Tidying up for winter

Have sorted out the wood for the edges of the new bigger beds and layed that out. I'm going to do another dig n weed before calling them finished and putting the boards up.

Rachael's spud excavation has left me with two more beds dug and ready, I'm assuming roots are the next thing in the rotation, but really, things are rarely that transparent and I'm still not sure.

Have finally got the pond dug in, boarded off and covered with an old grill I found in the post war rubble at the bottom of our plot. Within two hours it had a dunnock bathing in it, and two frogs. Plenty more frogs seen since. I've part filled it with bricks, and surrounded it with bark from some old logs we had lying around, so we have some hopefully useful habitat. I say 'pond', it's actually one of those blue sea shell sand pit/paddling pool things that Rachael found blowing down a road one windy night, so that's a bit of recycling going on there.

Also found an old wheelbarrow (with no wheel) at the back of the Russian vine/bramble mess so have nailed some holes into it, and will empty the growbags into it and then plant Nasturiums, Nigella and maybe some other pretty things for next year. Have decided to control the nasturtiums next year, following the potato incident :)

Can you dig it?

Serious digging today. Joined up beds 2 and 3, 4 and 5 and redug bed 7. Did large portions of bed 8 and removed about 50% of the carpet. Evil, evil stuff. It's biodegradable, they say, meaning you have semi permanent lumps of the stuff to make your spade go 'doooing.' and jar your back. Ugh.

The allotment looks like a tip while I move things around. Big fire tomorrow night, a bit of tidying up, and some photos to follow.

I need to weed! A lot!

Here's a picture of a lovely autumn visitor to our homes, that I found in ours, last night. The fastest running true spider lives in England and he is Tegenaria gigantea (aka Tegenaria duellica) - the giant house spider. Totally harmless. What you most often see is the male of species running around in Autumn, looking for a female to give him a hard time.



"Roll on tomorrow, onward verily again to our realms!"
The unknown gardener.