February 19th, 2009 by Rich

I’ve just read this article on the BBC which has cheered up my morning.  The shortened highlights are that the National Trust has released land on many of it properties to allow 1,000 new allotments to be created. This is great news and is very much in contrast with allotment closures that we have seen recently (our old site Cow Lane in Reading, Manor Park in London.)

If you are in local or national government, take note: people want allotments we do not need our exisitng sites destroyed for such things as a car park for a private company (network rail) or a footpath for the olympics.

February 17th, 2009 by Rich

I had said I would post the varieties for the fruit trees we purchased but  I forgot so here you go:

Apple: Cox’s Orange Pippin

Pear: Buerre Hardy

Cherry: Stella

We hope to get a plum tree this week as Aldi have some on offer for a little over four quid, we’ve also started looking at which varieties to get to cross polinate the apple and pears.  Once we have decided I shall let you all know what we went for.

February 17th, 2009 by Rich

This will no doubt end up being a long post as 3 days were spent down at Scours Lane this weekend and this is the first spare time I have had to post anything … where to begin …..I know, Friday!

Friday I had booked the day off on the grounds the weather was going to be ok so I thought I could get on and do a few jobs here and there. It ended up I was there from about 10.30 until 4.30 ish

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Grrr halfwits setting off fire alarms … now where was I … Oh yes Friday , so a pretty full day down there, mainly doing some prep work for Saturday. We had arranged for our friends Tony and Claire to come over Saturday to finish off the paths, this meant I had a big pile of poo to shift before that. So first and rather wet and smelly job of the day was to shift the poo pile temporarily into some three of the raised beds. This did prompt some questions of fellow allotmenteers as to what I was going to grow in beds of pure manure , I then had to explain what I was doing to prevent them from thinking I am madder than they do currently!

Once this was done, I then positioned our two dalek composters at the top of two paths on top of some membrane with a paving slab in front to allow easy shovel-compost interfacing. I then dug in the final raised bed which we had been unable to do with the poo pile where it was. After this a few edging boards were placed by the greenhouses and I began to dig a pond out. After much deliberation I went for a simple figure of eight shape, as far as dimensions, it is made up f two circles approximately random length of metal in diameter! I dug the pond out to about 4 inches in depth ready for Loo to inspect the shape and make sure she was happy, after all she wouldn’t want the wrong shaped pond! (I reckon I might get a slap for that ) Once that was done it was time to head home and rest before another long day on the plot.

Saturday was kicked off with a jolly nice bacon roll and a small amount of time playing animal crossing then it was off to the allotment. We had arranged to collect Tony and Claire at 2pm so this gave us a good few hours to get membrane down on the remaining paths. After so much practice doing this we worked together as a well oiled machine and the job was done and coffee made and drunk before I headed off to pick up T&C. Once we returned the four of us kicked into action, Tony and I shovelled the chippings into the barrow, wheeled it down to our fence and tipped into another barrow that Loo was waiting with, she then wheeled this to the appropriate area emptied it out and then Claire took on the job of raking it all out into place. A couple of hours later and we were done, all the paths done and it looked great. We reckon we saved about a day of work by having two helpers so that was great. By the time this was done Claire (who wont thank me for this) needed the toilet, as she is posh (so she claims as a Cavershamite) she wouldn’t use the bucket in the shed, this meant we were now on deadline so we decided to do one last quick job, which was for Tony and I to erect a garden arch by the gate, this was something we had purchased the Sunday before, a bargain at £9.99! And here is a lovely photo of us sorting it out:

As a thank you for their help we got take away and beer in and sat down to watch My Name is Bruce starring the one and only Bruce Campbell, I high class cheezie flick!

Sunday arrived and we were both a little tired so we decided to only have a two or three hours down the allotment. As the weather wasn’t too bad we decided to get the shed painted, we have had the paint/preservative stuff for ages now but not had the weather to get it done. The shed is now a rather fetching faded blue colour and doesn’t stand out quite as much as it did when it was just brand new wood colour.

The results of our weekend work are here, you can see the composters, paths, shed and arch all in one photo. Now we just have the actual gardening tasks to do!

