18th March

18^th March
Fantastic! The last few days I have had some lurgy that started on Saturday with me feeling a bit off colour and drowsy but mainly with a few muscular aches. It worsened through the day and was the same Sunday and Monday. The aches give stiffness as well as if I’ve just over worked the muscles in a frenzied attack on the gym. It affected, among other things, my forearms which meant that opening jars and peeling the foil lid off milk containers was a little tricky. I had a very slight glimpse of what people with rheumatoid arthritis must suffer with. Anyway, I was determined to get to the allotment after work, and I did. 2 hours of work in the open air and my viral aches were replaced with working aches that didn’t last long and at least were proof that I’d actually got on and done something at last. The fresh air was great too. I finished digging over the last section and getting the weeds up so now all 9 sections look good, with a few of them have their clods breaking down thanks to the rain.

An added bonus was that there was a large pile of horse manure kindly donated to the allotments with a ‘help yourself’ notice. I collected 7 bags of it and spread it where I will be growing the squashes. It was good as I had been too behind at work to pop in to my usual stables to bag up some manure earlier on in the morning, and as I usually load up 2 bags, this has saved me 3½ trips. I was in pigs’ heaven. There are still more preparation jobs to do at the allotment. I need to tidy up the edges of some sections, one particularly requires this as the pathway has encroached and it has significantly reduced the width of the strip. I need to rake the soil to reduce the lumps to a finer tilth, I need to build a compost bin – so far I have 3 pallets which are the sides, so I want one more (available free from work) then to nail them together. The greatest job is to erect a fence of wire mesh all around the plot to keep rabbits out. The trouble will be finding some free or reasonably priced mesh considering the length of it I need. Anyway, one very happy and satisfied gardener arrived home to a lovely mug of tea and a great meal.

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