The first planting......

Whilst 'the man' was gayly picking blackberries I was doing the real work back on our grassy field! As I've mentioned before - we have a current obsession with berries and are keen to establish our own army of productive fruit bushes. The last few trips have been spent carving a suitable bed to transplant our 30 odd stawberry plants into - no easy task with couch grass and bramble roots to weed out (plenty of worms though which can only be good sign that the soil is not a barren wasteland) but finish the task I did!
A great feeling of satisfaction we had this evening (at mos-i happy hour it would appear) as we worked together to put our first little plants in the ground. Some work needs to be done to extend the bed enough to accomodate the last four plants - but essentially we have ourselves a strawberry patch! Very exciting!

It is but a small triumph of an otherwise mammouth task but it is something we can manage - as long as we find a lawnmower soon!

A Strimming we will go......

We have bricks - kindly donated by the allotment in-laws! As they have been weighing the back of the car down for the last two days - we thought we'd best do something with them before we start to wheelie. They were intended for a raised bed on the home patch but we decided a shed base at the plot was a bigger priority as already it's a little weakening carting tools backwards and forwards, and I don't always remember everything.

To solve this little frustration I've made a checklist in my notebook of things always needed (water, gloves, snacks, camera, phone etc) and also a list of likely tools to consider. Seems to be doing the trick so far.

Once we - (yes we! Despite a tricky hangover the dearly beloved was a brave and determined little soldier not to let me down on the arrangement) had moved all the bricks (which took minutes) we scratched our heads a bit and decided to make a start on the strawberry patch. Andrew cut the turf into rough squares and i began forking them out.

With some gentle persuasion he then tooled up with the strimmer, safety visor and ear plugs and started slashing about in the long grass.

An impressive vision of manliness - I'm sure you agree!

We are now agreed that a mower is the way to make lighter work of this situation - so far 'freecycle' has not yet come up with a neglected machine that could use a new home, but we also have our network of friends and family keeping an ear to the ground for such an opportunity. If we are no nearer to acquiring said item before mid September, we may have to consider purchasing one - nothing fancy just a pretty basic machine that does the job. Mr Culture has volunteered himself (with some enthusiasm) as chief mower - a happy arrangement for me and good exercise for him. We just need to watch out for all the forgotten debris of plot owners past.....such as this!