Monday, May 08, 2006

An Orchard for the Community

From the inception of the allotment site there has been an odd shaped area at the top the the regular shaped plots called "The Community Orchard". It is not big enough fr more than half a dozen trees. The soil is really poor and quite wet. We divides the area last year and let the larger and better portion go to one of our ladies who had out grown the quarter plot she had taken on. The new area was larger than her old plot and since she was growing flowers she did not necessarily need high fertility. This meant the community orchard was much smaller but still a neglected space.

At the Society's AGM I put forward the idea that I should be given free rein to design hard standings on the community area. The reason was that in the two and a half years of the Society we had not done anything with the area. Sandra and Judith had already volunteered to plant up and maintain the "soft" areas. I knew that I had access to the the heavy tools for the job and twenty odd paving stones, my patio. I knew that, if given my own timetable, I could build the three patio. The new chap, another Dave, said he would weed the areas I had marked out and drop the road stone on the areas. This was a great help. Dave is retired and spends a couple of hours a day at the lotties. True to his word the road stone pile is surely but slowly being transferred to the would be patios.

Now that I have made a start everyone is getting on board. Each time I go down a little more stone has moved and a little more of the area that is to be beds has been turned over. I have installed my new decking at home and the flags which it replaced are stacked against the wall ready to go to the lottie. I have a couple of spare bags of sand so I just need some cement. The blokes of the allotment are getting together on the Saturday of the late May Bank Holiday to whack the stone into a foundation layer and hopefully lay the available flags.

The word is out so we will see what happens.

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