Butt pain

Today, we should really sow the pumpkin and squash seeds. There are a lot of "shoulds" when you have an allotment. The weather is so miserable though. Thank Heavens for my inner "Ignore" button. Tomorrow evening then.

There is something I can do though while the seasonal hail shower clatters on the roof of my workshop: I can repair the water butt. I've still got some tar tape left and somehow manage to tape the tap hole at the bottom shut. Will it hold? It's a double-sided tape job -- why not? The tape is meant to be waterproof.

OH and I plonk the water butt on the handcart and rattle off to the plot, ominous cloud mountains the colour of slate building in the west.

At the plot, both water butts are now full -- relief. We set up the third butt and fill it, to a quarter. Almost immediately a slow trickle emerges from the tape. It's leaky. Another leaky flipping water butt. I'm really not very lucky with these butts! We've now got 5 massive containers lying or standing around on our allotment and only 2 of them can take, and keep, any water.

"That's it," OH states, "we're getting those industrial-strength industrial-sized binliners." -- "Excellent idea," I say, "You'll order them this time."

Despite the claggy soil, we get a bit done: I hoe most of our still vacant beds and rake the weeds to one side. I'm currently also running a bit of an experiment: the self-seeded lettuce and the self-seeded opium poppies seem to like growing together, and their growth pattern is quite similar. I weed out the poppies around the lettuce seedlings in one area but leave them side-by-side in another. I wonder if the fleshy poppy seedlings give the lettuce a little bit of protection. And they're weeded out very quickly, unlike dandelion whose roots go on forever.

OH harvests rhubarb for us tonight and for next door. A fortnight ago, P, B, OH and I went out for a lovely meal in a poshified village pub. We basically ordered one-of-each from the day's special menu -- the food was that nice. Since then, P has discovered baking. His first was a lemon curd tartlet with a sweet meringue on top -- very nice, very gooey. Yesterday, he welcomed OH back with two Tartes Tatin.

We're returning the favour with an armful of rhubarb straight from the plot, plus a fistful of herbs -- parsley, coriander, dill.

OH has promised to cook tonight: it'll be pasta again, with chard and a herby vinaigrette and strips of smoked salmon and, hopefully, those roasted pine nuts (there are some left from my Friday feast).