrow with any luck) the migrainey-ness (I don’t think that’s a word but go with it!) will stop for a bit. Generally, hormonal migraines do suck but I think they suck less than having migraines and not knowing why…
So, we’re in March. February wasn’t so bad, in the spirit of everyday being a learning day, I learnt how to drain a washing machine and unblock the drain! (plumber’s daughter!) and I taught a couple of my godchildren how to knit via zoom! As the weather warmed a bit (last week) I got back to the plot so it’s relatively tidy for the return of the Weedfinder General aka Ma!
Family – my great grandad, Aunt Phylis, Grandad, Aunt Edith and Aunt Ada
Last week, we heard that my great aunt Phylis had died. Grandad was emotionally if not physically close to his sisters. Phylis was the youngest of the four (by quite a way), she used to send us clothes (I had a very fetching orange pyjama all in one when I was about seven which I loved!) and cards although she spelt Ma’s name wrong every year too….
She was also the last one standing in that generation of our family, Mum has no more aunts or uncles and it’s really sad for her sons and grandchildren. We’ve lost a whole generation of our family and yes I understand that death comes for all of us but it’s still sad.
Blossom
March is going to be full of things. Schools are going back next week, parents up and down the land are both happy and nervous! Mother’s Day is in 14 days and St Patrick’s Day is 17 days away. There is a ton of stuff to do on the plot and lighter days are happening.
March also marks a year working from home. Since the 18th March 2020, I’ve been in the office two days, once in the old London office to clear out lockers and once in the Southampton office to post goody bags to the team. I’ve since developed a close relationship with the lady at the Post Office in West Ealing! It’s strange how normal working from home is now, I can’t see that I’ll be back in the office before August (which I’ve always kind of thought that it would be August), because I know the roadmap is aiming for 21 June, but I don’t think that the phases are going to run as smoothly as everyone thinks and I’m not sure that I’ll be comfortable commuting every day until I’ve had a vaccine. We’ll see.
Anyway, let’s hope that this month is better than last month and this March is better than last year!
Nic Dempsey 