February 9th, 2009 by Rich

Last week I took delivery of my new toys, a nice A/V Receiver and 5.1 speaker set. I felt I deserved a new toy to fully enjoy the delight of blu-ray with. The system is now all set up, speakers on walls, inputs plugged in and it sounds great (just ask the neighbours!) Over the weekend we watched a few movies but none as good as the first one but this was not down to the content of the film, let me explain…

We loaded up the disc, turned all the bits and pieces on and just as we are about to press play Seefur comes along to sit on my lap and have a sleep, nothing unusual so far. Then the film started and the fun started! Over their lives the cats have learnt all about the tv, it is shiny and they get told off if they try to scratch it, it makes noise and they will mainly ignore it. Now we have a cat in the midst of 5.1 surround and she can’t get over the fact that sound is coming from all around and what is that thing that keep flying past (the answer was Hancock ~ I highly recommend it.) This freaked Seefur out and after 10 minutes she couldn’t hack it anymore and retreated upstairs to the bed.

I’m not a cruel man but I thought this was funny as hell, if you have cats get a surround system, it will no doubt provide hours of fun!

February 9th, 2009 by Rich

Contrary to weather reports, Saturday was a nice day. It started off a little on the chilly side but as soon as the sun came out it was nice and warm (warm for February that is.) We kicked off Saturday morning with a trip to the badlands or Reading (known locally as Whitley!) to visit the Lidl there as our local one didn’t have the fruit trees that were on offer this week. Fortunately they had plenty in stock but none of the varieties they had advertised so some off the cuff choices were made. After a few minutes of deliberation we had ourselves 1 cherry tree, 1 apple tree and 1 pear tree (I can’t remember the varieties off hand so will post them later.) And how much did this mini orchard cost us? I hope you are all sat down…. they came to a grand totoal of ……. £11.97! I honestly don’t know how they sell ‘em that cheap and still make a profit. We then left the badlands unscathed and returned home for bacon butties.

Around an hour later we set off down the allotment to get some more paths covered in wood chipping, we aimed to at least get a single path from the gate to join up with what we did last week so that we could get from gate to shed without getting muddy and dare I say it without having to resort to wellies.

Four to five hours later we had met our goal and more we have completed the central path to the raised bed and have two paths down the raised beds and to the gate. This now leaves four paths around raised beds at the top end of the plot and the fence side and behind the greenhouses to do. By my reckoning I think we will have another 11/2 to 2 days of work to do that if it was that simple. However when do I do things the simple way? Behind the greenhouses I want to get a small pond put in to attract in frogs, toads etc. This obviously needs to be done before the wood chippings can go down around it. The other slight problem we have is there is still a giant poo pile at the front that needs shifting to allow the last raised bed to be put in properly and for us to put the path down. Still a fair bit of work to get done but its starting to look good, it will be even better once the paths are finished and we have trimmed the excess membrane away.

Here is a photo from the gate showing the two paths we did: (notice the new paving slabs by the gate to prevent the gate catching on bark ~ clever eh!)

As for the fruit trees, given the less than favourable weather conditions at the moment, we have placed those in the shed to protect them until we are able to get them in the ground.

We celebrated our hard work with Chinese, which was very welcome and then sat down to watch a film …… my work was done!

February 5th, 2009 by Rich

This evening we placed our very first geocache! We started geocaching June 2007 and have now found 229 caches but to date have been a little slack at placing any. Well today we placed one, it’s called “Can U” find it? and you can find it on the geocaching site here.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that some of you reading this have no idea what geocaching is, so I shall try to explain….

Geocaching is essentially an electronic treasure hunt, a geocache is a container for which you have gps co-ordinates for (although sometimes you have to work out what they are as a puzzle.) You then use your gps unit to find the cache  where you will at minimum a log book to sign but depending on the size of the container, you will also find *stuff* (for the knowledgeable read as geo-tat! ) The idea with that is that if you take something out, you put something in.

To add to the “sport” (really lets face it, it ain’t a sport more of a past-time) you also get trackable items, these can either be in the form of special coins or (geocoins) or dog tags (travelbugs). These have unique tracking codes on them so you can place them in a cache for others to move on and log, this means you can track these items around the world. In our cache we placed today we also deposited two travelbugs which we are competing in a race with! Simplistically the race is to see which travelbug travels the furthest in a given time (I’d tell you the end date but memory failure is happening!).We have a whole blog dedicated to the race, if you are interested check it out here.

If my poorly worded description of geocaching has interested you at all and you want more info then do go and check out the official geocaching website.

On the allotment front, not quite sure what we will get done this coming weekend, the weather is still looking pretty cack and if it is frozen or snowy there will be little we can get on with which will be a bit of a pain to say the least!

