Our version of 'The Good Life' starts here!

Welcome to our Allotment!

This blog may be renamed in the coming months as 'A Triumph of Optimism Over Digging', or 'How Mother Earth Provides Despite the Interference of Those Who Think That They Know Best'.

So with a great fanfare & positive frame of mind thinking about all the lovely fresh fruit and veg we will grow, Jane and I are now the proud tenants of a half plot at the Hill Allotments!

Jane checked what the site was like last summer with Paul & the children and gave it the OK and we put our names down in the hope that there would be something become available in October.

We've been lucky with a half plot becoming free, & I've been down today with Jane & co & we've signed up. The half plot is conveniently sited by the green waste skip, & the manure heap and consists of rich dark soil with a jaunty covering of chick weed.

We're full of enthusiasm - we both have a mental image of long summer evenings picking baskets of beans & tomatoes, in clouds of butterflies with the scent of sweet peas and lavender perfuming the warm air.

We are not even put off by the fact that we don't appear to be able to do anything at all except clear chickweed & chit some potatoes between now and next February.....

We are also bouyed up by the fact that the allotments boast a Social Club on site - hurrah! - where we'll be signing up as members (all that cheap beer!)

So we'll be wielding our forks from next weekend, & in the meantime, I'm poring over John Seymour's Self-Sufficiency look at crop rotation plans and working our which bits to lime and why and trying to work out my pentlands from my pink rose firs.................