Happy Monday! Because I missed Friday Links las week they’re below.
Other things last week, Ma had a birthday and we (me, Ma, Ben and Lu went to Hawksmoor for lunch which was lovely!)
We cleared the allotment, had a haircut and saw Knives Out. It was busy, I had a very early night last night.
Plans for this week are catch up on work, go to the library and I’m babysitting the boys on Friday!
And here’s the links I would have posted on Monday!
Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face ‘abortion murder’ charges. As this isn’t actually possible, if the bill passes, doctors won’t intervene because they’ll be charged with murder, therefore women will die. Which I think might be the point.
In this climate, how does Boris Johnson not melt with shame? Because he’s Flashman..
There’s already a class war – and it’s the Conservatives who are waging it.
London Bridge attack: police and public were heroic, says mayor. A lot has been said about this but one of those hero’s was a Polish immigrant and the terrorist wasn’t a Londoner. I talk a lot about being a Londoner but the truth is, if you love it and you embrace it’s values, London is yours, no matter where you’re from….
Caught in the crush: are our galleries now hopelessly overcrowded?
DJ Mark Radcliffe gets commemorative bench after cancer recovery
Dr Martens: are things going wrong with the UK’s beloved brand?
Labour’s ‘red wall’ is looking shaky. But the problems started decades ago
‘This election is not going to plan.’ The Lib Dems feel the big squeeze
I really like Joe, who we took the plot over from but I was so cross on Sunday, he’d already taken a bunch of things of the site before he left and this was the stuff he didn’t need. There was so much rubbish, plastic bags of rotting potatoes, metal shelves, chickenwire that the ivy had grown right through, fridge shelves, a dalek composter that the ivy had totally grown over. It was dreadful, 40 years of saving stuff because it might be useful. We’ll be picking up bits of plastic for years to come.
Ma and I are pretty tidy, we tend to bag up any rubbish and take it home with us, but I am now acutely aware of how dangerous saving things that might come in handy can be on a plot. The truth is that as much as we love our plots, we don’t own them, we just borrow them and we should be aware that when we have to give them up, the new people shouldn’t have to hire a skip to tidy the plot up. I’m actually only hiring a third of a 12 yard skip, Nina and Mike are having the other third (they have a fridge and a boris bike to get rid of amongst other things!) and the allotment committee have agreed to chip in another third but really people, if you have an allotment, please for the love of God, don’t hoard rubbish, it’s really not fair on the people that come after you.
Anyhow, we have a pile of things to go in the skip (arriving Thursday) and a pile of wood for a bonfire, I’m going to ask someone else to set that going because I’m pretty rubbish at that. Any metal we (mostly Ma) took to the metal disposal area that the site has. In terms of tidying the rest up, the hedgerow is the responsibility of the committee, once the rest of the shed is down, we’ll woodchip the path (some of the plotholders use it for access), I don’t have to do anything else, although I will pick up any rubbish that falls out of the hedgerow. There a big tub full of smelly water and something that must have been a compost bin once, which needs to be attended to but after that I’m leaving the hedgerow alone. We shouldn’t be doing anything a metre from the fence and I’m sticking to that.
After Thursday and a bonfire, the only other thing I need to do in terms of rubbish disposal, is the loganberry frame, that’s coming down but the metal is easy to get rid of, and the loganberries are being re-sited. Then I can get back to gardening!
Ma reckons we’ll be good in shape by March, which feels ambitious but because we have a clear idea of what we’re going to do might not be too difficult although it is going to be expensive!
Last week was busy and tough, the last week of November is just difficult for me, it’s Stef’s anniversary and really, really dark. It’s like my body just gives up on trying to be cheerful and enthusiastic.
We have so much work to do to join the old and the new halves of the plot together but we have made inroads into the work. This weekend we moved the compost dalek on the old half to the compost area on the new half. So the compost area has two full bins and one half bin all layered with woodchip and a container, full of weeds that shouldn’t go into the compost and water. The weeds will decompose and then I’ll add it all to the compost. It’s pretty gross but it works. The only thing left to do is to buy and/or built two more bins that I can turn compost into, but that will wait until later.
In the space where the dalek was I planted a piece of rhubarb that I’d been given and we also planted some bulbs where the other compost bin had been.
I’m a Londoner, it’s something I’m extremely proud about (even though I had nothing to do with it!) but it huge part of who I am. But in common with most cities, being from here can mean lots of things, I love my city but there are lots of bits of it that I’ve never been to or at least not very often.
So on Friday, I gave my ‘west London’ self a shock and went to East London, not somewhere I often venture and I wouldn’t have gone all the way to Whitechapel on the Tube if not for the day my work team was going to spent at 
If the nephews lived nearer, we’d go. It’s a really small space about 10 minutes away from Brick Lane (and no, I didn’t stop at the Beigel Bake but it was a close call!), with a garden, which right now is growing loads of chard and winter salad and all sorts of animals (sheep, goats, geese, ducks, ex battery hens, donkeys, pigs and a parrot!).
Spitalfields is a no kill farm (which if I’m honest makes me feel that it’s not so much a farm as a petting zoo) and is largely funded by donations. During the day, one of the volunteers noted that they had lost funding for things like the permaculture garden and were trying to work out how best to carry on with it.
I knew that London had a couple of city farms but I’ve never been to one and it’s worth a visit. They have lots of Christmas events on over the next couple of weeks so if you’re nearby it’s worth a visit!
Last week we sorted out a composting area, but that only covered about a third of the width of the plot. So we wanted to sort out the rest of that back section. As our committee chair says, a full plot does give you some elbow room and most of this section is going to be for work. The centre third will be where I put my wilko greenhouse next spring, but right at the edge of the plot in amongst the rocket that was running amok, there are roses planted, I wanted to give them some space and protection over the winter, so we weeded that area and then covered it with woodchip, to help prevent it getting too boggy, that will also give us the chance to spot and pull the weeds as they come up.
Right next to that is a small apple tree which was surrounded by strawberry plants and lots of weeds, Joe had tried to enclose that area but we used some of those boards to demarcate the compost area. I’m not convinced that strawberries are worth growing in the ground as the slugs seem to get them before we do. So I committed allotment heresy and pulled them up and yes you’ve probably guessed it, put down woodchip, my plan is to plan bluebell and snowdrops at the edge of this bit of ground. We used the other two boards to mark the tree/bluebell area off from what is effectively our first path on the new half.
So we have a quarter of the new half under control. We will eventually sort out the section of space from the new woodchipped path up to the loganberries but this is going to by my squash area so work on that can wait until after Christmas, once we’ve had a bonfire, we’ll cover and then probably sort out the size of beds (I’m thinking two large beds with a path down the middle and we’ll grow squash and sweetcorn and beans there….
Nic Dempsey 