Well it’s been a while.  What with the pre-christmas snow, christmas, being poorly before new years eve, the holiday (and proposal!) and the big freeze in January we haven’t been able to do anything for what seems like months.  We popped down today with Leona but didn’t really get into any heavy work, apart from checking a few parsnips. 

The allotment seems to have survived the cold pretty well, there have been a few burst pipes around the site but even they provided some pretty ice sculptures!  Even the chickens have coped pretty well thanks to some left over straw from the christmas show.  I felt most sorry for the rhubarb – it had launched back into life following the warm autumn, obviously thinking it was spring, before being clobbered by 6 inches of snow.  It has now definitely gone back into it’s proper winter mode.

Today we realised we still have quite a lot to get done before the spring comes around and we are probably not able to spend much time there for the next two weeks.  We need to build a new fence on both the old and new plots, sort the old shed out, sort the raspberry beds out and generally get everything ready for the madness of April.  Still, there are hints that spring is not that far away – today we noticed our first growth of the year along the front border, we think it’s some of the snow drops we planted in september poking through.

We also heard some sad news from Bob – Tammy, our favourite little friendly allotment cat who had been taken in by Vicky after going blind, died last week – she fell asleep on a pillow and never woke up. Bless.