The Zed Shed

Yes thank you, I'm rather more steady today.  But I've a feeling I'm in for another wakeful night, because nighttime is when one worries.  Daytime is when you get it all into perspective.  Pah.  Really.

The family next door is still unwell.  Pugsley made it to school yesterday - I'm not sure if he had to come home at some point during the day but anyway, he wasn't well enough today.  Everyone has a hacking cough, a raised temperature and feels generally rotten, apart from Squiffany, who is fine.  The Sage and I are also fine.  Squiff came through for a while this afternoon, having a family who doesn't want to do anything much with her and just lies on the sofa coughing isn't the most fun for a lass.

Yet more paving is being done in the garden, this time in the kitchen garden.  It's part of a job that's now in its third year.  Those of you who have been here - it's between the greenhouse and the right-hand end of the wall, it all needs to be levelled, pathed and a shed erected.  There's so much to do before I go away, I don't know how it'll be done.  To make things more difficult, the soil is already drying out and a hosepipe ban will be brought in in April.  And there's me wanting to put in a lot of new plants.  It's going to be a bugger, lugging watering cans about - but it's been very dry for ages, one can hardly complain.  Anglian Water have got a good record for managing water supplies and not having a ban, especially considering this is the driest area of the country.

The reason the job is taking so long is that this is about the only time we get around to it.  My kitchen garden was originally 6 beds, each about 35 feet long and 4 feet wide with concrete paths in between.  The reason for this was to make it manageable, not to have to walk on the beds because you can reach from both sides to the middle, and not to have to dig or manure areas where you were going to end up walking.  It's always worked very well, with the additional bonus that rain doesn't soak into where plants aren't going to grow, and the unexpected benefit that the concrete heats up in the sun and this helps to warm the soil.

As time went by, we kept increasing the area and I had a large section that I used for various things, mostly Jerusalem artichokes in the end (I've got rid of them for the time being, they spread too much.  I like Jerusalem artichokes, but they are very tall and quite invasive).  Then, when we were planning to build the Wall, I extended it further again towards the drive, rather than have an expanse of grass between the wall and the drive that the Sage would be unable to resist using for storing wood or something.  We've been dividing this area into beds, but kept getting too busy or the weather was too hot or something - anyway, I hope we'll be able to finish it this time, though I'm quite doubtful.  The other thing is, of course, that the veg garden is now far too big for us.  Still, the other advantage of the beds is that one can cover over those that aren't in use and the job of bringing them back into use another year isn't too massive.

Oh, and I'm not going to let the Sage put anything into the shed.  It'll be my shed and he's not going to fill it up with a load of stuff.