Where does the time go. Work on the house has stopped for the time being. The juggling of renovation work, family life and allotment is a constant series of compromises. The compromise is always about time. Quality is always foremost wheever a job is being done. If I could give up work I would be just about able to fit everthing in comfortably into a 40 hour week. As it is I only have the evening and weekends to shoe horn the 40 hours of work into.
I had to go to Manchester for a friend birthday. As luck would have it I got four tickets for Manchester City v Fulham. I sent my Dad, Brother, Wife and Daughter off to the match. It was H & L first game. They were delighted, even if there was alot of swearing. I got the afternoon to play out on my brothers motorbike with the pretext of tuning the suspension. Whilst I was out and about I bought a lot of yeast for wine making. We saw some friends on the Saturday night and stopped over with them. We had a pleasant dinner and sunk a few beers by the fire outside. The ladies stayed inside sipping wife in the their nighties. Then onto the party on Sunday afternoon. Once that was done it was back over to my brothers to pick up a load of scaffolding planks to make the borders of the fruit beds at home. It being the Bank holiday weekend I had the day off on Monday to go to the lottie. Another chunk of the " camomile lawn turned into a black seed beds. I planted two rows on Pink Fir Apple potatoes. I must get the main crop of "Cara" in the ground.
The other day I managed to get some time to myself in the evening to go to the lottie. I had a pleasant couple of hours weeding the brassica bed. It is now raked out flat ready for the Hispi, Pak choi, Sprouting Brocolli, Swede, Tunip, Spinich and Beetroot. The red cabbage and Robinsons and second sowing of Hispi are only just germinated.
The gerkins and pumpkins are ready to go out as are the sunflowers. I finally got a chance the get the grow bags from Newall. They are now in the greenhouse with three Shirley's and three Gardeners Delight tomato plants. The automatic window arm I bought off Ebay works a treat opening a closing the window on the greenhouse.
The timber fo the decking arrived on the Tuesday after the bank holiday. The weekend just gone 5/6 May saw me turing a pile of timber into the decking outside the Dining room. It all worked pretty much to plan except I was a couple of planks short to finish the job compeletly. I could not have done more a I was interupted by rain several times during Sunday. We had friend round.on Saturday evening for diner so I was a bit fragile on Sunday morning. we did get out a little to take and collect the daughter from her friend in a vilage several miles away. It is alway nice to have a drive out, even a short one, just to break up the unrelenting pile of work. I was at a loose end after diner on Sunday so I went to have a look at the lottie. I could not help myself. I did a bit of hoeing. Every thing is coming up, even the early potatoes which have really taken their time to pop up.
I could not help myself and found myself compeled to rake out the piles on hardcore that had been dropped on the hard areas of the community garden. [see the next blog - An Orchard for the Community]. It was with great satisfaction that I pushed and shoved the piles into flat pans ready for whacking down into firm bases for the paving. Hopefully Dave and Sandra will pile some more stones on the plot for more raking and levelling. The bank holiday at the end of May is supposed to be the day we do the job of levelling compacting and maybe even laying some paving.
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