dreams of vegetables and flowers

I wouldn't say it turned out nice, but the day was far less wet and windy than I'd expected it to be from the forecasts.  I went to the dump first thing, since the brown garden waste bin doesn't get emptied over the Christmas period and the bags of weeds were building up.  I'd thought I'd just have time to do that before the rain set in, but when I said so to the Systems Administrator the SA said that looking at the rain radar it was probably not going to rain until later.  Thank you, Met Office, for helping me plan my day.  I went to the dump anyway, and by the time I got back it was still not raining so I carried on weeding the vegetable beds.

I am actually within spitting distance of clearing them, though there are bramble roots in a couple I didn't use last year that will take some digging out.  The best answer to the self seeded ash that keep springing up round the edges of the vegetable area is probably to keep cutting them down, if I can't get the roots out.  Persistent grazing on the new shoots kills established coppice stools, after all, and a young plant has fewer reserves than a mature stool.  Ash dieback seems bound to arrive within a few years anyway, which will finish off most of them.

All I need to do after that is move the last of the great compost mound on to the beds that haven't had any compost for ages, to increase the organic content of the soil.  It's desperately sandy and mere stuff at the moment, but the lettuce farm manages to raise crops on it, without the benefit of compost.  Then I guess the whole thing could do with liming.  I haven't done a pH test since finishing my student dissertation over a decade ago, but looking at the sand, the creeping sorrel, and the quantity of moss growing on the soil where it hadn't been disturbed, I am as sure as can be that it is acid.  The luxuriant health of the three camellias growing by the dustbins is another clue, as is the fact that when the house was still dependent on a private water supply, the well water rotted through two radiators and the metal chain supporting the well pump.

And then nothing stands between me and home grown broad beans, leeks, beetroot, sprouting broccoli, and flowers for cutting, other than the vast reservoir of weed seeds in the soil, drought, leek moth, pigeons, aphids, root flies, slugs, voles and any passing badgers, muntjac or rabbits.  But I shall persevere.  I normally do, at least until April when it all starts to get too much.

The tree surgeon rang late in the afternoon, and he obviously doesn't take the weather forecast awfully seriously either, since he called to say that they would like to come tomorrow morning to drop the unsafe birch tree just inside the wood.  I said that was fine by us, if he was happy with it since it was supposed to be rather windy tomorrow, but he just laughed.