Shift Change!

So, it was Jane’s crew's turn on the fork and weed bucket yesterday – and many hands do, indeed, make light work! Although - as I have truly discovered - much forking does make you immobile the following day.

An hour and a half later they have done a sterling job of clearing all the nettles and gone roughly over another third of the plot and make the following observations

• It is really easy to get really, really muddy
• Beetroots (half a row in evidence growing among the chickweed) have a great novelty factor. S & E desperate to know how to eat these despite a dark ‘I wouldn’t bother’ from Jane
• They discover the row of sprouting garlic by accident, and S & E learn a valuable botony lesson in how things grow. After an hour and a half of pulling up chickweed and nettles, this lesson has been learnt to the point of exhaustion
• Everyone’s really friendly including Reg, and a chap called Lionel. Someone called Brian was our predecessor, but despite both of us being massively curious about him, neither of us can ask anyone about him in case he is dead

Jane's brought her composter down to the plot (perhaps I should bring the wormery?) and has declared her intention to dig a huge bear trap to fill with kitchen waste between now and runner bean planting time. Sounds like hard work to me, but the books do say that this is a Good Thing to Do.

Horrifyingly, she also tells me that she has brought two plastic spinning flowers down from the garden which 'look really pretty'. They sound utterly ghastly, but Jane adds that as they spin, they will act as bird scarers. This does justify their presence. Barely.

The Plan progresses now to:

• finishing the digging over (by the end of the weekend? ha ha!)
• marking out out the four areas (with sand?)
• moving the garlic and replanting in plot B
• lime plot A
• manure plot D

...with the logical progression to world domination.

Roll on the weekene!