Saturday 3rd November 2007                        
                                             

Having missed out on the last three weeks of allotmenting due to either illness or DIY, I had the biggest urge to come up to the plot because I'd really missed it. I got there at 10am and saw plants were dying back and it felt like the growing season was well and truly over. I wanted to finish off that darned shed once and for all so cut the door down to size. However, I'd forgotten to bring a pencil so I ended up using masking tape as a guide to cut everything down. It was a bit dodgy but it seemed to work. I chiselled out some wood on the door frame and the door to fit the hinges and found that I needed to cut the door down a bit more.

By this time Tim had arrived on the scene and we gathered together all the local allotmenteers for a communal cup of tea. Roger, Nigel, Katya, Tim and myself stood around gassing and then we all got on with our bit of work. Tim went off and started to remove some weeds from the French beans and I screwed the door to the frame. I soon found out that I had cut the door down just a little too much in terms of width. If I had put the lock on the lock piece-thingy wouldn't have reached to the framework, so it would just be flapping around the place. I decided to give up on the door for the day and get back to the ground.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             

First off, though, Tim and I surveyed what was going on around our 20-perch plot. The beans that we had harvested a few weeks back and put in the greenhouse had dried out for next years seeds. It was quite incredible to think that we had grown loads of beans this year for food and grown the same beans for seed. Bonkers! We took a look around the plot and the Jerusalem Articokes were going black and dying off.

Tim cut the once proud and tall stalks down to around 30cm in height and then left then chucked the cut stems on our bonfire (which will never burn because it's far too soggy!) Tim showed me what he'd dug over the past few weeks while I hadn't been there. He's dug a lot and I felt quite ashamed. Still, I did take a couple of days off to build a shed. The fact that it's still not finished is neither here nor there.

We had some vegetables growing in the way of sprouts. Although they are hideous and are a staple Christmas veg ONLY, it was still really nice to have grown something and for it to have been successful.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
To try alleviate my guilt, Tim and I removed the bean plants and all the weeds in our top patch. It was becoming quite unruly so it was nice to try and at least get rid of some of the excess weeds. As we pulled up the beans we put them in a bucket. We had the luminous yellow French beans and some black ones too. We managed to fill up a bucket of each. In the same patch of land we also found some potatoes we must have missed. We had half a bucket of Desiree and Pink Fir Apples by the time we had dug through the ground. It was beginning to get dark so having dug up an artichoke plant and some carrots, I set off and let Tim tend to the bees because I hadn't brought my suit.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
  Saturday 10th November 2007

Tim and I were both a little tired today, not quite sure whether to go up to the plot or not. I wanted to get the shed door sorted once and for all. We had both been working our bottoms off during the week and despite tiredness, we managed to get up to the plot at around 12:30pm. I know it's not very good but we could have just not bothered at all. I had stopped off at a local DIY store and bought some pieces of wood. I had cut the door a little too short in terms of width last week, so the lock wouldn't have worked, so I bought a length of 4cm x 0.6cm wood to stick on the edge of the door.

My cunning ploy worked, although screwing the slither of wood to the edge of the door proved a little more complicated than I thought. The door is an interior fire door and therefore not solid wood throughout. I was trying to put screws into the fire-retardant material. It didn't work very well. I got some silicone out and stuck the slither of wood to the edge of the door in the places where there was a gap or where it needed sticking. This bit of wood was then held in place with bits of masking tape. It looked like the shed door had been in an accident with lots of sticky plasters all over it.
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
And here's the science bit... concentrate. I demonstrate my genius right here by painting the lock barrel with some green paint, then impress it on the wood where the lock will need a hole. I was then able to chisel a hole into the wood on the door frame so that we could lock the door hurrah!
                                             
 
                                             
  Tim had started digging while I was badgering away with the shed. He had managed to clear quite a bit of ground. As soon as I had finished the shed I joined Tim and dug the patch of ground where the sweetcorn and onions had been. The earth was so easy to dig. The sand and rotted manure had really broken everything down. There were loads of worms in there as well compared to when we had first dug the ground. It was fabulous as it only took a couple of hours to do what we had done in a day back in February 2006.

We discussed building a fruit cage and decided to go and look at the fruit cage that a lady had built behind our plots. We walked around and saw how it was all constructed and it immediately sent our heads buzzing with ideas. We could have this... and that... and this. We already have some mesh in preparation but we just need to get a LOT of posts and wooden beams, cement, sand and a large dose of genius on our part. I'm sure we'll meet the demands a fruit cage requires... one day.