Monday

Good morning!
It's half past four, way too early to tell what they day will be like, but it's not feeling particularly cold and the heating isn't on yet.
(having just written that, I have sneezed five times and now have shivers but that's the sneezes, not the room temp)

After tuition yesterday, I knocked together a vegetable crumble (I love cheesy crumble topping) and then got on with next week's planning.  Half way there for the week now!

Beth turned up and we had lunch, followed by some serious spending.  No, not that bad really, all allotment stuff.

We have a fancy to try asparagus so we looked at some that Beth had tracked down earlier which is already in manure blocks and just needs popping into the ground and bought ten plants.  We'll see how that goes and then decide if it's enough or whether we need more (or whether it becomes a 'no, thank you'.  According to the bumph, while we cannot harvest this year, we can pick very lightly next year and the third year will be all systems go!  A bit like rhubarb really.

Then we looked at raspberries.  We got a golden autumn fruiting one (All Gold) , another autumn fruiting type (Polka) and a long fruiting July to October variety (Joan J).  They all fruit on that year's growth which makes them a lot easier to control and with any luck they will give us some fruit next year.  We had to buy them in threes although we only wanted two of each kind, so we may have fruit in the garden as well as down the allotment.  I read that raspberries are great for containers.

Still working hard in front of the computer, we bought some hardware - netting, ground cover membrane, pegs, etc.  However, we couldn't find garden gloves that were a) small, b) simple, c) cheap and d) latex free so off we went to Wyvale to have some fun looking round.  We found gloves on offer although there were some lovely ones, all girly and flowery that were also on special.  Sadly, they only had medium size and the fingers were just too long for comfort.  Never mind, we got six pairs of plain ones for a tenner (we get through gloves quite quickly) plus some bulbs to pop into corners on the allotment and they were on special too, much to our delight.

I nearly forgot - we also got some over-wintering broad beans which we will sow before the ground gets hard (if, indeed, it does get hard!).

All that spending was a bit exhausting really but never mind, we got more or less everything that we need.

Today Beth intends to do a dummy run in the rush hour out to where she will be working, to see how much time she needs to allow.  Then she's coming here and we're going - guess where.  Today we are planting out the rest of the leeks and some survivor kale.  I call it that because I sowed seeds, they came up, they got nibbled to death and then, over the summer, they resurrected themselves and we have little plants that deserve a chance to make their way out in the big old allotment world.

So even though winter is coming, it won't be so dead down the lotty!

What we didn't do is pot on the strawberry plants or deal with the tomatoes, so I have that delight to come.

Should be a good day.  Now we just need cooperative weather!