Mucky work!

There was a very interesting programme on TV last night called ‘Grow Your Own Veg’. No prizes for guessing what it was all about. All good stuff to get the enthusiasm up, and there were a couple of particularly interesting things.

One was that Jerusalem artichokes might be good to try (tasty, apparently, a bit like potatoes, but a bugger to peel), and that there is no getting away from this runner bean bear pit that Jane suggested some weeks ago, and I’d quietly shelved it in the hope that the idea might fizzle out. No chance of that now, especially as Jane saw the programme too.

I went to the Hill this morning with one aim – muck spreading! For once, the weather was less than perfect – a bit drizzly – but I had a hat, and it soon stopped anyway.

I dropped my club membership application form in at the club house (‘consider yourself as a member already as you are an allotment holder’ – so that was a waste of £5 membership fee, I think.), then onto horse muck skip.

Unfortunately, the horse muck skip was full of ‘bad muck’ i.e. there was a lot of wood shavings in it, but after a bit of a dither, I thought that I might come to the plot ten times in a row and not find the magic straw-filled ‘good muck’, and deciding that any muck was better than no muck, I opened the skip end (NOT as easy as it sounds, actually) and wielding a shovel and my rubble bucket was on my way.

Although a particularly satisfying job, I was only moving the muck across the roadway and I’ll take advantage of the offer of mum’s wheelbarrow for next year - it’s harder work than I expected.

In fact, I’d gone a bit of a funny colour after an hour of shovelling – I’ve done about half – and my clothes would have been able to walk home on their own, so I called it a day and limped off for a hot bath!