Update from the plot

The Met Office predicted a dry Saturday but whenever I looked outside, it was either drizzling or chucking it down. Maybe the deluge predicted for tomorrow has already arrived. OH has offered to go foraging at the butcher's for tonight's stove dinner and I offered to slip and slide to our plot for some parsnips.

I ended up spending about an hour there, hoeing back the weeds, pulling the old parsley roots out and disposing of the pumpkin plants which were still flowering at one end but already rotting away on the other. Discovered two fresh self-sown parsley plants coming up alongside the old spent roots -- very pleasing! The spinach and the chard are still growing well. I'm waiting for a frost to sweeten up the kales and the red cabbage and the parsnips. Leeks doing fine. Some sweetcorn still on the stalks. Chocolate mint growing and flowering, as is the pink cosmos. There were still some autumn raspberries, and I ate a handful. 

The plot looks a little tidier now. Good to see our shed staying dry. Saw that the Old Boys were busy today. A pile of manure had evidently been delivered and they were running the muck up and down the main path in their wheelbarrows. We're going to get our handcart repaired soon -- our neighbour knows someone who can weld -- and I also want to get our own wheelbarrow(s) sorted so that we can get our plot mucked.

I finished off by harvesting some of the marigold, cornflower and perpetual spinach seeds and then made my way home.

Back home, I bumped into our neighbour, he of the chopsaw. Turns out the chopsaw won't be any good for what I have in mind so I'll just continue with my trusted bowsaw.  Carried all the wood we got out yesterday, about a third of a cubic metre, down the garden to the "poolhouse" for further processing.

OH is making steak and kidney pie tonight -- yum! He's inflicting Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back on me because, as someone who's never watched the series, I am missing out on so many popular culture references. But I find the film excruciating -- never liked sci-fi much -- and I might do some knitting instead.

Mr Tubby has been spending more and more time at our house recently. I suspect the neighbours have not yet given him 24/7 access and now that it's turned cold again, he knows that our catflap is still open to him. I saw him sneak into the kitchen this morning, and OH suspects he's spent the entire morning on the potato sack under the kitchen table. OH picked him up earlier and deposited him gently in front of our stove. Bless him, he instantly settled down and wouldn't move for almost 2 hours.