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| "We'll need lots more bottles to edge all these plots, J." "I'll just have to drink lots more beer then, sweetheart!" |
So, that was spring, was it? This time last week, the wee fella and myself were making great progress turning over some nicely warming soil on our allotment, planting out some garlic and onions that I'd started off in the greenhouse during the autumn, and even sowing some rows of broad beans on the promise of more mild weather. And tucking in to home-grown salad with some fine-weather Mediterranean-style food. Why, you could even think summer was just around the corner!
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| Slug-dodging salad leaves |
I also put together a rather splendid spring hanging basket as a commission for a friend and former colleague, with complete disregard for the fact that the poor bloke was probably going to have to get it home on the bus! I understand a lift was forthcoming in the event, but in future I probably need to factor in a small 'delivery charge' or cut down slightly on the polyanthus!
After a strenuous weekend digging our plot, it was college day on Monday and guess what? Time to dig over our plots there too. The allotment soil is light and silty, and gradually improving with regular doses of 'FYM' (farmyard manure - actually, horse muck as a rule). Reaseheath's soil, surprisingly for an agricultural college on the flood plain of the River Weaver, is not so; I've more chance of making a replica of the Portland Vase from the college's 'soil' than of growing carrots in it, despite the eight barrows of compost now dug in. But we did have our First Earlies to set out for chitting.
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| 'Foremost' - my 'lucky dip' taters for the trials. No sign of my Ulster Sceptre' batch yet so they'll have to go on the allotment when they arrive. |
Tuesday it was time to scrub the dirt from under my fingernails and stick some of my less scruffy clothes on, as I was in 'training mercenary' mode, helping the CAB explain the miriad of changes to the benefits system coming up in the next few weeks and months to their staff and some partner organisations. While it's fun to be back amongst friends and scrawling flow-charts and diagrams all over a 'Luddites' Powerpoint' (flipchart) to try and explain what the bloody hell is going on, when you actually step back and look at what IS going on, it's about as depressing as the prospect of frost with the plum blossom about to burst.
As it was World Book Day on Thursday, I'm going to slip in another sneaky plug for mine. I need to use all sorts of tactics to promote it as it occured to me, as I sent off my press release to the 'Sentinel' on Friday, that if the odds of a Northcliffe Press owned paper giving a mention to a book with a couple accused of benefit fraud as its heroes was pretty slim for starters, describing the arch villain of the piece as 'essentially the Daily Mail newspaper in human form' in the preface might have fatally damaged its marketability in their eyes. (But he is - in so many ways!). A free read still available at:
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/severe-discomfort--1
Friday was still being spring-like if soggy, so I put in another shift for a client with this lovely 'Winter Garden', for which I can take no credit whatsoever, though the patch to the left where the ground has been turned over and foxgloves and forget-me-nots planted is my handiwork.
But they'll be no gardening today - the snow is back, there's an icy wind blowing and anyway, I have notes on Employment and Support Allowance to put in order for a training session on Thursday. But at least it's cosy indoors: the fire's lit and Jon's doing lunch.
I might even let him have a beer with it!
