Things I will not miss

There are two things I will not miss when spring comes: hauling heavy sacks of compost out of the shopping trolley, into the car, out of the car, into the wheelbarrow, and then onto the garden.  That, and cleaning the fork and the spade in the kitchen sink.  The water in the pipes is turned off all winter, and you can’t get enough of the stuff to clean off your tools.  And today was another adventure in sticky soil.  First three loads of compost hauled into place, and then the bark chips down. And I sat back (managing to give my trousers perfect little half moons of mud from my shoes on my bum) and thought – this is it. The hard landscaping is done.  It’s all downhill from here. Just weeding.

I found three slugs yesterday up near the apple tree. An Ominous Sign.  It’s hard to lovingly spare worms from the fork and then gleefully get stuck into a small slug and chop it in half.  But that’s the extent of good nematode bad gastropod in this garden.

Started weeding the overflow potato plot.  The glyphosate has done its job and killed off the surface grass. But then you have to dig down and get up the weeds. I wish I had more time while it was colder and drier to get them out. Now it’s a slimy, sticky task and I have so much more to do.

Marked out the site where the carrots will go. And put up the little sticks for the big bean poles.

I met Susie as I was doing my endless laps with the wheelbarrow and compost.  She was working in the shop on the weekend and apparently heard from David Braeburn (the Allotment Secretary) that he is amazed at my progress.  Now that is praise indeed.  Chocolate swimming pool (with many bark chip paths) is complete.