Tired and emotional

I am quite recovered from the escapades of Friday or "LachlantheBoy and the flu remedies" as it will now forever be known. He is entirely all right, at least he's as all right as he was before he took them.

Despite the fact that I'm still full of whatever it is I'm full of, I had to go to the allotment today because a) my onion sets were sitting here still festering in their packet and untouched since they arrived in February and b) Thompson and Morgan will soon be delivering the array of veg plants that I ordered so that I wouldn't be able to say "I'll leave it until next year" and risk losing our plot. You may think I have already lost the plot but no gentle reader, that hasn't happened quite yet.

So Surrealo Son came to the gardenwith me while the Painter did some shopping. He only came to help me carry the tools and asking him to do some shearing of the common paths was apparently rather too strenuous and he left soon after.

We had cleared the bed for the onions last weekend before LTB's asthma came back with avengeance; I didn't feel like I could leave Arty Daughter and Surrealo Son with the responsibility of looking after him with a serious attack imminent so today was the first day we were really able to get back down there.

I turned the whole bed over again and gleaned yet more couch grass and dandelion roots and then riddled the bed and removed the hitherto undiscovered part of the Fosse Way that is my allotment. In true Roman tradition I am removing some of the stone to cover the pathways, even giving them a nice cambre in order to allow the rain (what rain?) to run off.

Our mystery fruit trees seem to be a nectarine, apricot or possibly plum not cherries as I thought last year and there are five of them all with fruit set so it's quite exciting.

The onion sets went in this afternoon, unfortunately some of the red ones had gone for a burton because I hadn't taken them out of the jiffy bag but there are too many other things in life to worry about so I'm just going to shrug and say an internal "so what" and not give myself a hard time about them. There are also strawberries, some potatoes through and red and white currants developing nicely.

My climbing rose Maigold seems to have recovered from its two moves in one year and is about to flower and Climbing Sweet Dreams is still thriving despite the fact it was an Asda bargain basement in a cracked pot when Dad bought it for me.

We also replaced the Wolf Tools multichange handle and rake which had been nicked. I was going to wait as Tom, the old guy on the allotment next door, gave me an old rake of his which was very kind but being handleless makes my hoes unusable and so I splashed out.

Two beds up and running the fruit patch is also going to be home to globe artichokes and sweetcorn, possibl the tomatoes too but for the rest of it some weed supressant fabric is the order of the day. I wonder if my lovely mum will mind giving it as a birthday present?

Enjoy your gardening.