honkjazz - The Allotment! - Part 10

Saturday 5th April, 2008
(this bit has the alternative title of...)

Two Slabs Short Of A Shed
(Is how my nan probably refers to my dad)

As you can see here we're finally (nearly) ready to take delivery of a garden shed. When we find one. Damnit man, we had one so close as well. Gazumped again. Still, the effort spent schlepping these paving slabs (plus a few extra that went to my bosses garden) from the far end of Harry & Sue's orchard, all the way up the hill to the gate, was well worth it. Although I did think that my time had finally come. Like, really, I thought my arms were going tear off before I keeled over and karked it right there in the middle of the field. Anyway, thanks Harry & Sue, you are stars.

So that was Saturday morning done. After getting to the plot and laying the slabs, as above, I did some very gentle and relaxing weeding (it's not like I couldn't actually move my arms enough to even lift a cup of tea or anything. Sorry for going on about this but really, have you ever lifted a paving slab before? I refuse to believe that in the world of modern scientific miracle that we live in, where army generals can pop a missile down someone's chimney pipe from 8000 miles away, where only last week human/animal embryos were produced or something, where the crazy Japanese can make little rugby ball-shaped robots spin around and change shape in time to Justin Timberlake songs - no, I did not dream it - that they cannot make a paving slab that DOES NOT WEIGH MORE THAN I DO!). Actually, this was a bit more mellow than the weeding I did last weekend. Then I was grappling with dock roots of enormous magnitude. One of the buggers was so terrifying and evil that upon wrestling it out of the ground it grabbed the shears, chopped my hand off and said, "Brazil I am your father." - and that totally happened.

(note: If any Sci-Fi geeks are thinking of writing a spluttery e-mail to us correcting my Empire Strikes Back misquote don't bother. I KNOW that Darth Vader doesn't actually say that. I KNOW that the actual line is "No, I am your father, Luke".
Shut up Sci-Fi geeks. You'll never kiss a girl ever!)

Executive decision made: No More Horse Sh*t. And that's not me getting all cowboy on you. The amount of weeds (all of them) that were sprouting out of the top of the horse manure on plot 1 was stupid. I started off diligently pulling each shoot out by gently crumbling the soil/manure around it and teasing the offending sprout out but soon exhaustion wore my patience thin and I just smashed up the top layer of earth therefore hiding all of the weeds! Job well done I thought (they were too small to get out anyway, we'll wait until they're a bit bigger).

It's a frog.
Banging a drum.
Totally makes sense.
It doesn't have a name yet so if you can think of anything better than Devillion or Frog then please let us know. I spotted him on my bosses rubbish heap and thought he'd look great on the plot. He just looks smug. All like, "I could have told you not to use horse manure - far, far too many weeds in horse manure. Everyone knows that. You want cow manure, that's what you want, not horse manure."
Shut up frog.

After all of that I set about finishing bed number 3. It's on an awful slope so I thought I'd utilize some of the old shelving that had ended up on our timber pile to kill a few birds with. I wasn't actually killing birds with big bits of wood. But then you knew that right?
By sinking the shelves into the ground it means that the pesky weeds can't can't grow into the plot and also that the gradient of the slope is greatly reduced. I guess it's like an accidental raised bed. Whatever. That's a dumb argument that I can't be bothered to get involved with. I got enough on my plate trying to swat those stupid birds.
After that I chucked a load of pig manure in to spicy up the dance and the finished bed looks like this.





Which is nice.
Umm, that was about it for Saturday. Had a bit of a tidy up (enforcing the honkjazz ethos of "always leave the site looking better than when you first arrived") and scowled at the frog. I think I took some more pictures of stuff but it they were generally awful. Whatever.

Sunday 6th April, 2008
Managed to get to the site for a few hours before the kerazy weather decided to mess wit bizness. Started work on bed number 4. I really have to get a move on with these beds as Herb has got the seeds ready and reckons that they can all be sown straight into the ground starting ................................................................................................. ....................................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................NOW!
So it's all exciting and that but we've only got three beds finished out of eight. Gulp. We'll be fine. Here are some photographs of stuff growing and sh*t.
Garlic.














The International Shrub Of Mystery
















The best of the raspberry canes.
















The flowering chives.

















And there's the gag, see? It's a photo of some bags of sh*t! You thought that when I said "Here are some photographs of stuff growing and sh*t." that I was just cussing the swearwords because that's how people talk now, like I was using the parlance of our time. But it is actually a photograph of some sh*t! Because that's how we roll!
(and isn't the home-made compost bin ace!)

So Herb wandered along for a gander and brought the seeds and onion set down for us to ooh and aah over. There we were stood out in the sunshine. Occasionally a cloud would cross the sky but it was a pretty nice day. There were a few clouds looming in the distance but I figured I had a good hour and a bits worth of digging before they hit us. The weather forecasts had predicted the arrival of the winter that never was the first time around for this weekend but Saturday had been glorious as well so what the hell do they.............
















.........know. This photo was taken within 30 seconds of the sky turning dark grey and a mini-blizzard swirling around us. It doesn't really do it justice (and my residing-in-Canada sister will be struggling to stifle guffaws at the pathetic nature of the snow) but it was amazing how quickly the temperature dropped by like 10 degrees. A matter of seconds. Click on the picture to get a better looksee.
We stood around like the British do in bad weather but after about a minute or so it was just too frickin' cold so the day drew to a close.
But still, good work was done. And the country has something to talk about around the water coolers today because like, the elections in Zimbabwe or the anti-Chinese protests messing with the Olympic flame's route through London, etc aren't interesting at all. Actually, whilst we're on the subject, the Olympic flame had to be put on a bus at one point (St. Pauls Cathedral, I think) to protect it from the protesters. Was it a bendy-bus? A double decker? I thought they were all no-smoking now? You can't smoke a cigarette but you're allowed an Ever-Burning Symbol Of Olympic Spirit, a flaming bloody torch? What?
Bye.
BB