Our Allotment

I went to bed worrying about the weather last night. John had agreed to work our plot for us this morning, as long as it wasn’t raining. The weather forecast wasn’t great; there was talk of showers and torrential downpours later, but in the event today dawned bright and sunny. There were clouds, sure, but they weren’t threatening yet. It looked like good rotavating weather to my inexperienced eye…

Julie kept me from hassling John; we spent the morning doing a little grocery shopping, and buying some of the kids’ uniforms for next year. Then, after a hurried cuppa, I could be restrained no longer! Julie, Storm, the Roo and I bundled off to inspect John’s progress.

We arrived just as John was finishing up, and the results were certainly impressive! As you can see from the photo, the plot looks enormous now! We did some more-accurate measuring, and the rotavated area (which isn’t even the whole plot) is 6.5 x 23m, with a corner “bitten out” because of a heap of composting vegetable matter ‘donated’ by a neighbour. Even leaving out that corner, we’ve enough room for ten beds, 6.25 * 1.5m, with a 50cm path between each…

So, next stop: the local builders yard to find out how much the edging wood will be; and here things stopped going quite as swimmingly. Their estimate for the timber was roughly £220 + VAT; this would, obviously, leave us with nothing with which to buy seed or any of the other stuff we’re going to need. Clearly a rethink is needed…

…So now we’re looking into recycling wood. Watch this space…