Why I Don't Have a Project Plan
A few years ago, working in language assessment, (writing tests of English, really) I started to do project plans. Well, everyone I worked with seemed to be doing them. On a spreadsheet, tasks down the columns, time to get to each stage along the rows. Utter bullshit. Like the small raised beds I see most of my allotment neighbours have. Everything in its place. No room for improvisation or good fortune.
I have to keep reminding myself of this now that the Spring is well and truly under way, and the tasks proliferate. Only the floor of the shed is treated. Only maybe 20% of the pile of rubble has been reduced by the 7lb hammer to small bits for the shed-base. The hedgerow: my wee gorse plants - put in the ground too soon - are getting choked by weeds. And I haven't riddled the glass out of... anywhere, lately.
One thing I have managed to do: the old greenhouse area is no more. first I excavated it, then knocked out the old wall, then cleared the rubble and its old path, and finally levelled the ground, filling in the excavation trenches. It's still pretty rough, still needs riddled and there's a lot of glass and rubble and god knows what else in there yet.
Back in the beginning, Summer 2015, this was all weeds, rubbish, stacks of old doors and windows, that rotten old shed, inexplicable mounds of earth, and of course the old greenhouse foundation wall, which seemed like it had been there for centuries, a permanent unmovable fixture shored up by ramparts of earth and timber, commanding the entire plot.
Now, it's a bed, a nice big bed of infested soil which can be cleaned and restructured into good earth for growing. This is the heart of the garden. I suspect the Predecessor, when he took the plot 30, 40 or 50 years ago, (accounts vary), put an experimental fork into the rubble and glass infested ground and said, "aye, right", and did no gardening there. This year, this year, it will be brought back into cultivation.
I have to keep reminding myself of this now that the Spring is well and truly under way, and the tasks proliferate. Only the floor of the shed is treated. Only maybe 20% of the pile of rubble has been reduced by the 7lb hammer to small bits for the shed-base. The hedgerow: my wee gorse plants - put in the ground too soon - are getting choked by weeds. And I haven't riddled the glass out of... anywhere, lately.
One thing I have managed to do: the old greenhouse area is no more. first I excavated it, then knocked out the old wall, then cleared the rubble and its old path, and finally levelled the ground, filling in the excavation trenches. It's still pretty rough, still needs riddled and there's a lot of glass and rubble and god knows what else in there yet.
Back in the beginning, Summer 2015, this was all weeds, rubbish, stacks of old doors and windows, that rotten old shed, inexplicable mounds of earth, and of course the old greenhouse foundation wall, which seemed like it had been there for centuries, a permanent unmovable fixture shored up by ramparts of earth and timber, commanding the entire plot.
Now, it's a bed, a nice big bed of infested soil which can be cleaned and restructured into good earth for growing. This is the heart of the garden. I suspect the Predecessor, when he took the plot 30, 40 or 50 years ago, (accounts vary), put an experimental fork into the rubble and glass infested ground and said, "aye, right", and did no gardening there. This year, this year, it will be brought back into cultivation.
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