Ah.. I know we / she / I haven't posted for a month but life has been a trifle (to put it mildly) strange around here!
The main source of strangeness was someone whom she has known for many a year and had never had any reason to think or voice a cross thing about.
A sequence of weird things that happened has resulted in her having to cease having anything to do with this person and to ask them to return any keys and not to come to the allotment ever again. She informed Denis, the allotment manager, and his rsponse was something that really shocked her..
"Did you never think it was them that took your cherries and those apples, they were certainly here very early a couple of times with their car". And no.. she had never thought that but it did explain how no one had seen anyone 'strange' around and about.. because the person wasn't strange.
Anyway, the 'cirfuffle' upset her greatly but she has done as Denis suggested.. "Never mind, just change every lock and if we see them we will tell them that trespassing is illegal". And bless his heart, he turmed up with four new padlocks for her that afternoon.
Onto much happier things..
One morning she met up with a small bunch of gardening friends and had a guided tour of the kitchen gardens at Hampton Court Palace with Vicki Cooke, the Keeper of the Kitchen Gardens.. what a wonderful title to have!
Not a weed was in sight.. but what was on the site and IN sight were replicas of 1700 century melon pits!
She couldn't get to Hitchcocks & Kings (timber merchants) fast enough! And she's transformed the 'slightly sad little' plot number 35 into what will be a highly productive place for melons and deep rooted vegetables.
The REALLY raised beds are of two sizes, down the middle, facing the clematis and rose walk, are a trio of big guys, length of 2 metres with a depth of 90 cms, the back height is 70 cms, the front height is 50 cms, flanking them on both sides and facing inwards are two pairs of slighly shorter beds.
She covered the entire plot several weeks ago with sheets of thick cardboard on which she piled vast amounts of wood chips and even though the ground was dry with our lack of rain and high temperatures in June and July, our dearest friends, Mr and Mrs. Worm, have already started to break down the cardboard and to munch the chippings.
Draught.. what draught?
We've now had copious amounts of lubbly-jubbly rain. The grass is as green as ever, so too is Mr. Weed and Evil Slug and Snail are back but never mind, the birds are happy and Old Thrush is estatic!
The boxes will be filled with compost, wood chippings and the fermented stuff from her brilliant Bokashi bins, we recycle ALL our food waste and have our Lebanese friends and our upstairs neighbours saving theirs as well, we supplied each family with several airtight buckets and either they leave them on our doorstep late at night or we collect the buckets every other day.
Bartek, our wonderful Polish Deli, are thrilled to give us their buckets! She collects them once a week, sometimes they have lots & lots of them, sometimes there are only a few but they said they always felt awful putting them out for the rubbish trucks and having explained to them why she wanted them.. other people are now keeping their food waste and giving it to neighbours who have allotments or have composting bins in their gardens.
It is exactly like this.. a small idea that creates a change and we no longer have a wiff of anything from our dutbins as paper and plastic have no smell!
And it stops food waste going to landfill!
When the beds are full to a height of 50 cms, she'll give them a good watering, tuck a heavy sheet of black pastic over the top and leave the contents to rot down over the coming Autumn and Winter months. Come early next Spring, she'll start Melon, Persian Cucumber, Carrots, 'Hamburg' Parsley seeds and Sweet Potato slips off at home in the propogators and, when the time is right, they'll go out to the raised beds.
Each bed will be covered up with a Sun Tunnel, she bought nine of these over 14 years ago and they have been worth every penny of the £9.00 that they cost! They'll stay in place until each seedling is fully acclimatised to being planted out.
So she happy again. Corinne and Joska, who are two of our allotments neighbours, both said "Good riddance, all that person did was pick your produce and they never did any work apart from when they first started" but Corinne even went so far as to say "What DID they do, they raked windfall apples together but never picked them up and then they stupidly put plastic, broken glass, wood and weeds all together in a pile that you and I had to sort out before we could take the separate lots to the council waste dump".
Isn't it 'funny' what other people see..
Well, I see a new bowl of fruity-tootie and pumpkins seeds.. adios amigos! Yumyum calls.
