I have to say I’m feeling a lot better after a couple of nice warm days. The soil feels better too, We’ve had the soil turned over for us and started spreading compost and there’s hope for the future. Strange how it only takes a few days to turn things round. After a couple of false starts we’ve even got the community allotment project off the ground.

That’s what I wrote on Saturday, but didn’t have time to continue. By Monday morning we’d had a cold snap, a cloudburst and I’d watched the jackdaws pulling up the newly-planted community onion sets. Now I like jackdaws, but I’m also fond of onions, and I do like cropping what I plant. It was a bit of a moral dilemma, which I resolved by taking the Josie Wales view – “Jackdaws gotta eat, same as worms.”

Anyway – to Monday. I love the smell of meetings in the morning, which is good because that’s what we had. I walked away with a page of notes, which was a bit like the curate’s egg – good in parts. The headline news is that we will be getting some help with the gardening, both in terms of labour and plants. We’ve struggled over the years and though the display gets better every year, much of it depends on one of the neighbours who gives us surplus plants.

Part of the help featured a small digger, which broke up the ground for the second keyhole bed. It was a mixed blessing as it also carved a trench for a water pipe (hooray!) by digging up our newly rotovated bed (boooo!). Still, we will have water, and the bed has benefitted from some extra digging I suppose.

We’ve also filled some tyres and planted potatoes, using a lot of compost. I’m sad to use it (do I sound like a compost miser here?) but quite proud that we’ve managed to produce so much in the last year. It’s a bit variable and included quite a lot of plastic despite all the care we took, but a lot of it is black and friable just like proper compost. The bits that aren’t so good are still good enough to throw on the ground and the bits that aren’t good enough to throw on the ground are already in another bin waiting for a second chance.

Just in case you think I’m a bit dull talkig about compost look at this club. I found it while I was looking for Be Nice to Nettles week. I’m getting a bit worried that I can’t find details for this year.