moving on slowly

Thankyou herhimnbryn.
He is on his journey, I' m starting mine.
Mornings are still difficult, but hold on to normal things. The garden always needs something doing and that helps a lot. People come and talk to me there, just as they did to Col on his! Not just about him, which is good as we all need to move on.

We have had sporadic rain, with some decent length dry spells, but it is still chilly.
The canal is a foot lower than the usual low point, and the overflows are bone dry. Colour it Green has noted on a different forum that a spring she knows, that overflows in a stream, reached the August low point in May and the stream dried up. Which is where the Southern English place name "Winterbourne" -winter stream- comes from.
The present rainfall is hiding the facts from many people. Or is it that they don't want to see them and the fact that they have been profligate with resources- not just water- for far too long.

The potato crop is low. I have lifted a couple of plants and considering that they have finished flowering, there is not much there. If we get a lot of rain those that are there will regrow and split and not store well. We are all watching like hawks for the first signs of late blight, a well as the many other things that attack potatoes!!
I've had a fair crop of redcurrants by picking as they ripen, now it is a race against the blackbirds for the last of the crop!. I've wrapped the Morello cherry in a mini polytunnel cover, carefully tied like a lollipop cover to keep the birds out! It has holes enough to let the rain in but keep the birds out! Two years ago I ended up with two cherries...last year I had about five pounds or more, so it does work.

I'm tidying the paths and edges so that it will be easier to garden and harvest when it is wet, putting down strips of old conveyor belt! It looks tidy too. It might not be the final solution to the problem, but it is better than cheap groundcover in two respects- it is free and wont degrade in no time, like the latter! It will still look good while I work out how I really want the paths.

This morning I must do more preparation work for the New Shed, before the Allotment Committee Meeting. I think 11am is a good time for this- late enough so you have time to garden first and if it goes on too long they'll miss lunch!!!!