Quite allot of work*

So, this week I've acquire yet another pastime to distract me from blogging and knitting (and housework), because C and I finally made it to the top of the council waiting-list for an allotment. Mysteriously this happened the very week that we finally decided to ring them up and ask whether they'd forgotten us, having sent the application off in March and not heard anything since...but that's probably just coincidence. Mysteriously too, although there is a waiting-list, when I went down to the council offices on my day off, I was told we could have a choice of three different plots.**

The allotments are only about two minutes walk from our house so, armed with the key and a (rather idealised) map I pottered off to have a look at the possibilities. After wandering around for some time peering hopefully between rows of beans, I finally found someone else who happened to be there at 3pm on a Thursday to help me get my bearings and we established that the plot I was looking for was the one next to his. So here it is...


No - actually that's a lie: this is ours:


The others were worse, honest - you couldn't even tell where one started and the other ended and they were all covered in the dreaded bindweed. And at least this one has well kept plots on three sides and a fence on the other. Plus we have already met several of the neighbours, and they seem very nice. One offered to lend us a hand with the clearing/heavy digging if we happen to be there at the same time, while the lady on the other side plied us with courgettes to make up for the fact that this season all we have to look forward to is lots of hard work and very little produce.

Owing to 'financial pressures' the council no longer offers to strim allotments which have been abandoned for a while*** (though the lady at the council offices kindly lent us her very own scythe), so, very little knitting this weekend, but quite a lot of what might be described as 'horticultural archaeology' as we struggled to clear away some of the weeds revealing what had clearly been beds of potatoes, cabbages, onions, leeks, and strawberries in the not too incredibly distant past, along with some mint, oregano and chives, a couple of rather miserable gladioli, a soggy lump of old carpet, and about two-thirds of a collapsed shed. Quite a lot of hacking, chopping, digging, getting stung/bitten/scratched by things, and two trips to the tip later this is what it looks like. You can see the floor and everything - there's even one bit that could almost be called a bed (though as C pointed out it does look a bit more like a freshly dug grave at the moment). Not bad for a weekend's work I feel! Now if I can still move my arms enough to grasp my knitting needles...




* I know, I know, sorry...
**Although on reflection after seeing the plots in question, that might not be so surprising.
*** Unfortunately the same 'financial pressures' have also done for the trailer which used to come once a month to take uncompostable stuff to the tip, so our car is now full of a substantial quantity of dock seed and an even larger number of spiders.