Deadlines: Tuesday 22nd; Friday 25th March


It really is Spring. Here are the crocuses, (are they? bulbs ain't my thing) in Alexandra Park, yesterday. I heard Monty Don on Gardeners' World saying the daffodils were nearly finished where he was (southern England, somewhere), but they're just appearing in Glasgow. And I walked into the University this morning without a hat on my bald head, for the first time this year.

The walk through the Park on my way home yesterday was a change. Normally, I go by the route that takes me home via The Lea Rig, shut for refurbishments, so after coming out of the Park I went to La Cala, on Meadowpark St, for my Sunday Guinness. A proper Glasgow pub, but not a place you'd want to linger in beyond a couple of pints.

I wasn't exhausted, as I sometimes am of a Sunday. I'd intended to get the NE Bed, (aka the Pond Bed) levelled and raked and ready for the spuds, but the old fruit bush bed which once was there is slow to give up the fight. It had sprawled out to occupy almost half the width of the bed, up to 7 or 8 feet from the fence, I assume its original dimension was maybe a yard wide down the NE boundary. Hard work, grubbing up the nettle, fruit bush and cherry tree roots. I wasn't too tired-out, but my wrists were beginning to ache - I'm still not recovered from shovelling and barrowing several tons of oomska last Friday.

Speaking of which, I've worked out where the woodpile and the oomska will go in that SW corner. It should be an invertebrates' paradise. I'd moved the compost heap there, but the oomska will go on top of that, now. There was a rat there yesterday. And the new, current, compost heap will go back to the far NE corner, close to the pond. I'll bung a shovel-full of oomska on it once in a way, to raise its worm population. And it should enjoy a relationship with the pond from an invertebrate point of view.

I saw a kind of bee or wasp at the pond yesterday, doing something in the mud, maybe taking it for a nest? And a crow came down for a drink and washed its face. I see and hear the crows all the time, but that was the first time I've seen one in the allotment. The magpies drink there too. There's no rain forecast for the rest of the week, so it'll be interesting to see what happens to the pond levels.

The deadlines are, next Tuesday's a re-submission date for some EdD work, and of course it's Good Friday, when I intend, inshallah, to sow ALL of my spuds in the Pond Bed.

Oh yeah. Before leaving yesterday I sowed the entire plot, apart from the Spuds' Bed, with white clover. I'd got a Tesco "Essentials" flour sifter for the purpose, (only a quid) and it was perfect for the job. I used only about a quarter of the seed I've got, so I'll give it another sowing in a week or so, after this batch begins to germinate, and when we're due some rain.

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