GeeGee Parrot.
August 29th, 2018.
The main source of strangeness was someone whom she has known for many a year and had never had any reason to think or voice a cross thing about.
A sequence of weird things that happened has resulted in her having to cease having anything to do with this person and to ask them to return any keys and not to come to the allotment ever again. She informed Denis, the allotment manager, and his rsponse was something that really shocked her..
"Did you never think it was them that took your cherries and those apples, they were certainly here very early a couple of times with their car". And no.. she had never thought that but it did explain how no one had seen anyone 'strange' around and about.. because the person wasn't strange.
Anyway, the 'cirfuffle' upset her greatly but she has done as Denis suggested.. "Never mind, just change every lock and if we see them we will tell them that trespassing is illegal". And bless his heart, he turmed up with four new padlocks for her that afternoon.
Onto much happier things..
One morning she met up with a small bunch of gardening friends and had a guided tour of the kitchen gardens at Hampton Court Palace with Vicki Cooke, the Keeper of the Kitchen Gardens.. what a wonderful title to have!
Not a weed was in sight.. but what was on the site and IN sight were replicas of 1700 century melon pits!
She couldn't get to Hitchcocks & Kings (timber merchants) fast enough! And she's transformed the 'slightly sad little' plot number 35 into what will be a highly productive place for melons and deep rooted vegetables.
The REALLY raised beds are of two sizes, down the middle, facing the clematis and rose walk, are a trio of big guys, length of 2 metres with a depth of 90 cms, the back height is 70 cms, the front height is 50 cms, flanking them on both sides and facing inwards are two pairs of slighly shorter beds.
She covered the entire plot several weeks ago with sheets of thick cardboard on which she piled vast amounts of wood chips and even though the ground was dry with our lack of rain and high temperatures in June and July, our dearest friends, Mr and Mrs. Worm, have already started to break down the cardboard and to munch the chippings.
Draught.. what draught?
We've now had copious amounts of lubbly-jubbly rain. The grass is as green as ever, so too is Mr. Weed and Evil Slug and Snail are back but never mind, the birds are happy and Old Thrush is estatic!
The boxes will be filled with compost, wood chippings and the fermented stuff from her brilliant Bokashi bins, we recycle ALL our food waste and have our Lebanese friends and our upstairs neighbours saving theirs as well, we supplied each family with several airtight buckets and either they leave them on our doorstep late at night or we collect the buckets every other day.
Bartek, our wonderful Polish Deli, are thrilled to give us their buckets! She collects them once a week, sometimes they have lots & lots of them, sometimes there are only a few but they said they always felt awful putting them out for the rubbish trucks and having explained to them why she wanted them.. other people are now keeping their food waste and giving it to neighbours who have allotments or have composting bins in their gardens.
It is exactly like this.. a small idea that creates a change and we no longer have a wiff of anything from our dutbins as paper and plastic have no smell!
And it stops food waste going to landfill!
When the beds are full to a height of 50 cms, she'll give them a good watering, tuck a heavy sheet of black pastic over the top and leave the contents to rot down over the coming Autumn and Winter months. Come early next Spring, she'll start Melon, Persian Cucumber, Carrots, 'Hamburg' Parsley seeds and Sweet Potato slips off at home in the propogators and, when the time is right, they'll go out to the raised beds.
Each bed will be covered up with a Sun Tunnel, she bought nine of these over 14 years ago and they have been worth every penny of the £9.00 that they cost! They'll stay in place until each seedling is fully acclimatised to being planted out.
So she happy again. Corinne and Joska, who are two of our allotments neighbours, both said "Good riddance, all that person did was pick your produce and they never did any work apart from when they first started" but Corinne even went so far as to say "What DID they do, they raked windfall apples together but never picked them up and then they stupidly put plastic, broken glass, wood and weeds all together in a pile that you and I had to sort out before we could take the separate lots to the council waste dump".
Isn't it 'funny' what other people see..
Well, I see a new bowl of fruity-tootie and pumpkins seeds.. adios amigos! Yumyum calls.
GeeGee Parrot.
August 29th, 2018.
