Just How Much Can I Cram Into a Weekend

Short synopsis of the weekend.

1. Pull up all weed fabric from front garden, bag up gravel ready for transportation to allotment when first raised beds are built, dig over earth, tow out tree trunk with Discovery, dent Discovery when strop snaps trunk and bolt ricochets through the air and just misses the back window by inches.

Whoops!

The offending tree root

and resultant hole

Move edging bricks from side of path to front of new bed. Infill with more earth. Decide to fill in gaps with mixed salad leaves currently in back garden under cloches.

2. Decide not to pull up New Zealand flax as eventually after 8 years of sitting on front garden, after hacking it shoots up an enormous flower. Curiosity has led to said flax being left until flower has shown itself before being uprooted to make way for new turf.

3. Bake enormous Madeira cake for Son No 1 for Tudor homework project. Buy copious amounts of ready coloured icing to make tudor rose design for top. Be grateful that friend who visited to help with garden and allotment is an ex-chef only too happy to help with said cake.

design template

Joshua's finished product on 10" square madeira sponge. You have to admit it's very impressive!

4. Visit allotment and weed the ever increasing meadow. Pull out stinging nettles and give up saying 'ouch' each time it stings and spend five hours with both arms covered in welts. Straighten up corrogated metal sides, nab some carpet from the unused plot next door to suppress the weeds at bottom end.

5. Use some of the nettles. Put in bucket, cover with water, weigh down with brick and leave to break down to make organic fertiliser. Should take two weeks and will smell just awful. But my plants will love it and the food will taste good. Therefore, worth the pong.

6. Weed between potatoes and earth up. Weed between onions and discover a lettuce growing in the middle. Also find three potato plants growing between current bed and onion bed.

7. Start fixing in more corrugated metal sheets to other side of allotment to fence in plot.

8. Arrange collection of fence panels for allotment with local fencing businessman who will deliver all panels and posts to the allotment for a tenner.

9. Discover behind shed some double glazing panels and more corrugated metal sheets. Very handy.

10. Deliver and collect two daughters to and from two birthday parties.

Exhausted?

I am!