Tuesday 28 October 2008

Cow Poo

It's snowing outside, can you believe it! Hopefully it will make the parsnips really tasty - I've heard they're best after the 1st frosts, but what about everything else?

Anyway, from one day of stinky weather, to another, namely Saturday past. It was so cold and rainy in the morning that we thought a trip to a garden centre would be good - maybe the weather would clear up later (hahaha!). When we arrived there, it seemed we had entered a different place in time - it was CHRISTMAS and the shop was laid out in a way that you felt so confined and like Christmas was coming to get you. I felt claustrophobic (not a fan of Christmas at the best of times) with strange Santa Claus' singing at me etc. I just hate all that stuff - save it for December for goodness sake, and why does it seem to be Garden Centres that go SO mad over it all.
We went looking (oh, shock horror) for plants and seeds etc - hardly any there. We had a coffee, in the now essential gardening centre coffee shop and left. Where are all the good nurseries you see on TV?
One good thing I did notice was this sign above a greenhouse display. It was light relief in an otherwise scary and disappointing visit......

So, after that we went straight to the lottie. In was still raining, but crazy kids that we are, we decided to stay. This is my 'I'm so cold and it's raining pin pricks' face. In the end it was quite fun and we were pretty much there alone, funnily enough. Once our new (2nd) cloche was put in place over the small scallions and carrots we set to work on the gloriously stinky cow manure pile. After speaking to Bobby, Bill's dad, on Friday we were advised to take some off the pile and let it rot down on our own plot for a while. I suppose ideally it should all stay in one big lump but the feeling was people would want to make sure they have some of their own and thus the pile would be attacked soon enough. We took some and put it our empty compost bin. It's still relatively fresh so we'll leave it there til spring. It was hard, smelly work getting it those few 100 metres from pile to plot but I'm sure it will be worth it!

Once that was done, I was, cold, soaked, smelly and wrecked and put myself on coffee making duty. Thank goodness for little gas camping stoves - we'd freeze to death without our wee warm drinks. I sat on the massive bag of paper shreddings (like a bean bag) that we have for composting and waited for the kettle to whistle away at me. Luckily, when that time came, Andrew had taken refuge in the shed too - I couldn't get myself up out of the bag, haha.

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