Feet of Clay

Feet of Clay

Today, I embarked on a soggy pilgrimage to the 8:30 church service, where my ADHD played its usual games with the sermon, leaving it a murky concoction of divine musings and biblical anecdotes.

By 9:20, I was back home to plant some sweet peas and broad beans, with some help from some little hands.

By 11:00, the sun came out to reveal a beautiful spring day. I snuck out of the house to my cherished allotment (my “lottie heaven”), spade in hand, ready to conquer the rain-soaked earth. I managed to dig over a large chunk of the weeds, which was extremely satisfying. The rain had at least made it possible for my spade to slip through the earth like butter.

Returning home, our neighbours were in the kitchen with Mr B, eager to inspect our newly installed City Fibre setup. They invited us to their lovely home to inspect their fitted furniture. I am always impressed when people’s homes are clean enough to have someone view every room with no notice.

As we toured their immaculate abode, I couldn’t help but covet their domestic paradise. Alas, mortgage woes keep such luxuries at bay, leaving me to admire from a distance.

A dinner at Fuego offered a brief respite from the day’s adventures, though plans to plant raspberries were delayed by yet another bout of rain.

Undeterred, we eventually made it back to the allotment, where mud became our constant companion, and laughter echoed through the squelching earth.

And then, just when we thought the day couldn’t get any more adventurous, the girls managed to get themselves stuck in the mud. Amidst the chaos, I managed to plant my raspberries, a small victory amidst the muddy mayhem.

Home now. Clean, dry and cosy.

Gallery

Just keep going!

The week leading up the Easter weekend has been very busy!

Monday morning I was super excited to see the council finally take away the rubbish (or most of it).

I potted-on the very leggy tomatoes! I’ve moved these to a kind of polytunnel and they’ve been fine so far, but there is an ‘arctic wind’ and temperatures will dip to -3 in the coming days.

I do worry that I’ve been too hasty with these and so have planted an ‘insurance’ set too, along with some new varieties.

I dug over the messy end of the plot (where the rubbish was) and in the process found numerous old carpet tiles (yes, the weeds had just grown on top!). So now have a new heap which we are slowly moving (yes, Mr B actually helped a tiny bit this weekend).

I laid some membrane and put the Wickes walk in greenhouse up! It has blown over twice leaving a nasturtium casualty (I cried). I’ve put more pegs and a sandbag on top of it now so we shall see! It really is rubbish – little more than 4 very shallow and unstable shelves. I want a proper greenhouse in my garden more than ever now. Mr B will not allow it because of ‘his lawn’. Contemplating divorce.

And let’s not forget the Birdie’s Original Veggie Bed! I waited months for these things to arrive and finally decided to put it up on a very warm day. I took three down to the plot thinking it would take minutes with no tools required (I’m sure i saw that advertised!).

No! This was not the case. It was full of nuts and bolts and needs 5 for each panel (8 panels per bed). The instructions seemed to suggest that a tool was contained within but alas – no! So I put in as many as I could – took me an hour and even then they are not all in (I gave up) and not tightened. The edges are also very sharp. They say to wear gloves but that’s impossible when fiddling around with nuts and bolts! I also think I need to scrape another layer of mud back to level it even more and also to line the bottom of these really deep beds! I’m not sure how I’m going to get them up! Too dangerous around the girls.

Status

Allotment: Getting There

I started the week a little bit overwhelmed and isolated. I felt the council wouldn’t help and my husband was dead against the idea of an allotment: “I will never visit.”

I met a few allotment owners who explained the previous person had the whole full plot and there is a guy who has the other half now (completely bare except for one water butt). Obviously, they chose to take the half that didn’t have all the rubbish and then just smothered it all in weed killer! Explains why it was yellow and dead looking. ☠️

I looked around – everyone was making progress – working the earth and piling on compost. Not me, I was still trying to get rid of the structure! It did move me to a few ‘fed up’ tears!

Monday: Digging and chatting

So I wrote to the council lady imploring her to help. She promptly called me and said I would need to dismantle everything and put it in the corner and then she’d arrange for some council people to take it all away. If it wasn’t in one corner they would likely not take it. If I couldn’t move it all then she would help me. Love the lovely council lady!

Mr B then said he’d help me dismantle (yay) it if the council would take it away.

It was quite wet all week and was really hard to dig over. On Tuesday and Wednesday I clipped the tree and two huge lavender bushes. It created so much ‘stuff’ – not compostable. I then managed to move the front of the structure.

On Thursday, it rained all day so I didn’t visit. I took Friday off as leave and my amazing Draper tipper cart arrived which I put together in the morning and took down in the afternoon to shift some of the weeds I’d dug over. I did a bit more digging as the ground was a bit better although still quite wet.

The cavalry arrived today (Saturday): Mr B and the girls!

The tree is gone (not the stump yet) and the structure is down! We also took a lot of twigs and everything that would fit in the car to the tip!

It’s looking much clearer now!