friends again

So not only did I manage to get up and leave the flat before 3pm today, but I also managed to go to the allotment and be there before 12pm!! I started digging at 1130am and went until about 115pm. It was a glorious, sunny, blue-skied day today as you can see in this first picture.
I dug the whole of the third bed along today. I was quite impressed with how quick I was going at first, and then at about the half-way mark I seemed to enter into another dimension in my head and was daydreaming so much that I slowed right down.  A couple of times I tried to speed up but it was no good, I was lost in dreamyland, so I just accepted my fate and pushed on.
I always amaze myself with how slow I can be to grasp something.... So in the last week or two I have gone back to the first two beds that I dug over back in November/December.  So today was the third one and about ten minutes in, a little lightbulb came on in my head and I realised how I could dig over the soil without treading on the lovely soil I so lovingly dug over a month or two ago.... Yes!! I knew there was a reason why we made the beds this size!! It was so we could reach them from either side! Genius! I felt very chuffed with myself when this realisation came to me and off I went digging away from one end to the other, and then coming down the other side, all the while not treading on the soil.
It's these little feats in life...
Here are the before and after shots of the bed I did today:

oh my goodness I really need to work on my blog skills...! Just took ages trying to position these photos and write text next to them, and in the end gave up! Anyway, not relevant...

I saw two other cyclists at the allotments today! That was exciting.

We have got a very temporary, makeshift compost bin in the form of a plastic box with bin bags over the top, which I put together the other day because there is basically a huge open container where we (me, Baz and Mikey) have been putting all the green waste from the allotments, but the other day I looked in it and found that Mike has been putting any old crap in there, and by 'any old' I mean plastic, polystyrene, metal, yep pretty much any old rubbish he's been coming across. So we shall share no more. (The container is half on our side and half on his side). This is what I'm going on about:

I do realise we need to sort something out soon for a permanent compost bin! I've read loads on composting, but not recently so I need to go back to the literature and sort something out with Baz when we're next up there together.

I had an idea today for what we could do in the bed that has the fruit tree:

well, it's not really much to look at! But basically unlike the other beds we've got this one is too wide for us to reach from either side so I was thinking that we could put a ring around the tree, using all the stones I've unearthed whilst digging, plus the other bits we've got by the shed, just wide enough for us to walk on and then bring a little path from it down to the other end. We still need to look into what might be good to plant under the tree.... Some sort of flowers.

Ok I've waffled on enough. If all goes to plan and it doesn't rain then I should be heading up there again tomorrow. Oh the life of the unemployed!
I'll leave you with a few more pics I took today... xx
(oh the title is to do with the fact that after neglect and lack of interest on my part, I feel that me and the allotment are, well, friends again.)

our first water container (on right) was full so I moved the pipe into this. I know it looks like it's going to fall over but it's sturdy, honest.

Oh my god I can't wait until there's actual things growing!!!! These pictures are getting so boring... x