Thursday, December 21, 2006

It's on the horizon

Yep the good old season of goodwill seems to be well and truly upon us and it's only 3 more days until Christmas day arrives....it's looming on the horizon!
I haven't been to the allotment since the 12th December because it hasn't stopped raining since and I don't want a repetition of the last visit! I've continued to study the seed catalogues and I've come to the conclusion that it's all a guessing game and nobody knows what they're doing really they just have a go and fall lucky! Well that's my theory and that's what I'm going to do I reckon, I'm just going to order loads of stuff, stop trying to work it all out scientifically, planning every last square inch and just bung loads of seed in and see what happens.
A bit like the attitude of Robin in the book 'Allotted time'. This is quiet an interesting book written by Robin Shelton and his friend Steve about his experience in 'doing' an allotment. Not a bad read! His attitude is '...stuff grows' (or some similar quote!) and I suppose that's correct, if you sow seeds they want to grow and ok maybe they need some attention as well now and then but generally it's not us that are the experts but him above or nature! I think I'll go off now and do some chatting to him above to see if he'll go and dig my plot over while I'm busy at work...you never know!


A Gloucester allotment

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

And God said...let there be rain!

Ok so he didn't really but at the moment I am sailing the car in and out of the allotment! I went down there yesterday to put some odds and sods there that we had rescued from skips (door, pallet etc) There is a central track that leads through the middle of the site and at the moment it is a total quagmire, I got half way along and came to a grinding halt with the wheels just spinning! I don't actually know the right way to get out of that sort of situation (apart from phoning someone in distress!) so I floored the accelerator and hoped for the best, it worked. Of course then I had to do the same in reverse to get back out but luckily I managed without getting stuck.

It's so frustrating to stand looking at this plot of ground wanting to dig it but not being able to, the ground is just so sodden that it just sticks to everything, totally impossible to do.
I keep day dreaming about the summer and imagining what it will be like then...at the moment that feels a long way off!

I had a very garden influenced birthday the other week, I had some fab presents including : New spade, secateurs, trowel, hand fork, 2 allotment books, digital radio (for the plot), parsnip seeds and garden vouchers, I felt totally spoilt.

I've been trying to gather seed catalogues together to work out who to buy from but so far the only one that really inspires me is the real seed company. It's a small family owned seed company that appears to stand for all the values that I would like to have in growing veg. I don't like the fact that the multinationals are so dominant and that older varieties are dying out.


A Gloucester allotment