It's a long one!

Oh jeez, so here I am, totally knackered after a day of sorting out the flat, chores, going to the allotment briefly, going to yoga, making calls, cooking, and eating dinner, and now it is ten to midnight and I partly want to go to bed but also partly really want to update the blog as I haven't done so in about a week. So here goes...

The last time I updated was the day I went and took 3 hours to dig up a little bit of soil.  Well the good news is that I have since finished that first bed and finished two others. Yay! The bad news is that I've still got five to go.... But I'm getting there and that's the main thing.  Here is the before and after of the second bed I did:

I even made an attempt at temporarily bordering the end that B left open.  Which I was very impressed with.  Whilst talking to B about the blog the other day at the allotment, he said I should definitely mention a couple of things which he found quite funny.  The first is this.  My sis bought me two pairs of gardening gloves for my birthday.. and I put one of them on the day I started on the above bed,  they look like this:

And I went to put them on, thinking I had definitely put them on the right way. Well it was a few, maybe even five, minutes before I realised, like a lightbulb suddenly coming on in my head, that I had in fact been wearing them the wrong way round which happened shortly after I said to myself 'Oh that is a shame to get the nice material-ey side all grubby....' Lightbulb on. 'Oh, right!! Yeh, now it makes sense as to why there's this rubbery bit and that it goes on your palms! Oh. Dear. I need help.'

The second thing B found funny which I had totally just absorbed into my every day experiences and initially failed to see the funny side of, is that on Saturday when for the first time in ages me and B were at the allotment at the same time I accidentally got a shovel out of the shed instead of a spade and attempted to dig the grass/soil up before B pointed out that in fact I was using completely the wrong tool. I should have listened to a tiny, but drowned out, voice in my head whilst selecting my tool for the task who was saying 'I think you might need one of those other ones.'  Oh well, you can't be good at everything and one thing I am definitely not good at is naturally and automatically knowing what tool does what and when you might need said tool. And by tool I also include gloves. Obviously.

Ok back to the allotment. Here is our new resident.  My sis says 'It's you!' If only my legs really were that skinny. Actually no I'm quite glad they're not, that would just look weird.

And this is a lovely rose at the entrance to our allotment:

I just suddenly had a thought that at some point we can grow our own flowers and cut them and bring them home to look all lovely in our flat. Though of course I would rather them live out their lives in nature, but if the veggies and herbs get the chop, well sadly so too do the flowers. Some of them anyway.  I'll let some of them live.

On this day (ie all the pics above) which I think was the 25th or something, I remember a couple of things. One of them and I'm sorry but this isn't going to be pleasant to read, but whilst I was digging the soil in this second bed I was just thinking about how during my work placement in Whitehawk I had asked one of the guys if he had ever unearthed any skulls or bones, and then literally five minutes later I dug up a sweet, dead, peaceful-looking, little mouse creature. I say mouse, it was actually (just looking up on Google......) ok well maybe it was a vole or I don't know what but I totally froze and didn't quite know what to do.  It was so sad and I don't know what it was doing under the soil, other than it either burrowed under the soil and whilst it was there it had a little mouse heart attack and died, or possibly a predator animal killed it and buried it for later.   Well anyway that was a bit sad.  And then a few minutes later I dug up a little screw driver.  So that took my mind off the dead mouse-vole.  Until a few minutes after the screw driver I dug up a dead ladybird and then I was back to thinking about the mouse again. 

I should add that after taking a stupidly long time on the first bed I managed to speed up for the second one. So that's good.  I was completely determined to get faster even if it meant not picking up every single 1mm of weed root.  I just had to let it go.  Every now and then at least.

Then there was Saturday. Here are me and B.

We both got quite a bit done on the weekend, as we both went Saturday and Sunday, B staying a little longer as I had to go to work both days so had to leave there about 2ish.  B managed to finish re-laying the path so that now it goes pretty much down the centre of ours and M's plot, as opposed to half way through ours.

Left is B not looking all that happy I'll admit, but he's probably just cold as it was about zero degrees C at this point.  I took this picture so that you can see the wood B put above the door, and also you can just about see the hook he moved to keep the shed door open as he was getting sick of the makeshift door wedge in the form of a brick.

As you may have noticed I have just discovered that you can place the photos to the left or right- amazing! Anyway, right is a pic of 'Monny' and 'Silvy', otherwise known as mine and B's bikes. Unfortunately you can't really see Monny (my bike) but it is amazing and I just got it for my birthday thanks to Mum and B and I love it. B is going to pave this area so that we can use this space to put our bikes.

Above are two pics of the third bed I dug over and I really hope you can appreciate the difference.  If you can't then I'm seriously doing something wrong.

Here is B hard at work, moving the path.  And below are some more pics of the wonderful path-

It was on Saturday that B pointed out to me when I exclaimed, "Look, look, there's the lovely robin that's always around!" that "Yeh he's after the worms, didn't you realise?" "Oh. No. The poor lovely worms, we don't want him eating the worms, we need the worms! Oh no are we helping him to kill the worms by digging up the soil and also should we not have the peanut feeder as it will entice him in?? Oh but wait, maybe by feeding him peanuts, it will distract him from the worms?" B, laughing at me: "Er no, I don't think it works like that."

Sunday: I dug some more soil, and finished off the third bed.  By this time the ground was so solid that it did take a little longer than usual, but it was still a good couple of hour's work and I was sooo happy to finish the bed.  Tension arose when at long last we saw M since all that palava about us reclaiming what was rightfully ours. Actually having spoken to B tonight, he confirmed to me that it wasn't really all that tense, but it was a bit weird and we are a bit distant with each other.  He seemed fine and was chatty with us, and us with him, but things have just, well, changed.  I wasn't really that talkative anyway, what with my psycho-PMS-self bubbling at the surface and thinking about work, so I just got on with the digging and left B to do most of the talking and niceties. Here is me looking all chuffed with myself:

Actually this picture is a bit cringe, I don't really know why I posed like that. Anyway...

Here you can see B moving the fence at the top of the plots.  M has a space for his car here, which he wants so that he can, well, drive his car in.  When there was first talk of him doing it I instantly got all silly about it and hated the thought of a car being there when I look up from working the land, but actually I now realise that it won't be there that much and also it seems I can't escape cars however hard I try, and I can't be trying that hard given that I live in a city and in a country where the majority of people drive and own cars, so I should just shut up and live with it or else move to a desert island where there are no nasty machines...

Here are some pics of the path on Sunday:

Ok if you're still with me then well done, it's been a long one. If you broke to make a cup of tea, then got distracted and then forgot all about my little blog and then two days later vaguely remembered something about something you were reading but didn't finish....and then rejoined us here again, welcome back.  I have only one more day to tell you about and it is today.

Today I went for an hour and begun working on the bed which has the mystery fruit tree in.  Thus:

I saw E next door which was nice as I hadn't seen her in ages. She too was digging over a bed and we chatted about a few different things before she left me to it and I basically did most of this end of the bed and this time, so far, haven't accidentally dug up any tree roots.

I'll end with this pic of the sun starting to go down at about 320pm. I wish I could have stayed a little longer today to do some more digging and also to watch the sun set and the sky change.  But unfortunately I had to go.

So long. xxx