Time passes.....

....and it seems as though I haven't been to the allotment for ages and have done not-enough-work for far too long. And all of that is true. But all of that is on the cusp of change. Today is LWD15 - that's Last Working Day 15 for those of you unaware that I'm retiring soon (there surely can't be many left; I must have told everyone, everywhere??) .

So I'll have lots of allotment time. Errm? Well, that's after all The Jobs which I'm assured have been lined up, and the 2-years overdue Eurostar trip, and, and, and.

But it will be good to have more time and start to do things properly instead of in an almighty rush. I actually gave up my first allotment, almost 30 years ago, because I felt I was in a constant competition, which I wasn't going to win, with a load of pensioneeers who had all the time in the world. Ah but pensioneeeers now aren't what they were then; altogether livelier!!

All this is by way of preface to the fact that I did get to the allotment yesterday, found it to be, in Sheffield parlance, a reet tip, but left it a bit better. Here are a few before and after pics;


no prizes for guessing which is which. And I now have a sunroof in the shed (no shortage of sophistication here, I tell you).

Gotta fix that before the rains start!

Sloe-ly does it

Last year I got precisely 8 sloes. 8

This year, from the same [small] tree I've got two and a half pounds of them!!!

Here they are.



Should be enough for some sloe gin this year, to accompany the blackberry whisky and the plum whatever. Speaking of plum whatever, last week I was in Slovenia and was routinely given a shot of slivovitz after every evening meal. Very tasty and just the sort of digestif we needed. The allotment, meanwhile, is still pretty dry and unproductive, sloes aside, and heading for its autumn tidy. I feel a few bonfires coming on!