… as to whether or not I finished the raised beds today. I can usually legislate for most eventualities that happen around here, but no-one has yet managed to legislate for the weather. And when, when I went to resume work after lunch, I noticed that the heavens had well and truly opened and there was also a hanging cloud in the vicinity, I reckoned that that was that.
Mind you, it was all my fault.
After the usual 3 hours or so on the web site, I went outside and finished off weeding and digging over the big cloche. That’s now clear, and I even managed to rescue four strawberry plants. They went in the soft fruit bed, which I duly watered (and which was doubtless my downfall), and then I came in for lunch.
Seeing the driving rain, I had a very merry 45 minutes inside doing some tidying up. But then I thought that this isn’t getting the baby bathed and I don’t really want to come back and do it again, so I put on a rain jacket and went back outside.
By now the soil had turned to a miserable, wet, claggy clay but I carried on regardless, covered in mud and soaked to the skin, but at 18:35, with just 25 minutes of my working day remaining, I could put my tools away.
Yes, in just 12 working days, many of them full of interruptions, I’ve dug over and weeded 13 raised beds and a giant cloche, none of which has seen any attention since August 2012, and I’ve sown and planted a few crops in them too.
I can safely say that I have never worked so hard in all my life, but it’s all now done, even if I am totally exhausted and crashed out yet again this evening.
But I’ve treated myself to my last bag of vegan Rhubarb and Custard sweets and quite right too because I feel that I’ve earned them. I’m going to be taking it easy over the weekend and then restart work on Monday.
And quite right too.
