He:9hrs Me:9hrs

Another busy morning today up the allotment.  Shane had mowed the lawns for me so that was one less job to do.

 Our compost bins which were full of horse manure

 grew thick thatches of grass on the top of them

 Mr Lottie kindly took on the task of weeding them!

Well the first one took three hours!

This is a job for him to do next time!

Meanwhile, I was busy doing other things. Weeding the end, and planting second early potatoes, and another row of main crop.

And constructing two more paths.

If my old bones will allow me, tomorrow I want to put the last of the spuds in and take some perennial flowers up there to plant.  At the moment it is 50/50 whether my old back will recover enough to let me. I am also keen to spray some horrendous dock weeds.  It is a yearly battle to dig them out every year - but this time I am trying a different tactic.

If I ache too much to work up there, then I will be doing some seed sowing at home.

These posts are just for my benefit so that I can look back each year to see what I was doing when!

R.I.P. Gozzie

My dearest and oldest little bantam Gozzie, passed away in her sleep overnight.

It came as rather a shock - only last week she was tapping at the back door because I was a bit later than usual putting them to bed with their evening meal - only 30 minutes late - it was 6pm instead of 5.30pm

Yesterday she spent almost all day sunbathing in the brilliant spring sunshine, scratching around in the gravel paths and getting lots of insects - and she even pulled a really big worm out of the lawn at 7am!

I am not sure of her age - she was at least 12+years old as she was one of my original bantams, together with Daisy who is still alive.  I am not sure of their age when I  bought them.

She gave us lots of pleasure, captivated us with her antics, and was the tamest, funniest teeniest little bantam you could ever wish for!  She fitted in the palm of my hand!

I am sad that she has passed away, but I am absolutely joyous that she has lived to such a grand age, and packed every single day free-ranging and enjoying the very best life and living conditions, in the company of a contented flock.

We are NOT amused!

Friday I turned a weed infested flower bed at the front

Into something smarter - and it should be a riot of colour in the summer.

I will need to pressure wash the slabs again to spruce it up even more!

But today these limp looking plants are all standing proud after a weekend of rain.

The day I did this work, a dear friend of mine living in France called me and we had a lovely long chat early evening.  The time flew past!

But some ladies were not amused!

They staged a door step protest because  I had completely forgotten that it was

way past the time for their evening meal!

They went on egg laying strike the next day!

2014 Allotment update.

My goodness we have been having some bad weather !  The Sahara 'smog' was bad in our area of Norfolk which prevented me from doing any work up my allotment last week - but there  has been progress over the weekend!

 This end of the allotment is ready to continue planting.

Just a little bit of weeding along the right hand edge 

where weeds are growing through the wire!

What a difference it has made getting rid of the runner bean posts which split up the plot, and made it more difficult to work.  And I have also got rid of the grass paths which were a

pain, at it was hard mowing along them.  Now I will pull up some more of the black rubber 'tread' (from the other end of my plot which we 'inherited' many years ago on this site together with enough rubbish to fill skips!) - and recycle them as paths up this end. 

 Easier maintenance and less work for me!

 I just need the rain to stop and the soil to dry out a bit so that I can finish planting the spuds!

Thank you for visiting.