Pig Sty Avenue

Anything that exposes the earth, whether weeding or digging, brings me the company of Mrs Robinson; (I don't know if it is a female, but call it Mrs R anyway). She finds grubs in the disturbed ground I'd never spot with the naked eye. And she's very bold, hopping around inches from my hands when I'm weeding. I took this photo by the arbor, where I had idly turned over the earth to test out an old spade, and horrified to see a vast quantity of bindweed roots, which you can see gleaming white in the photo.

This is the view from the gate, so that's the SE corner of the plot. I was preparing to excavate an area by the gate, a yard or so square, to lay bricks down, and then lay a path across to the middle path, (another story). But there's already a path there, covered until today in a couple of inches of loamy soil. It's a strange, green, crumbly concrete. I'd planned another brick path, leaving a foot or so of earth for the hedgerow between path and fence. Instead, I've got this peculiar green edifice, and an inch or two of soil by the fence. Heigh bloomin' ho. I was going to have pyracantha all the way along the S. boundary. But it looks as if it's going to be ivy, now. Which is fine. As you can see the fence there is an allotment-chic pallet construction, constantly leaning towards my side of the boundary because stuff is stacked against it on my neighbour's side. Well, we'll see how the ivy deals with that situation. The next job is to strai...

The northern 1/3 of the NW bed is still neeps - and the marigolds are thriving, still. The middle section is now garlic: I dug in 3 barrow-fulls of oomska, and then left it for a week or so. Then raked it all as level as possible, and planted 3 rows of carcassonne wight  to the north, and 3 rows of picardy wight to the south of them; (I'm being precise because, whilst I found enough plant markers, I couldn't write on them, being unable to find a pen or pencil: the conditions in the old shed mean I struggle to lay my hand to anything I need).  That was last week, so say 10th October. They were planted 10ins apart, in rows about 1ft apart. (One is advised to plant them 6ins apart, but that won't give quite enough room to get a hoe between them). The final, southerly, 1/3 of the NW bed, and the whole of the Midwest bed, I dug over a week or so ago. I then left it for a week, as 'tillage prompts germination', apparently , and it seems like a good idea to give the we...