School holidays in sunny Essex

First day of the school holidays and first break in of the year. Coincidence? I don't believe in them. Day one and they are already bored. Scheezh!

We learned that a padlock is only as strong as the thing is its screwed to, in this case 15 year old wood. Hmmm.

These feral kids need stopping. In these more genteel times children are protected by laws which mean that they can't be tortured or imprisoned against their will. (oh wait a minute, I think every one is protected by those laws) so we'll have to let the police deal with this one.

The kids climb over the fence to take a short cut through to the high street during the day. I guess they see all the sheds and think they must be full of valuable stuff. There is, but not things that are valuable outside of an allotment. There must be £60 worth of seeds in the shed. We'll have to get the anti climb paint out and paint the fence again. Hopefully that's all it will take and they won't pester us again.

Fortunately we did not lose anything important. It appears that they have only taken a gas burner which is inconvenient but it's replaceable. We should be grateful that they didn't use the thing to burn the place down.

I'm off to watch Commando (starring Arnold Swarchenegger) to practice making booby traps. Hahahaha!

Never red

We need flowers on the allotment. I'm not a flower person but I understand the basics of pollination so we grow flowers too. Being a Tottenham Hotspur fan I have made an effort not to grow red flowers. It's complicated, and If you don't know this is not really the place to explain it. Think... Yankees v Mets or Yorkshire v Lancashire or England v France.

Here are some pictures of nature in all it's splendour which also happen to be in Spurs colours.


Sun flowers. If I had a favourite flower it would be these. Of course I don't have a favourite flower because I'm a bloke.


They are kind of pretty though.

Borrage. It's edible, in the same way that hay is edible. This is the chap you need to attract bees. They go nuts for this stuff. This is a big hairy beast of a plant that grows like a weed and has huge sprays of these blue flowers. Bees are attracted to the borrage and then they spot your fruit trees and bushes and the bees pollinate the fruit trees too. When it's finished growing cut it up and put on your compost heap. Borrage is your buddy.


Yep. That's an ant. Click on the picture to see it in full size and stare in awe at the Panasonic Lumix DMC FX12. Sorry! Mother Nature, I meant Mother Nature.

It's not a patio

It became increasingly clear that we were going to need a proper working area at the allotment. Until now the work took place at Coryn and Harry's and was driven down to site. This is becoming increasingly tiresome and it's wrecking our cars. In addition it is becoming necessary to have a flat firm, dry, clean, area just to sit down and have a cup of tea from time to time.

Ladies and gentlemen directly in front of the spider zoo I give you "My flat, firm, dry, clean work area." Woo Yeah! It doesn't have flowers a washing line or a barbecue therefore it's not a patio. Really.

These are blueberry bushes not flowers. See, it's still not a patio.

It's not a swiming pool.

The continuing saga of the greenhouse. Remember this wreck?

We've moved the greenhouse out of the way for a bit and in its place Harry has built some footings which will raise and support our fiendish Frankenstein greenhouse plan. Unfortunately, it does rather look like we've started making a swimming pool.

La.

Currently we have one green house which has no glass, no door and a very suspect window mechanism. My Uncle Paul is donating his greenhouse which currently has a door and glass and an operational window.

As the greenhouses are the same size, we are going to join the two greenhouses together and glaze the two with polycarbonate. The plan is to join the back of Paul's greenhouse to the front of mine and remove the cross members that only support glass. Then the front of Paul's greenhouse provides a working door. This will leave us a Crystal Palace style greenhouse still only six feet wide but now eighteen feet long and seven feet high.

What could possibly go wrong? I'll let you know how we get on.