Digging & Guttering

That's the Mid- and North West beds dug over now. I've bought 50g of phacelia from Nuts 'n' Cones, and will sow that in the next week or so. Basically, I've got 5 or 6 rows of directly sown seeds in each bed, and the rest will have to be phacelia this year. The heavy clay in the bed, dug up from the pond and beneath the path in the winter, has dried out and broke up nicely. What with both the green manure to grown on it, and the horse manure to go into it, and the mixture of soils, it should be a wonderful growing medium next year.

I should really have watered those rows of seeds today, but I've foolishly neglected to catch any rain, and I've ran out of water entirely as of this afternoon. I'll keep the gorse seeds going with water from the nearest tap, but that's over 100 yards away, not a reasonable distance back-and-forth with the watering can to water the whole plot. The pond is now completely dry for the first time ever. I worry for the Typha latifolia, the one I planted in the bottom of the pond is going yellow at the tips of its leaves. Heigh ho.

Anyway, the weather forecast is for more of the same in the week ahead, though there's a possibility of very heavy showers almost anywhere in Scotland tomorrow and Tuesday. Fingers crossed. In expectation and hope of this, I've at last made up for my earlier negligence and rigged up guttering to catch any rain that falls on the old shed. As you can see from the photos, it's very rough and ready, but everything about the old shed bears the concept of TEMPORARY in upper case, just like that.