Looking Ahead

Two minutes after winter solstice, on a cold, damp non-skyclad plot (see previous), seemed like a good time to look around and MAKE A LIST.

You can never have too many lists; sometimes you need a "list of lists". Sometimes the list is a substitute for action. Expert listmakers put into their lists things they've already done, just so they can relish the sense of achievement of immediately ticking them off again. I wouldn't do that of course. Oh dear me no; well, not often.

So what is the LIST about and what's on it? It's stuff to do on the allotment next year, innit? ya need a list to give ya'self some structure, dun't cha? Here goes:::

• Move the straggly Mallow (to make room for the yet-to-be-ordered pile of ordure)
• Construct the ordure area (buy posts & post-hole spade)
• Order ordure
• Dig in ordure (listen, it's a crap job but someone's gotta do it).
• Complete digging of remaining plots
• Move "rotten rubbish wood", excavated from bottom of plot and still lurking there only marginally tidier than when un-excavated) to the top ere it goes to the tip.
• Construct chicken-wire-hurdles to keep pigeons off cabbages etc. Could I perhaps automate this, with a motion sensor to detect incoming pidg and unleash barrage of "**** Off, you fat B*st*rds"? There's money to be made in this.
• Burn other rubbish when dry, or encourage with paraffin
• Bring fallow plots back into production
• Leave more space around plants, and hoe more (more space = less chance of hoeing the innocent)
• Fix hole in water butt (concrete?). Ever the optimist, eh, that summer 09 will be so good that watering may be required?
• De-buttercup the raspberry plot (why do you build me up, buttock up?) before tying them in (buy posts) and adding more (buy raspberries).
• Buy & construct either a greenhouse or polytunnel
• Put a glass lid on the former cold frames to transform them into, wait for it, cold frames once again.
• Major Tidy (that's what we need, some military discipline. Attention, Major Tidy) of the bottom end of the plot excavated last year to uncover the grapevine
• Prune the grapevine, prune the blackberries, prune the Autumn Bliss (a state I aspire to), prune everything.
• Cut down the rogue hawthorn. That's a very British, Rogue Male, sort of name isn't it? hawthorn's the name, Rogue Hawthorn. I could have that as a pseudonym. Perhaps I May. that is of course a clever allusion, which you can follow by dint of looking-it-up.
• Shall i coppice the cobnut? Come, Felicity, let us coppice yon cobnut. Coppice yer cobnuts while yer may.

And that'll do. Happy Xmas & see you next year. Don't forget to coppice yer cobnuts.