Fire in the disco

Today we went up altogether - a rare treat - with the intention of clearing and making a fire. We took hot choc in a flask for the boys and tea for grown ups and cake we had left over from one we made yesterday when visiting baby Amy Jones, Helen and Ken's new addition!

Neil and Lou went off to get some old wood to make paths with. They did really well except most of it was pallets that had been painted. Now I am no purist in the garden but recently I have been reading about paint and other substances leeching into your veg through the soil so we decided not to use most of it. One little natural pallet makes a great pathway and we used another to start our fire as most of the dead material was quite wet to burn.

The boys loved getting the fire going and chucking stuff on but they don't have much of an attention span and to be fair there isn't much they can be getting on with at the moment at the plot. I wanted to dig and clear so Neil took the boys off for lunch and they had a game of footer planned with mates Tom and Bill for afters. I stayed and dug and weeded and burnt old stuff. Beautiful day and I only intended a couple of hours up there but stayed for 4 or so. Absolute bliss just pottering around.

The plot looks a million times better for a good sort out and Mr Robin came to see us to let us know he was quite happy with all the digging too now all the worms are up top. We harvested 4 green pumpkins which are now ripening on the windowsill and some raspberries for a crumble. That's about all that is growing up there at the mo. Apart from a few Jerusalem Artichokes (which Neil and Graeme had last week dug and roasted for our roast dinner - yum!! Neil and Graeme had also cleared and planted Crocus and Fritillary bulbs in tyres for Spring which will look wonderful, thank you!).

It is glorious up there and all good practice for me. I have managed to get a couple of hours a week at a church allotment in town so I now have two plots to think about when coming into Spring..........