Plans...

We were promised 'the worst storm of the year' by the weather forecasters earlier this week, & on Friday, yes, it was very rainy & on Saturday it was squally, but today has been lovely.

An example of weather warnings from the Met Office being rather over the top. Yes, it wasn't very nice weather, but as it is the middle of November, I wouldn't have expected to be able to have a picnic either.

The way the forecasters had it earlier in the week, we should all have been cowering under the bed praying that the roof didn't fall in.

In the event, although it was damp underfoot, & not the nicest of days, I did get to the Hill for an hour or so yesterday without any other mishap that to get caught in a shower as I was loading the car to come home.

I dug myself up a PARSNIP (guernsey), which was full of canker; a few LEEKS (mrs d), which were full of the little brown leek moth grubs; & a perfect SWEDE (virtue) before moving on to bed-shortening duties.

In order to bring bed d1 into line, I needed to move the blueberry bush across a few foot - rhubarb Brian had very kindly planted it out in the plot for me whilst I was away & he certainly earned himself a pot of mock lemon curd for that kindness, & next year a pot of blueberry jam too.

I made short work of whipping out the screws from the bed sides & end, then took the 4' lengths of 'side' & stakes away & refixed the 4' end to reduce the overall bed length from 20' to 16'.

I moved on to bed d2, hoofed up the COURGETTE (golden yellow) which has given up the ghost & tidied up the swiss chard. I'm going to have to move this - it's really in the way of shortening this bed, but I'm not sure how it will react to being moved. I guess it has two choices.

The final bed for shortening will be bed b2, which currently has about 30 leeks growing in it at the end I want to work on. I'll try moving these too, I think, by digging them up & heeling them into a trench.

Then I can get stuck into constructing the beds for the permanent crops. It looks like there is room for 5 beds which will be 8' by 4' (for strawberries, raspberries, redcurrant/blackcurrant, asparagus and A N Other which I haven't decided on yet) but I want to level the whole area before I start to put these in, as the ground is all over the place at the moment.

So plenty to be getting on with next weekend - if we don't have storms...