February 3rd, 2009 by Rich

A bit of a catch-up post today following a busy weekend. We spent many an hour Saturday and Sunday down on the allotment mainly concentrating on getting paths sorted. We had previously put boards up to mark paths and a nice area to have table and chairs etc so this weekend we put down a load of weed proof membrane and covered it with wood chippings. We were fortunate that the council supplied us with both membrane and chippings, the down side was the chippings were in the roadway behind and along from our allotment. This meant that we had to fill up a wheelbarrow, wheel it down to our fence and empty it over the fence into another barrow to be placed where we needed it. As you can imagine, this took a little bit of time and the unloading over the fence became the most tiring part! By the end of Saturday we were both achy and tired but pleased with the transformation that we had made, no more slipping on mud outside the shed and somehow it just looked so much nicer.

Being achy and tired, clearly the best remedy for this was to have friends around to drink beer, eat take away and play rayman raving rabbids on the wii, after all shaking remotes around like a loon has to be good for you right?

Sunday ended up being a little more of a relaxed day, we got up late and headed down Scours Lane for a few more hours of membrane and chipping action. We didn’t do huge amounts as we were still a bit achy and it was bitterly cold, fortunately I remembered to pick the mugs up so we nice hot coffee helped me along the way. By the time we left I was happy with our progress, we have probably covered about half the area we need to with the chippings, on the whole the bits left to do now are the paths between the raised beds.

This photo gives an idea of what we have done, you can see the path leading down to the “patio” area, all around the shed and across to and in between the greenhouses (there are two honest! there is one behind the one you can see.)

What we will do this coming weekend, I don’t know I guess that depends on the weather!