Wonderful sunshine

As the sun was shining we had no choice but to catch up at the allotment.

In the bed, that was the potatoe bed this year, the garlic is taking up half but the other half is for the winter broad beans and peas. Nick is finishing off digging for the plants to go in while I am shifting muck. I moved 28 barrow loads and don't seem to have made much difference to the pile.

One big disappointment was to find that the broad beans that I planted as beans rather than growing plants to plant out, have been dug up and eaten by mice. I was a bit odd that there were uniform holes on the bed so I dug down to find only the shell left behind. Oh well, we learn by experience.

The parcel that was delivered was in fact our Christmas present to ourselves, a selection of fruit trees and bushes. This means that No 53 has finally become the focus of our attention. It is amazing how quickly the space was used up, we have planted 5 apple, 1 pear, a cultivated blackberry, 1 tayberry, another whitecurrant and another blackcurrant. Next time I will make a list and plan of all of them so that we have a record of what is where just in case we lose the labels.

We still have to move the gooseberries that we inherited and a couple of currents that we planted on 51. This is in addition to the 72 strawberry plants and about 50 raspberries. So expect it to be a fruity 2007.