A Spring Clean

This story starts in the kitchen of our home, it starts with a shocking revelation - I couldn't make my fabulous recipe (as alluded to in this post) due to our ingredients cupboard being shockingly full of out of date items! I'm not just talking a few months out of date but years, some where from 2011! The shame is almost overwhelming but not really...

So no pumpkin scones, no wonderful reveal of how you can still have stored foodstuffs from the last harvest ready to be made into something delicious even in March *shakes head with such melancholy*

Aww well...moving on.

At the allotment we are still slowly but surely kicking ass on 14b and boy it feels great :) It's a hard slog but I love it; getting rid of weeds is my sort of my thing. Just look at how much better the summer raspberries look now without all the grass and thistles etc. Goodness the 'Tulameen' are going crazy (the ones closed to the camera) I don't know whether I ought to have cut more of the runners out but I had so many things I wanted to get done, like clearing the overgrown path too, still much to do, but it's better.

Then I turned 90 degrees to my right and decided this, this was the new enemy. It was really tough going and I was exhausted by the time I had gotten this far (which was 'home time'), but every huge weed and it's root system has been obliterated thus far :) Plus Andrew got some fine mesh net fencing up to try and help keep next doors' weeds out a little and give us some wind protection.

So home time it was and it had just started to rain as well so that always makes me feel better about leaving. Funny, we were there on one of the most settled days yet and only 2 other people were on their plots. It was only as we were leaving (cue rain) that a group of men arrived to tackle an overgrown plot....wonder if they stayed long.

Lucky for me I got some nice Springy photos at tea break time and again as I was packing up; Andrew got together our first harvest of the new year - Rhubarb! But that's all for next time xxx

Hugs and love
Carrie x

On the plot, off the chart

I have returned from a glorious afternoon on the plot! What a joy it is to see the weather improve just enough that some work can be undertaken :) Here's an overall picture - oh goodness it's been too long since I have been in person...

Here was my first task ~ to weed the blueberry patch which was infested with damn unwanted plants, choking my beloved fruit bushes.Why do weeds thrive when other plants must fight so hard to get through the winter? I had music in my ears thanks to replacement headphones and was even able capable of coping for 20 mins here without Andrew on site - quite proud of that...though on a serious note 20 mins was tough.

Next up for this area is nagging the hubby to build a fruit cage so that we, rather than the birds, grrr, get a bounty of blueberry goodness this year. I am getting rather fed up at not winning the battle to eat my own fruits. (I do hope you are reading this dear hubby - in front of the world, now you have to make that cage asap! xx)

Andrew dealt with this little disaster - our broken wind battered mesh fence. It's even better than before now and much more sturdy - hurrah!

Then in a fit of good moodliness (it is a word, stupid spell checker) I attacked this area and boy it felt good. I was only stopped by one side being really waterlogged and there being a visitor at the plot. He was utterly lovely but well, I was very nervous and though I smiled I couldn't cope and that was the end of the afternoon for me. It was getting very cold though too, so lets blame that instead :)

There was another super surprise hidden in our storage box under the shed window but that's for another day - oh what a tease I am!

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* Now I must warn you my dear friends, as I tell a truth of harrowing villainy and complicated crime...

A black hole is within me and I am losing myself at an alarming rate into the void. You think you'll eventually get used to Depression; it'll get easier, you'll find your way out of these horrible days, learn to cope...it just doesn't work that way for me. Today, as with yesterday, I am slave to my own broken body, I can fight no more, sleep is my refuge. 

Thank goodness I had written the above post already; my blog (and Maggie) are everything to me in my loneliness. I must, with all the passion I can muster, give thanks to you... for reading and for those comments you bestow - you make my life so much more bearable xxxx

Hugs

Good Fences/ Ode to Bill

For the longest time we have been aware that a good sturdy wind break is absolutely necessary on our Field. Recently this problem has been compounded by the cutting down of all the hedges around the fields, I know in the long run they will thicken up and on top of that there were lots of baby saplings put into the existing hedgerows. But it will take quite a while for this to make any real impact.

So, to come to the point; we have surrounded our 24a plot in wind permeable membrane. To start with we took a trip to Gleno, a little village North of Carrick (frequently, inaccurately written as Glenoe - there's no E damn it). There, there is a fabulous farmers shop that sells everything, and I mean pretty much everything! You can get farming equipment, timber, clothes, any DIY stuff you need, gifts for the home, food and the papers etc. Fabulous. We only needed tree stakes for our fence, but we stayed for much longer, just looking.

So back on the plot Andrew hammered in the stakes around the two long sides of the plot and then we were super duper lucky enough to get the aforementioned mesh off Bill. He has a friend he could buy it off wholesale and boy did it make a heck of a difference in price! He was able to give us more than we needed for hardly anything, when it was £2/3 per metre everywhere else (which sure adds up when you need 18 odd metres!) it was a godsend.

It took a couple of days to get it all finished and battened down top and bottom, to make sure it stays in place. The wind really can be that bad ~ last week a shed was turned on it's head in our field by the storms. It was really sad to see but it's fixed now. Just goes to show you the power of the gusts down the Lotties.

Then, on top of all that Bill give us the gift of a lovely kidney bean shaped bench. There were 4 of them going to go the rubbish heap at the house of a man he was doing a job for! Okay it had 2 missing legs but Bill had 2 new ones sawn up in a jiffy and it's perfectly good again. Ours is going on 14b and will have pride of place and a lick of paint (once we get it sorted out over there) looking over at the flowers. I'm hoping I can get Andrew to build a little arch for it too and then we can grow another rose or some such thing up and over it.

Here is the man himself - Bill. I hope you have a handy, generous friend to help you out on your plots too, it such a lovely feeling to get and share things with others.