Time to confess: I’m anxious again

My brain is frazzled. I’m down. I know this because I’ve been unable to water my houseplants for the last 2 weeks. This might sound like a trivial thing, and completely absurd given that during those 2 weeks I’ve also been working full-time in a pretty demanding job, exercising regularly, interacting confidently on social media […]

The importance of going outside, even if I don’t feel like it at all…

I woke today with a headache for the second day running, after a long and tiring week. Most weeks feel a little long and tiring at the moment, just because of the general background noise of crisis and awfulness. I’m not complaining – I count myself very fortunate indeed for having a job I can […]

A cold, bright January day

It was perfect winter day today; cold air, a bright blue sky and a low, low sun. I love days like these. We walked to the allotment with the sun weakly warming our backs, stopping in the park to let it shine on our faces for a minute. I love walking to the allotment on […]

Dirt to soil

June and July came and went, just like that June was a bit of a write-off, work-wise. I was doing crazy hours, chucking myself at the task in the hope of making a little bit of a difference and absorbing myself in something constructive to try and keep myself reasonably stable and ok. I managed […]

May: promise and plenty

May is known as the hungry gap among those who grow fruit and vegetables, because the spring veg are all spent and the summer ones are yet to come. Well, it may be true that there’s precious little to eat at this time of year, but I absolutely love May in the garden and on […]

A little potter

Felt flat and shattered at the end of work today having failed to make progress on the things I wanted to make progress on. I felt like I spent the whole day in meetings going around in circles. There will be days like this, I know it’s inevitable. Progress is rarely linear, especially not in […]

Seedlings, social distancing and staying sane

Covid-19 Covid-19 has changed everything beyond all recognition, on a scale I can hardly begin to get my head around. We are not allowed outside other than to get food or medicine, for 1 hour of daily exercise in the local area, or to go to work if it’s not possible to work from home […]

Sowing seeds

I love this time of year for the lengthening days, the way everything starts quietly and in tiny ways coming to life and the hope and optimism that is involved in sowing seeds. I get most of my seeds from The Real Seed Company, because I love their general ethos, they have a good range […]

12 beds done!

There are 12 beds! They’re not completely finished, and there is a lot of digging to do, but the basic structures are there so we’ve definitely broken the back of what turned out to be a bit of a major undertaking… We had a long day of it today, in mild but grey weather and […]

3 more beds, and spring is in sight

Spent 4 hours on the allotment today, lugging more wood up to the plot, building 3 more raised beds, digging a bed over and sowing some seeds. We’ve done 8 out of 12 beds now – if we get one more done tomorrow morning, we’ll be able to finish all of them next weekend. I […]