No dig

The pumpkins and the tomatoes are ready to be planted out so we load up the cart and rattle towards the plot in broad sunshine.

Today, we'll be trying the no-dig method. OH lays out two beds with surplus cardboard from the loft, weights them down with bricks lying around, and a heavy scaffolding pole we inherited, and then cuts cubic holes where the pumpkin plants are to go. He fills the holes with farmyard manure and plants the pumpkins in them. And that's it. The cardboard, according to the theory, should keep the weeds down and the soil moisture in. Over time it will degrade and enrich the silty soil with organic matter. We have loads more cardboard!

Unfortunately, it looks a bit tatty.

Meanwhile, I plant out a dozen tomatoes and discover to my joy that in the same bed, our home-made compost has sprouted more tomato seedlings. I separate them all out and plant them in the plastic cells and end up with about 40 more tomato seedlings. We love tomatoes so if THAT harvest comes off, it'll keep us and or neighbours in pizzas, lasagnas and spag bol until 2014.

Gruesome aside: the Allotment Kittie always visits us now because she knows she gets her little treats. So I went and fed her and allowed her eager paws to claw holes in my new leggings. Then we returned to gardening and kittie wandered off, and all of a sudden we hear an almighty racket in the hedge in the plot next to ours. We look across, and OH is hit by a flying object, which turns out to be a wren fledgling, no bigger than a moth, which has hastily fled from a scene of carnage. Over the fence, Allotment Kittie chomps contentedly on its little sibling while the rest of the tiny family protests loudly and, sadly, without much hope for restitution.

Then, and this is the best, Allotment Kittie gets up, pads back across to us and begs for more of our treats.

I'm not naive about cats: they're very effective predators, and they're opportunists too. But that cat had already eaten -- this was a completely gratuitous kill -- and my estimation for Allotment Kittie plummeted. "How about you tackling a bird your size, you cowardly piece of fluff?", I thought as it wound its way appealingly around my legs, pretending it hadn't been fed its treat yet, "Try that massive  wood pigeon over there instead and see where that gets you. It'll just sit on you, and grind you into the allotment mud by its sheer weight, and then what will you do?"

Problem is: I'd love to punish it by withholding treats but the more I do that, the more it will want to eat wrens. I'll have to think of training up the wrens, perhaps to dive-bomb the cat, like a version of Hitchcock's The Birds, but without the gore but with more birdshit instead, a Kelly's Heroes-style hippie version of The Birds. There'll be a Clint Eastwood wren, grim-faced and efficient, talking tightly through its tiny beak. There'll be the sexy, perma-stoned Donald Sutherland wren, so sozzled it'll miss the cat and dive headfirst into molehill instead, still singing out of tune. And there'll be the Telly Savalas wren, who'll just be bald.