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an update
I've not been around much lately. For this blog, that's not such an unusual thing, but even in my other online hangouts I've been much less present over the last six months or so than I used to be. There's just been a lot going on.
The main thing is that my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer last September, after a long summer of shuffling back and fore between various different doctors for a battery of tests. He's on hormone therapy and doing well, the oncologist is optimistic that he still has a few years left in him, but it is a terminal diagnosis and as such came as a bit of a hammer blow. We're still coming to terms with it.
In Other News, it's been just over a year now since I got my allotment (a year and a week, to be precise!).
It's been a strange sort of year, in many ways, and I find it disheartening sometimes to look at other allotments on social media and see how much more they seem to have achieved in the same timescale, so I have to remind myself that those are influencer allotmenters who all have much more resource than I do - they are working their allotments in pairs or as extended family groups, they have greater financial resources as well as manpower, easy access to transport, and admit to receiving lots of freebies from suppliers in exchange for a shoutout on social media. I don't have any of that, so everything I've achieved has been done by myself, by hand, mostly on foot, in stolen moments when my time isn't taken up with other responsibilities - and when I think about it like that, I think I'm doing okay, really.
My plot has gone from this (photo taken the day I first got the key and installed my lockbox for tools, ready to get started):
To this (photo taken last week):
Not bad, if I do say so myself. I've got leeks ready to harvest as and when they are needed, garlic and shallots overwintering and doing well, overwintering seedlings coming on in the greenhouse, fruit trees neatly pruned, thicket of self-seeded saplings all chopped down, the overgrowth has been tamed, new compost bays built, and new growing beds set up ready to be uncovered for planting.
(The plot behind mine is completely abandoned, though, mine ends just behind the black box and green bin you can see in the photo, so I'm going to have to make an effort to keep clear space between that and my plot this year, now that I've unearthed the row of blackcurrant bushes at the back of my plot from all the brambles coming over from behind.)
It's been another mild winter, mind, so let's all keep our fingers crossed we don't experience another Slugageddon like last year!
The main thing is that my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer last September, after a long summer of shuffling back and fore between various different doctors for a battery of tests. He's on hormone therapy and doing well, the oncologist is optimistic that he still has a few years left in him, but it is a terminal diagnosis and as such came as a bit of a hammer blow. We're still coming to terms with it.
In Other News, it's been just over a year now since I got my allotment (a year and a week, to be precise!).
It's been a strange sort of year, in many ways, and I find it disheartening sometimes to look at other allotments on social media and see how much more they seem to have achieved in the same timescale, so I have to remind myself that those are influencer allotmenters who all have much more resource than I do - they are working their allotments in pairs or as extended family groups, they have greater financial resources as well as manpower, easy access to transport, and admit to receiving lots of freebies from suppliers in exchange for a shoutout on social media. I don't have any of that, so everything I've achieved has been done by myself, by hand, mostly on foot, in stolen moments when my time isn't taken up with other responsibilities - and when I think about it like that, I think I'm doing okay, really.
My plot has gone from this (photo taken the day I first got the key and installed my lockbox for tools, ready to get started):
To this (photo taken last week):
Not bad, if I do say so myself. I've got leeks ready to harvest as and when they are needed, garlic and shallots overwintering and doing well, overwintering seedlings coming on in the greenhouse, fruit trees neatly pruned, thicket of self-seeded saplings all chopped down, the overgrowth has been tamed, new compost bays built, and new growing beds set up ready to be uncovered for planting.
(The plot behind mine is completely abandoned, though, mine ends just behind the black box and green bin you can see in the photo, so I'm going to have to make an effort to keep clear space between that and my plot this year, now that I've unearthed the row of blackcurrant bushes at the back of my plot from all the brambles coming over from behind.)
It's been another mild winter, mind, so let's all keep our fingers crossed we don't experience another Slugageddon like last year!
no subject
But your allotment looks amazing to me - your work definitely shows!