Welcome to the rainy season

• By Alison
• 1 July, 2007
• Comments Off on Welcome to the rainy season

Well – day one did not go off as planned. The heavens remained open with the trademark English drizzle pouring out. Slightly higher volume than normal in fact.
We dressed down and set off for the allotment anyway, hoping that someone would be there, and that the gate would be unlocked, since we are not getting our own
key until next week. But no joy, even the steadfast old guys were not stupid enough to think spending a day in the downpour would be fun. Hell on their
rheumatoid arthritus I guess.

We set off for the garden shop instead. With a bit of research behind me, I’ve discovered that the royal horticultural society recommends starting with
plants that other people have raised from seed, rather than doing the seeding yourself. Which suits me fine, since everything (other than the leeks) died in
infancy. The garden centre was woefully understocked, to the tune of 3 mangy cabbages, so we had to resort to homebase. Which was wonderfully full. Came home
with 4 tomato plants, 4 sweet peppers, 2 aubergines, 1 chilli pepper, and one dwarf french beans plant. Plus some herbs, since my attempts to grow mint were
also failures.

Paul and the girls spent the afternoon clearing the walkway behind our shed, where our neighbours had dumped all their clippings, and the rubbish that had been
behind their fence for years. Now I have to work out how to tactfully tell them to never do that again without resorting to banshee-like behaviour!

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the rain deweeding my vege
plot in the back yard and clearing the area around the four carrots. Then I decided to attack the trees that my neighbour fails to maintain, and ended up
sawing off several long branches. The garden now looks neat up high, with mounds of clippings on the ground waiting for someone to clear them away. Perhaps I
should throw them all behind the neighbours fence…