A Return To The Land II

There's a lot of water running down through the allotment. This is a feature of the site - so much so that the digging of ditches is written into the agreement, and forms one of the tasks of the monthly communal work days which are also part of the deal. The previous occupant of my plot would seem to have attempted to dig all kind of wee trenches. I've discussed this with The Old Man and spent six weeks thinking about it. It needs a fairly deep (two spits) ditch just inside the perimeter. This should take the water away from where it is now - springing up in the middle of the plot. It's all very rocky, so I should have enough rocks to fill up the ditches in due course, so that they double as drainage and as a perimeter path.

On the outside of the path I'm going to plant blackcurrant bushes. There's a bit of history to the particular plants: our garden in Hedworth had a blackcurrant bush growing by the front gate. One year, I took a lot of cuttings from it, and they found their way to the allotment, where they flourished. Now The Old Man has taken a third generation of cuttings, and I've brought them up from Tyneside in buckets. They're all showing buds.

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