Somewhere a village is missing its idiot.

Compost is Nature's miracle. Our local council encourage composting and will provide a big black compost bin for about £15. As is the way with things, when something becomes ubiquitous, some witless fool tries to trivialise or present an anthropomorphic personification of the object, usually missing the point completely. This time the claim is that compost bins look a bit like Daleks.

It's a bit of a stretch so let me clear this up before it gets out of hand like the wheelie bins.

This is a Dalek.

It is bent on the destruction of the earth and Dr Who. They've been at it since the 50s.

This is a compost bin.
It provides an environment for the accelerated breakdown of organic matter into an odourless material resembling soil. It takes about a year. It is completely ambivalent towards Christopher Ecklestone, that camp yank or the Scottish bloke.

I should add that this is the remains of our first compost heap. The majority of the good stuff has been dug into the plot now.

Where do these people get their ideas? Do they qualify for a halfwit diploma if they say something really stupid once every couple of weeks. Is Boris Johnson their leader?

I hope that bubble stays blank for all our sakes.
Who wants to bet that I'll soon find some one selling compost bins with blue balls stuck to them and a head like a tank's gun turret that rotates in the wind. Sheesh! I think I'm ranting.

Can I dig it? Yes you can!

We are double digging the top plot. I can't begin to tell you how boring this is. Still at least it was very hard work and look a really long time!

We had a massive harvest from the crops on this part of the plot (Tomatos, sweet corn and tomotillos) The ying to this particular yang is that the crops sucked the soil dry. By the end of September the soil was as hard as concrete and did not contain an ounce of organic matter.

Let me walk you through it.

Dig a trench and load the soil in front of you.
Clean out the trench and put that soil on top of the first lot.

Then break up the soil in the bottom of the trench and the add lots of organic matter in on top. Nettles, chopped up crops, old compost and newspaper it all goes in.


Then fill the hole by raking back the soil dug out ealier.

Oooh! Nice and tidy.

Repeat.

It's not as fun as it sounds. I'll confess that a trip to the Tesco fresh veg counter might be easier.

My butt it overfloweth.

It's October and the long shadows cast over the plot around 4pm. The weather is still decent but things are changing.

You know how irritating it is when, for what ever reason, you have to spend even a few hours without running water. The chairman decided unilaterally and without notice that he would turn of the water at 10am last Saturday.

"There were frosts in Scotland last night" he said.

It was 26 degrees in Paris last night. What's his flipping point?

Harry politely disagreed saying that frosts were not due in October. Chairman said "Aaah well" in a way I imagine he thought conveyed some sage Jedi like understanding of the weather patterns of Western Europe that had some how escaped the Met Office and the Weather channel and shuffled off home.

"Yeah. Said Harry rolling his eyes. "I bet his water buts are full" and carried on digging. A quick investigation proved Harry correct. I can't tell you the langauge I used when I saw the chairman's water butts capped and so brimming with water that the ground beneath them was still damp from the over flow. I did scare birds from the trees and spooked a cat from the raspberry canes.

Our butts are full these two and another one is filling up from the shed roof gutter system. But that's not the point.

I am free from the petty tyrany of the small minded thanks to a bit of hose pipe and an old squash bottle.



It's a mark of my trusting nature that I half expected to be greeted by a frost on Sunday morning. I'm here to tell you that it was a lovely night, I spent a very large part of it drinking outside in the garden with some friends. We even had the hot tub on.

Never underestimate peoples ability to remind you how important they think they are.

Oi !

Look at him. Just hanging out. Scratching.

Who Me?

Too slow tubby!