Sixteen Miles on the Erie Canal?

Well, no actually, more like 10 miles on the Chesterfield Canal towpath this morning, by bicycle. The Chesterfield Canal should look like this

but bits of it actually look like this.

There's been a breach; the ducks look very confused.

I was listening to Springsteen singing about the Erie Canal on the Seeger sessions last night, and I have actually been to the Erie Canal,

here in 2001 when I was on my Churchill Fellowship following David Douglas - all good allotmenters should know about David Douglas (1799-1834).

But the Chesterfield Canal has grand aspirations:

Meanwhile, back in allotment-land, it's been glorious here today.

Finished clearing out the cabbages

and came home with that great Russian delicacy, a bucketful of cabbages. I've also started digging out some of the internal paths - my path:plot ratio is too high and I'm wasting good growing space. Although all I have in the whole plot at the moment is a few leeks and some excellent garlic.

Other plans for the plot this year include:

• making a manure 'bin' immediately behind a thin part of the hedge so that I can have manure delivered and hurl it, in a cavalier fashion, through the hedge into a cunningly placed receptacle - not unlike what my Geordie Granny would have called an outside netty.
• To one side of the pseudo netty I want a flowering mallow (Lavatera), for big showy colour and
• to the other I want a Rambling Rose to ramble picaresquely through the hedge.
• Downhill from the pseudo netty, I want to extend the top part of the plot and and actually grow things in what is currently a fallow area.
• Also need a new water butt for the top, and to repair an old one with concrete (what else?), and fix a puncture on my wheelbarrow.
  

Exciting times, what?