A whole weekend of sunshine with rain overnight - ideal for watering in the gardening of the day before. Today I’ve finished planting my 5 new beds. Peas and French beans went in yesterday and today marrows, squashes, pumpkins and courgettes have joined them as companions. There’s a rhythm developing between my digging, sowing, manuring, watering and transplanting. It’s a collaboration between the weather, the seeds becoming plants, the creatures inhabiting the air and the ground and me.
I’m planning to have hens and am gradually making space for them. I decided a strip of grass by the side of the path will make an ideal hen run but this has required the re-transplanting of my ex-allotment fruit that I put in last autumn and the garlic that went in with it. I am now left with four long thin beds full of very good soil so I’ve been shifting to my new vegetable beds. I’m re-filling the holes with the turfs I’d removed and stacked inside my cold-frame. It’s physically demanding work but triply rewarding in providing ground for a hen run, well-filled beds and a soon to be usable cold-frame. Digging out the beds has been an oddly uncanny experience as they resemble a series of small graves… a solemn but reassuringly ordinary reminder of the grief I am still processing.
