The weather’s been something of a drag for the past few days; pleasant enough during the day (when I’m at my desk at work) but drizzly or worse by the time I hop on my bike to cycle home. Needless to say this, combined with the need to attend to the kids, has left me frustratingly unable to contemplate visiting the allotment, let alone start working on it.
On the other hand, the small veg plot in our back garden has been quite productive; yesterday Julie made the most wonderful lasagne, with our very own courgettes and spinach. The courgette was so special that even Storm had some. He even went so far as to declare it palatable! I’m afraid I’ve allowed the weeds to take over a little. There’s no excuse, but it’s just so disheartening to start tracing down the stem of yet another sodding bindweed tendril and find more and more of it wherever you look. Our persistence earlier in the year must have had some impact, surely, but I know some more work is needed now. Maybe this afternoon, weather and kids permitting.
I’ve been thinking about raised beds for the allotment, and was a trifle shocked at the cost of the timber we’d need to set them up. Oddly enough, at almost the same time a colleague told me about an interesting website, or online community, or rather collection of online communities called “Freecycle“. The idea here is that if you have stuff you don’t want (clearing out the attic, say) you can offer it up for anyone who wants it. Similarly, if there’s something you’re looking for you can post a message saying what you’re after. With any luck, someone else on the site will have been meaning to throw out that buggy / sewing machine / pile of floorboards and will offer them to you instead. It’s two sides of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” triangle; the idea is to reduce the amount of stuff going into landfill, and make better use of the resources we have. Keeping the networks local also limits the amount of transport involved; unlike eBay, there’s no need to post these items; they tend to be collected en passant. It’s a great idea in principle, and I hope it’s as successful as it deserves to be. I’m also hoping that someone out there in freecycle land has some spare boards they can donate. In the meantime, there’s some plot-planning to be done. But that’s a story for another day…