Today we don't hit the plots until 3.30pm. We bump into one of the Old Boys, who tells us off for being late. We discuss the frost that's been forecast for tonight. He says in the 40 years he's been on this site, there had only been one year when there hadn't been a frost in May. And the growing season was only 16 weeks.
"Was he having a go at us for not putting anything in the ground yet?" I ask OH afterwards, confused. He shakes his head.
Lots more digging on both sides of the fence again today. I tackle the back left corner this time, a tangled mess of bindweed roots and ground elder and rubble and glass and the occasional nettle and stray raspberry but I am making only slow progress. Earlier that morning I'd ordered 4 asparagus crowns ("Dr Theilim"), and today I am going to dig the new asparagus bed, this time with a foot-and-a-half "kill zone" around the raised bed.
OH kindly (after I guilt-trip him twice today about abandoning me to the crappy plot) digs a trench and plants the remaining currant and gooseberry bushes that I had lifted from the overgrown back bed.
Then, together, we move the untidy pile of wooden boards to one side and burn all rotten ones -- more lovely fire! -- and I get second wind and go after all the dandelion roots I can find and then do a quick grass cut with the hand scissors to make everything look a bit tidier. There will possibly be a frost tonight so my last act is to cover my already-flowering strawberries with protective netting. I look at "my" plot and think, this is finally getting somewhere.
OH and I stand on the corner plot and survey the work done, me now a little more reconciled to the potential of the new plot: OH has pruned the grapevines that were already there. There's a gorgeous little apple tree that will hopefully supply us with cider apples. We've got two more fruit trees to move -- a cherry, currently in a pot on the patio, and the small Discovery in our garden.
The huge and unsightly scrapheap of crap, mostly rusty metal things, well, we'll get rid of it. We have managed it before. We either hire a skip or let it be know that "we have metal". It's amazing how people line up to take this stuff away.
Dinner tonight: very late, at 9pm, and it's glutenfree gnocchi with tomatoes, basil and mackerel in a vinaigrette plus a bottle of very quaffable French Sauvignon Blanc from Lidl.
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