What's brown and sounds like a bell?

There seems to be something of the ritual about our weekends at the moment. Saturdays we do little jobs, like shopping in shops other than the supermarket, and Sundays are for walks in the countryside. This last weekend was no different, although for some reason we were both awake and up around 8am. Not unheard of for us, but not the usual nine o’clock rising.

I love my weekends. They are a time when I don’t think about work and forget all about Manchester and the walk down Oxford Road. Instead I think of my life away from the job and my life with my wife. That is worth spending time on. Unfortunately, two days of a weekend is nowhere near long enough. Still, it’s all we have at the moment and we make the most of it.

That’s why, after coffee and breakfast, we headed first to Lidl – oh, such excitement on a Saturday morning – and then to Wynsors for me a pair of wellies. Five quid for a pair seems pretty good to me and I know they’re going to get plenty of wear. Plus they have elastic, rather than string, to attahc them to each other, so walking is not quite so restricted.

So what did we do at the plot? Well, the huge pile of dung is still just sitting there, smelling, sprouting non-edible mushrooms. While my dad put some on the rhubarb, me and Agnieszka got busy clearing the last large space.

Shovelling some shite.

Then moving it...

I piled some muck onto the cleared soil, then we covered it over. I think we’re pretty much ready now apart from small clearing jobs and then it should be the usual round of hoeing and light weeding. I found some arches made from pipe so I will attempt to make a small polytunnel to give the tomatoes a better chance this year.

Where the potatoes will go in a few weeks.

The apparent chaos that hides a well-tended allotment.