February 3rd, 2009 by Rich

Monday was meant to be a nice lazy day for me, I had the day booked off as I knew I was unlikely to be in a fit state to work as I stayed up to watch the Superbowl so I knew bedtime would be around 4am. The game was a corker and was in the balance right up to the last 5 seconds of play when the Steelers secured their victory, it was a game the really showed why the Steelers and the Cardinals got to Superbowl, I’m glad I stayed up to watch it.

Ahhh lovely sleep, wait what’s that f*&£ing noise …. arggghhh, yes no one told Seefur that I was meant to be having a nice sleep. I managed to put up with her being a royal pain for about 2 hours and ended up getting up bleary eyed at 9am. I knew snow had been predicted but was none the less surprised when I looked out of the window to see just how much snow there was.

On a day where there is snow and  schools are shut, public transport is cancelled the country is in mass hysteria, what is the first thought that comes into my head? Hmmm I should get down the allotment and get that snow off the greenhouse roof! Yes truly that is the thought I had upon seeing the snow, I guess this proves I’m a real allotment man!

The drive over there and back was a little interesting, (mainly because it appears the world is full of morons who can’t drive) whilst over there I quickly brushed off the snow off the greenhouse and the shed roof to make sure they weren’t going to get damaged by the weight of the snow. Having done that I took a quick photo and headed back to the warmth of the house and plonked myself in front of animal crossing on the wii so that I could weed and plant flowers

The difference a day can make:

This also shows nicely shows how much more wood chip we need to shift as you can see all of the paths around the raised beds

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!

January 29th, 2009 by Rich

If you are I have to insist you do something radical, drag yourself back to college and study something worthwhile and useful, hell I don’t know make it “media studies” I’m sure your tiny brain can cope with that. If you think that’s a bit unreasonable please find a bus and jump under it, you are wasting your life and more importantly you are wasting valuable  time in other peoples lives ~ you are a spawn of satan.

I shall back up my idea with some facts for you all, July 2008 I started a new job, I did everything I was supposed to do, filled in forms brought in documents to interviews etc. I get all the way through to the final interview when Human Remains remember they were supposed to ask me to do a psychometric before my FIRST interview. Despite filling in answers indicating I can get a little *frustrated* with r-tards I got the job, during the first week I ensured a copy of my passport was provided to HR to prove that I am British, I also ensure that the medical history forms are completed and returned (hey free healthcare is good!:-) )

So time goes on and the true nature of the waste of space known as hr comes to fruition, “We don’t appear to have had your medical forms returned” Oh really, funny how I have been sent all of the records and healthcare card already then isnt it …. I chose to ignore them and say I would do it, still my medical cover is in place so a win all around if you ignore the fact they have LOST sensitive personal data.

Time continues to pass … whats this a phone call from some other HRtard, “We don’t appear to have a copy of your passport to prove you are OK to work here….” Oh FFS already, I politely inform that they have already had a copy and get told “oh sorry it must have got misplaced, we will need another copy”. Oh hell you’ve lost a copy of my passport, now what’s the worst that could happen if that got into the wrong hands …… ARRRGGHHHHHH

Again I try my time honoured method of ignore the HRtard… sadly it hasn’t worked, today I get an email telling me they have not had my id yet and now it is urgent so can I please let them know when would be convenient for me to come and see them with it. Lets just back this the fuck up, you lose my health records, you lose a copy of my passport due to your incompetence and now you expect me to make the effort to come and see you?!?!?!? Just who the fuck do you think you are?!?!

So in conclusion, if you work in HR you are nothing but a waste of space, please do the honourable thing and find something worthwhile to do with your life or perhaps I will?

January 28th, 2009 by Rich

So I thought I would post a photo of our new plot on Scours Lane, it was taken by my *better* half a few weeks ago, not a lot going on really, some raised beds laying around, our old greenhouse and  a new shed in the wrong place! The only real reason for posting this is so that you see what progress we have made when I post a newer photo in the days to come (unless I forget which is entirely possible – after all whilst there is beer to be drunk it will be!)

In the foreground you will see a nice big pile of poo! Well poo and straw actually, the pile is now half the size it was as we have spread some around ready for the ground to dry out a bit before I get to take the rotovator out for its first run. The rotovator was a brilliant find of mine from rehomeyourstuff, a website I suggest you check out.