Friday 25 November 2011

In which I lose (things on) the plot

So - last Saturday doorbell rang. Rather insistently, like the old lady who used to live a few doors up used to ring it (she's dead now) and it was a delivery of raspberry canes. Quite surprising really as usually things that need planting arrive on a Monday when I can't get up to the allotment until the next weekend. So all good.

Go up on Sunday, slightly cursing the fact that really I should have gone up earlier in the day. It's so noticeable now that it gets dark so really quickly. By 4 o'clock you're on borrowed time, and once the sun disappears beyond the horizon it gets dark rather too fast. And cold too.

Anyhow, plan is to plant all 18 canes (three different varieties). Get first six in relatively easily but then realise that a quarter of the onions I planted a couple of weeks ago will have to be moved to make way for the rest. This wasn't in the original plan. (Plan? Who said that? Whenever was there a plan?)

So - onions moved. Get next six in. By now I'm decidedly on a timer. Sun has disappeared. Realistically the only option is to "heel" these six in and wait for next weekend, so that's what I did.

Pack everything up - where's my trowel? I know I used it to dig up the ambling onions.

Really pack everything away - still no sign. So obviously it's either a) so dark now I can't see it wherever it is - this gardening by moonlight thing is so overrated, or b) I've buried it. Hopefully when I was heeling in the last six canes, so therefore I should discover it when I go back next weekend to plant them properly.

To be continued...... (bet you can't wait, eh? Riveting)

Saturday 5 November 2011

Sorry, this isn't a very cheerful start to this blog. I keep checking the news to see what the latest is on the M5 crash yesterday. My elder son drove down to Torquay yesterday morning (and then back again) only hours before, and then my niece left Taunton to drive home to Bridgwater and passed that spot only ten minutes earlier. She works at Musgrove Park Hospital and said her ward was being cleared to take the survivors. Her boyfriend (a trucker) was driving back from Devon, and had to leave the motorway at Tiverton.

This probably hasn't impinged that much on the rest of the country, but there's a shiver when it passes that close to you.