Well, finally I managed to get a couple of hours to deal with the potatoes. They have been chitting in their egg boxes for so long now they were almost plotting an escape bid. So, I loaded the car with tools and drove up to have a look for a suitable spot to plant them:
I think I'll save this bit, maybe for fruit bushes. The patch at the top where I want to plant a small 'lawn' next to the shed that I haven't ordered yet, which means that there's one bit left:
Ultimately I want to move the compost bin but as you can see if you look carefully through the weeds it is firmly 'posted' in to avoid being blown over by Devon gales (more about West Country weather in a minute). So, I got the tools out of the car...
...and started digging. This took some time, partly because the soil was very wet - too wet really, but at the moment I'm having to grab the day - and secondly because the task was halted several times by some very lovely chats with fellow allotmenteers. I met a man who can apparently predict the weather with great accuracy, and I met the chap who owns the Rotavator. My friend Steve popped over for a chat, along with Trish, his wife, then I met a lady I've known for a few years and we had a very interesting talk about green compost. All in all it was a very nice couple of hours, and I did actually manage a bit of digging between conversations:
The bit on the right hand side of this picture is the pathway between my plot and the one next to it. I marked it out in a vaguely territorial way with a bit of string I found lying around. Having done this - very small - amount of preparation it was time to install the potatoes. They are probably the latest 'second earlies' to be planted in the whole county, but they are in - nearly three short rows of them (miscalculation!), and they must take their chances!
Having done this, I carried the trays of onions from the car, placed them beside the compost bin and covered them loosely with netting. the general idea was to pop back in a day or so and plant them...but then it rained...and rained...and rained...it has hardly stopped since! The cloud has been low, the sky has been grey and the rain has fallen like stair-rods...
The weather forecast says that Friday and Saturday will be better, but how wet is the plot? How well and how quickly will it drain? Will the onions have rotted away? Is the netting still in Devon or has it blown over the border into Cornwall? So many questions and no way of getting answers until the sun comes out!
Finally, I once heard it said that: 'A weed is only a flower that is growing in the wrong place'. How very true:
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