Hello and Happy Monday!
I didn’t really mean to take a break but I just didn’t have anything to post about. It was December, I was busy and I didn’t have any head space for here. Work is busy, which is great but I have a limited capacity for words during winter anyway and I found that I had used them all up by the time I got home. I stopped work on Christmas Eve and didn’t go back until the 3rd and even that was working from home. So I had an actual rest, which has been lovely, today is a shock to the system but I find I don’t mind the idea of the office right now, although I’m still not happy about the dark mornings. However, let’s see how I feel at the end of today!
So let’s catch up.
- Just before Christmas, my great uncle John died. Ma and I did go to the funeral just before Christmas and it’s strange to see so many of my Mum’s family in one place.
- Christmas was lovely but everyone was sick. I had re-occurence of fever and a vomiting on Christmas Eve, that was horrible but over by Christmas Day. It’s so weird, I wake up shivering and feverish and sometimes throw up, it feels like flu but then I’m fine and I was ok but my brother said he knew I wasn’t well because I had half a glass of wine and told him to drink the rest! Ma was also in pain, this time tooth infection related and Laura had a cold and J had a viral infection. So I was not at all out of place sitting on the sofa in my ‘jamas!
- Despite this, the tree went up and we still managed to have a lovely time.
- We also went to see my Aunt Jude over the break and got updated on all the family gossip.
- I had an eye check and have been informed that the age of varifocals is upon me. Well for glasses anyway, apparently varifocal contacts (which do exist) don’t correct astigmatism. To add to that delightful news (which I knew it was coming but I’m still not thrilled about) since my last check up, the sight in my right eye has got quite a bit worse (from -4.5 to -5.25). So that was a good start to the New Year!
- We did some good work on the plot and the new half is beginning to take shape
- I saw Christelle and Mike and left broken by too much good red wine
Plans for this week are to finish putting the flat back together post Christmas, adjust back to office hours so lots of early nights, get some exercise, eat well and book a smear test!
As usual, it’s all go around here!
We also got some other work done. We covered four beds for the winter, moved two gooseberry bushes, dug up the loganberries and pulled down the frame. The plot feels like a whole plot again.
We were going to try and save the loganberries but they were old and in rough shape so up they came and down came the rusting metal frame. We’ve left one frame up right at the back of the plot, which in a change of plan, will support the boysenberry. All the advice I’ve had about the boysenberry is that it needs room and the width of the allotment, and I really don’t want to cut the plot in half again so it’s going at the back with the roses and the mint. At the back, is the ‘work area’ and eventually a temporary greenhouse and the compost area.
There were two gooseberry bushes on the new half which I moved. I really wasn’t sure how best to do this, so I cut the bushes back, dug them up as best I could and plonked them in the new bed. The soil in that bed is pretty good and later when we get some, I’ll cover that bed with woodchip, which my soft fruit really seems to love. I don’t expect much from them this year, but assuming they live, they should do well the year after, which is when I’ll move (finally) the ones on my plot. They won’t move far, just away from the edge of the plot and into the bed right next to them. And then hopefully in four years time, we’ll have four fully productive gooseberry bushes that we can effectively cage to say nothing of the extra rhubarb plants, I want to put in the vacant gooseberry space! Allotmenting is a long game..
We cut back the autumn raspberries, and when I move the boysenberry to the back of the plot, I’m going to move some of those into the spare bed. The three planned fruit beds will be ordered in January, so I need to think about whats going in there, I might wait for the spring when Wilko and Morrisons start selling fruit plants and see what they have! Before that I need to sort out my two planned flower beds either side of the new raised beds. I’ve got one planted up with flower bulbs that were given to me but there is already a rose and lemon balm on the other side so I may just leave it and sow some annuals there in spring or plant some herbs I don’t have, part of me still wants a camomile lawn but that might never happen!
In short, the plot feels like we have a plan and it’ll be sorted very soon, but there is lots of work still to do to have the new half ready for spring…
We cleared the allotment, had a haircut and saw Knives Out. It was busy, I had a very early night last night.
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.
