For the first time in four years at the allotment I do not feel like I am behind schedule sowing and planting. My early potatoes are already in the ground and sweet peas have germinated. Which does not mean I haven’t got a lot to do, but there is no anxiety, which feels good.

The hubby’s terraced garden has dried up a little bit too much over the last week, but I watered it yesterday and have finished flattening the area where the new bench will go.

Something that is bugging me, though, is the rats. I mentioned already that I did not catch any last time, but I found no cheese and a few little droppings in the cage. Well, this week I caught two little rats – as usual they came in pairs. No need to drown them, as they were already dead. And spookily something there was no trace of had eaten their snouts away: only the bones on two furry balls and tails were left.

At the end of this weekend we are both knackered, hubby and myself… maybe we overdid it this time. Today it was sort of sunny so we went on the mission impossible of putting the chitted potatoes in the ground. Hubby’s soil is really heavy, though, so we ended up digging ust enough for one of the four bags potato seed I got this year.

Although we cannot complain as the weather is affecting some people in much worse ways, I must say that the constant weekend rain has started getting at me quite badly. I try and go out anyway, but mud is everywhere and there’s only so much you can do.

Not everything was gloomy, though. We had a couple of hours’ sun, and it was warm, and everything looked so unbelievably beautiful it almust hurt. And my unnamed plant cutting took (the one that was growing on the allotment path, so I pulled a branch out with a bit of root and took it home, where I stuck it – literally stuck – in the ground). I also managed to plant hubby’s daffodils in the newly terraced bottom of his plot.

I picked the last of the Jerusalem artichokes as I planted the newly arrived ones: they will form a nice windscreen and feed us through the winter.

Next weekend is March already, and I will have to start sowing some seed and plant my chitted potatoes (btw I found a very useful online source of information on potato varieties in the British Potato Variety Database)!

— Post From My iPhone

The buds are bursting out of their scales on most plants, and the wind of the last couple of days was warm though quite strong: it blew away one of my greenhouse tents and down my greenhouse door (a blessing in disguise, really, as I found a couple of lost bits which had made it wobble for the last few months, and so I could fix it for good!). Even the sun made a timid appearance out of his permanent blanket of white clouds. And more people are emerging from their winter hiding, and are busy around their plots.

Feeling energised, I had a go at tackling the hill of rubbish at the bottom of hubby’s plot – a hell of a big task:  I dug out another 3 bin bags of rubbish, while removing a wheelbarrow or two of suckers, nettle and other weeds.

Up at my plot, my beds start to look pretty and tidy now. Both days I stayed until after dark, as in the good old times 🙂 I feel very well but also extremely tired and all sore: it takes just a month or two without serious gardening to get me unfit: I am really getting old! ;p However, I found myself with a grin on my mouth whenever I stopped working.

No sign of further digging from the rats: have they eaten the baits? I keep forgetting the butter, but I have also remembered why I had stopped using it: the resident fox would get the trap and bash it around until she managed to eat what was inside.

Hubby has been down with me all the time and managed quite a lot of work: he cleared a big strip of land, manured it (the soil was extremely heavy and compacted so I though it might be a good idea) and planted his first onions. I hope he enjoyed it.

The technological type he is, Gianfry managed to think of a geeky gadget for the allotment too: he got us walkie-talkies to communicate when apart! I guess it is one of those thing that you hang on to from childhood for both of us, because I remember having thought of getting a pair myself a while ago. They work well, but I still prefer to walk from one plot to the other: it’s good exercise! And it is nice to be both there on site, even though we soldiered through and didn’t have much leisure together.

That’s all for the weekend. I have soaked some cyclamen seeds and will try to sow them one of these evenings: my penchant for flowers is still showing, so much so that I have even bought again from T&M (but their website is really clunky, so I used the catalogue to browse). Well, time to get my head down and write my essay now…