Week Two has been a mixed bag. I am trying to NOT go to the
allotment every day but I am finding hard with coping being in the house all
day by myself. Two days is my limit!! I have been up the plot for a few days
this week. The weather has been good and my brain has been bad, so I have
needed to go.
I am really missing social contact with other people this
week. I really miss my volunteers. They had basically become my social life. I
have never been one to have a large group of friends and I rely on David a lot
for support and company. I struggled with loneliness before the lockdown but now
everything is amplified. My weekly work phone calls are likely going to stop soon
as more members of the team are furloughed, so I won’t have that regular
fixture to look forward to either. I am quite good with my own company and
happy doing my own thing, but not having a soundboard has been hard, and not
interacting with people who I enjoy being around has been really hard!
Allotment
So this week on the allotment has been another good one. I’ve
been trying to get stuff sorted before the rain came – we were due a big
thunderstorm this week that never amounted to anything – but I have also wanted
to use this furlough time to get lots of big jobs started, and hopefully
completed.
This week I have:
·
Scraped vegetation off the patio area by the
shed. I like to sit here and watch the birds, but couldn’t as it was thick
with bramble, couch grass, and dock. Not any more.
·
Dug a pond! Great fun. I have dug it on part of
the plot that I have never dug in the ten+ years I’ve been there. I hit clay
and then hit the underlayer of clay (it changed colour). The pond is only maybe
30-40cm deep, but due to the slope of the ground, one side is maybe 60-70cm
deep and the other is 30-40cm! I am going to have to install a fence around the
back of the pond as it is a long way to fall. I cannot afford the liner or
anything yet so currently it is just a whopping great big hole.
·
Planned and measured up for four new raised
beds. Four!! This will totally transform the bottom of the allotment where it
floods the worst. I will have five new beds in this area when it is done, but
currently I do not have enough dirt to fill them all. The spoil from the pond
will fill one, maybe two at a push, so I need to plan more digging to get more
spoil.
·
Sowed a load of flower seeds in amongst the
bulbs. I have sown nigella, calendula, hollyhock, chamomile, and other things.
I just chucked the seed down and will hope for the best.
·
Dug over and weeded one small bed, ready for
courgette plants (I have LOTS).
·
Started digging over and weeding the larger
quince bed. I want to get this sorted out this year too as it floods really
badly and the quince end up under 4-5 inches of water. I just haven’t got the
materials so it’ll have to wait. I am trying to reduce the amount of dock on
the plot (still, after ten years) so I have dug out a few, and will do more as
the furlough period goes on.
The solitary bees are starting to emerge. I spent quite a
long time just stood, watching. I think these are the male mason bees – they have
hairy yellow moustaches and are waiting for the ladies to emerge ready to mate.
I saw four males flitting around the three bee houses! I love watching them,
and I absolutely love it when they sit in a hole looking out at the world.
This bee house was homemade - a chunk of silver birch tree with holes of different sizes drilled into it (between 3mm and 12mm).
Home
At home, the salad seedlings are starting to come up. I have
a handful of radish, a few turnip, and one chard seedling so far. I check the
beds every morning hoping that absolutely everything has shot up overnight, but
alas, no luck so far.
I have also made a start on growing LOOFAH! I have sown nine
seeds, and as of 17th April I have three seedlings appear. They are
taking a while to germinate but I hope I get a few more. I might have to give
them away to my neighbours!
Life
I have potentially another six weeks of furlough leave, so
my allotment should be totally transformed by then. I am slowly putting on
weight and I hope that regular trips to the plot to shift dirt should help keep
the wobble off. I am finding it so hard to motivate myself to do anything,
especially exercise. David and I started doing a bunch of 30-day fitness
challenges and promptly stopped after day four. I keep doing odd bits here and
there to try and exercise my hip, but I’m not doing anywhere near enough. I am
not going out for walks when David isn’t here, so I told myself I would hula
hoop every day, but I just can’t motivate myself to do it.
I have been crocheting squares to try and keep my fingers
busy. I have made five so far; no idea how many I need for a blanket, but probably
around thirty. I started making crochet birds but a couple of the patterns are
written peculiarly so it stresses me out trying to translate them. There is
also lots of fiddly colour work and carrying yarn needed, so it isn’t as easy
as it looks.
The weather is due to change this week so I'm not sure how often I'm going to get up the plot.
