I feel like a Dixie Chick

“I ain’t hoed a row since I don’t know when”

But I did get back to the allotment today, with a newly repaired strimmer and made vast amounts of strim, strim, strimmy progress. Mid-way through the afternoon Chris & Susan (who share the entrance and other half of the double-width plot) arrived, with concern about was I all right, had noticed crops going unpicked, vegetation climbing to the skies etc. Explained that I’ve had a travelling summer and an allotment neglected at a critical moment, of which there have been many, never gets back under control until autumn. I was quite touched at this concern.

And now it feels, courtesy of a mega-strim, that it is heading back to the straight and narrow. I did begin to consider whether keeping the allotment was truly viable; I’m 60 in 18mths time and intend to do more travelling so don’t want to be constrained by my cabbages, so to speak. But nor do I want to walk away from something I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in, and which I do want to maintain as an active energetic interest for a zillion years to come. I think I do need to think rather harder about how much of it lies fallow next year so I can concentrate on doing the bits I have in cultivation rather better.

As ever, there are competing priorities:

• Normal life at home
• Work which pays the bills
• An OU course I’m starting next week (Beyond Google; information mgmt)
• Continuing work on the David Douglas movie project which has taken a lot of time this year and will take more next year.
• Short Way Round on the scooter (with apologies to Avril Lavigne, “I am a scutr boi, she said blow yr hutr boi”)
  
  But, if you want something done ask a busy man (or woman).
  
  Finally, to help explain why I do all this, here is a puny little Bishop of Llandaff who did eventually come good(ish).

Think I’ll start the Bishops off in pots next year cos starting them in the ground was no use whatsoever.

And a piece de resistance of some totally unexpected Autumn Bliss raspberoonies, which went down very well with ice cream as dessert for Woody & Wilma Wilbury this evening. This is seriously good news because it means they’ve established properly and I should be able to get a decent crop off them next year.

It's like a Jungle sometimes.

In fact it's like a jungle right now, due to being away following David Douglas. Truth is, the allotment looks awful. But, given the choice of travelling where I've been and having a tidy allotment, travel wins hands down.

Today was the first opportunity to get at it and I made little real impression. Mowed the central path and the side path.

Had to stop in the end as the humidity was so high I was sweating cobs. All of which prefaced a massive thunderstorm later. Why is it so wet? It's been awful just lately.