Where the green woods laugh, and cry

We live in a lovely part of the country and in bluebell time it becomes even more beautiful. So after the boys had tolerated a good amount of Royal Wedding watching, we hot-tailed it to the woods where they could collect sticks, drop stones down holes and bury dead frogs. This is an ancient woodland, part of a mediaeval deer park and linked to Lady Jane Grey (the 9 day queen more famously associated with nearby Bradgate).
The boys of course are oblivious to the history of today and yesterday.

And so to the present.
We took the cucumbers and squash outside for a watering - they will be going in again though - it has got awfully nippy in the evenings lately. A reminder it is not summer yet.

The crying? Eldest was investigating a ditch looking for an old fence.  He found it, unfortunately by tripping over it, and landed in a patch of nettles. OUCH!

I'll have a pea please!

Was very short of time (again) this weekend. It's a dilema, the garden is crying out for attention now! But so are the family, the housework, the olds, you get the picture...
So the sum total of my gardening achivements for the 4 days I have not been at work are:

1. Installed Mum's new compost bin - more complicated than it sounds - a sorry tale involving a barrowload of twitch (couch grass) I hate that stuff.
2. Mow both of Mum's lawns.
3. Prune some of Mum's shrubs
4. Fill Mum's new compost bin with a mix from old composter - now deceased in a fallen to bits and on pile to go to dump kind of way - prunings and grass clippings.
5. Fill garden dustbin with twitch - ha! good riddance!
6. Mow our lawn
7. Install our new compost bin - much less complicated (thank goodness)
8. Fill our new compost bin with kitchen waste and grass clippings
9. Only then arrive at allotment for a scant 1 hour time slot - planted two rows of peas which were escaping their toilet roll root trainers.
10. Picked some more rhubarb.

I need more time at the allotment. Please stay fine tommorrow amd no more family crisis so I can go after work tommorrow.  Pretty peas!

How do they know?

We were up at the allotment briefly this morning and chatted to some of the old boys, after harvesting the rhubarb and getting some chives for lunch.
"It'll rain later" says one,
"How do you know said OH-what signs are you looking for?" (hoping for some old country saying I think)
"I listened to the weather forecast!" was the reply.
"Ah!" says OH

I'm late! I'm late!

I booked an appointment in at work yesterday. "See you next week then - that's the 6th April".
6th April next week? How did that happen?

We haven't made many visits to the allotment this year in fact when we visited two weeks ago it looked like this,

Oh dear!

We cleared a bit

but didn't make much of an impression.

So as I had a day off today I thought I 'd better get the season under way.  

I dug and planted and composted and emptied compost (it was lovely stuff!) and dug some more. I had done some gardening so I had things to plant, chitted parsnips, beetroot plants, broad beans, garlic, onions, shallots and chitted potatoes. Oh and a yellow raspberry another blackcurrent and a thornless blackberry.

I also sowed seeds of radish and spinach. After that little lot it looked like this,

Still plenty of work to be done but at least I have made a start. The old boys enjoyed it enormously they kept coming over and admiring my soil - now they could see it.
I pulled some  rhubarb and dug some Jerusalem artichokes - hurrah for first harvests!
Then it was home for a cup of tea and a quick bath before getting the kids from school. A most satisfactory day.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Not much action at the plot lately.
Well to be honest no visits to the plot for quite some time but in my defence this happened.

I managed to salvage my Christmas potatoes - but we've eaten them - oops!

Now we are spending our time visiting polar bears

and that man in the red suit - oh well there's always next year.

We will be digging the bean trench on Boxing Day (providing I can get the spade in the ground).
In the meantime hope you and yours have a Happy Christmas. Here's to good gardening in 2011.

A century

This is my 100th post - and boy has it been a long time coming!
We have been very busy this year with family and work commitments but have fitted in quite a lot of travelling too so the blog has had to take a back seat.
The allotment is winding up for the winter now - I wasn't in the right place at the right time to plant much to over winter just a few parsnips, brassicas but no sprouts (disaster - we love our sprouts) and that's it. the boys picked grandma a boquet when we were clearing up at the weekend . But who would give it to her?

as you can see they have their own way of sorting these things out!

Tonight we have been making preparations for the weekend. The pumpkins may be small but they look quite good I think.

We have two parties a disco and a school non uniform day to prepare ourselves for - Hallow'een was never this important when I were a lass. So off to polish up my face painting skills YS wants to go as a "zombie ear basher with a scythe" ,whatever one of those may be.

Bean at the plot

School holidays, holidays, w*rk and family have all combined to make the visits to the plot less frequent than ever this month. Tonight, after returning from the annual bank holiday camping trip we all mucked in to try to get some winter crops in the ground and see what there was to harvest.
The harvest was beans, beans and beans (oh and courgettes) and then some more beans. So now I am of to chop blanch and freeze, leave carrier bags for the neighbour, Mum and Aunty and work out how much of the remainder I can realistically get through and how much needs to be gifted.

We did manage to plant leeks and winter caulis and a few sprouting broc plants but I need to do some land clearance before we can finish the rest of the winter planting. I am trying enviromesh this year in an attempt to foil the butterflies/pigeons/ everything else that made last years brassicas a near write off - the cost made my eyes water but I'm hoping it will last for several years (it had better!).

Soon YS will be off to school and I may be able to sneak an extra lottie session in each week which should make next season a lot more comfortable/ productive/ planned but the best laid plans... We shall see and in the meantime we shall eat beans.