The whole environs of the Old Greenhouse Foundations contain many a mystery. Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I cleared away all the bricks that were littered around the area, throwing them onto the Frog's Winter Palace.

But before returning to excavate the pond/greenhouse area, there was another row of bricks, about a yard south of the greenhouse foundations, across most of the width of the plot. I have no idea what purpose it served. In the photo you can see that it wasn't ordinary bricks, but big objects, almost twice the size of a regular brick, which will come into their own when I extend the path.

"Extend the path..." I was thinking of a big pond, maybe 20x10ft, across the width of the garden, with some kind of bridge over the middle, in line with the path. Maybe that's a bit ambitious for this year. I looked at some of the sods of clay I'd thrown up when I started on the Greenhouse Foundations. It's very crumbly as it dries, and full of pebbles. More like marl than actual clay, maybe?  So it might be a case of a more modest pond, with a plastic liner. Thing is, you can't really tell until you get right up close to it all with a spade in your hand.

The Eastern side of the garden is still planted out with phacelia and borage, and yesterday there were still honeybees, a bumble bee, and a butterfly feeding off them. I want to get them all cut down, composted, and the ground dug over and sown with winter field beans, but I'm reluctant to that when wildlife is still benefitting. I'm pretty sure the dark coloured honeybees I see there are out allotment association's own bees, and I'm told that being able to get pollen and nectar this late in the year means they're less susceptible to diseases over the winter. So heigh ho. I've bought a sickle on eBay, hasn't arrived yet. And then there are the fruit bushes to prune, sending cutting to Cliff, relocating some of the pruned bushes. AND the cherry and ash trees to coppice.

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