Rain stops Play

Big ‘F’ for Fail!

No, I didn’t cajole myself into trudging out into the pissing rain and wind and cold to plant my raspberries. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t do it. It was my last day before my new job started, it was warm in the house, fecking cold out of the house, and I was just Not In The Mood.

Yeah, hard-boiled farmer-type I am not. But hey - look at the weather! Wasn’t it GORGEOUS today. I sat in my car at lunchtime practically basking in so much sunshine and warmth that I had to actually open the window because I was too hot. Didn’t see that one coming. I’m keeping a beady eye on the weather because I’m planning on doing an awful lot of sowing, planting, composting and various other jobs on Thursday. All I ask is for vaguely mild weather and No Rain. The Smallest Smallholding has been looking decidedly soggy and slightly limp lately, and I really want to try to keep things on track this year.

I imagine I’m already way behind - I haven’t yet planted my garlic. But I put it in late last year and it was absolutely fine, so I’ll just wing it again this year. I have faith that nature will do her thing and before you know it, I’ll be enjoying the succulent, juicy, plump cloves of my fat Cristo garlic.

I did start the potatoes chitting on the windowsill though. Throw your hands up in the air and say “yeah!”.

Sorry. I do apologise. I think the endorphines are currently raging through my body, as I’ve just returned from my first ever jazzercise class. Wow. I used to think I was coordinated and could dance just as well as the next person. It turns out that I am absolutely crap at picking up new steps, my laces have a habit of coming undone (mental note, the grannies have got it right, velcro straps are so much more practical), and I actually have muscles in places that I didn’t realise. That hurt when I use them. And will probably hurt even more tomorrow. I’m probably going to arrive at work, much to the amusement of my new work colleagues, looking like I just did a poo in my pants. Oh, to have elegance and grace.

It’s all good though, it’s a step towards my healthy living plan, which I think will compliment this thing I have about moving towards “The Good Life”.  I plan to be working outside a lot this year, so that coupled with regular exercise classes should see me shift this tyre I’ve been growing around my middle. To be honest, I just want to get to a state where I’m content, and I can eat what I want to eat without thinking about calories and fat. To just enjoy the taste and texture of my own home-grown good food, rather than feeling like I’m being virtuous/naughty and/other other. Just make it all much, much more simple. And enjoyable.

Great theory - thing is, if I want to enjoy my own home-grown food, I actually need to sow and plant it first. Thursday. That’s my day. Look forward to it. If rain doesn’t stop play, that is.

Weight: 11 stones 1lb

Tags: exercise, Good Life, home-grown food, job, raspberries, weight loss, work

I was hoping to greet you all with many pictures and words detailing the amazing number of things I’d done this week. But it was not to be.

I finished work on Monday, and was given a beautiful bay tree as a leaving present.

During Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I waited for my wages to arrive. And whislt I waited, I ate, I ate, I watched Star Trek, and I cleaned, I baked rock cakes, and then Rich and I ate them all.

Friday arrived, and so did my pay packet. I whopped and cheered, and went shopping, safe in the knowledge that I’d have all weekend to get going with Things That I Have Wanted to Do for Weeks and Weeds. You know - composting, potting, sowing, planting, repairing. You see, I had cast an eye over the weather forecast a few days previously,  and was delighted to see that we were in for some sunny intervals. I didn’t check back. I should have done. Because today, it rained, and it rained, and it rained some more. Joyfulness.

I don’t mind rain at all, really. But it’s somewhat troublesome  when the volume of rainfall practically quadruples overnight, just when I really want to get on with some important jobs. It rendered me into a useless lump with nothing else to do. Well, I did go shopping. I bought a few clothes for my new job.

I’d also drafted a huge long blog entry a few days ago, tainted with hormonally-tinged rage about being stuck in the house and fed up with cleaning, clearing out and sorting. I couldn’t bring myself to publish it though.  The jist of that gargantuan, self-indulgent moan was that I’ve got as far as I can go on my own in the house. I have to wait for Rich to finish working his six million concurrently-running jobs before we can get on with the next (big) steps in our Quest to Live in a Normal, Nice House. We’re talking next steps like bringing down 100-year old cracked, saggy lath and plaster ceilings. Filthy work.

But, right now, every inch of me is willing spring to wake. I want be out there with it all erupting out around me. I want natural fragrance, warmth, growth, and green. And I can definitely feel it stirring - here in the east, that feeling of unrelenting bitter, biting cold is starting to edge away. The mornings and evenings are getting noticably lighter, and there are buds and shoots tentatively emerging.

But the rain has tripped me up this weekend - and having two missing panes in the roof of my greenhouse doesn’t exactly help matters. I can’t even get to work in there yet. Perhaps tomorrow I should head out and see if I can find some replacements? Not likely though, is it, on a Sunday afternoon? I think it might have to be a mail order job. For now we might have to just live with an unsightly but temporary tarpaulin greenhouse roof. I’m sure the neighbours will get over it. Good things come to those who wait. Or something.

I’m pretty desperate to get my raspberry canes in. Having read Kat’s blog entry about her Polka raspberries which fruit on the first year’s growth, I decided to get some of my own. But I’ve had them over a week (I shall blog in detail next time about my delivery from Victoriana Nursery Gardens - including why I’m going for wild plants this year), and I need to get them there canes in the ground quick smart. I think tomorrow I shall just have to brave the rain. I need to stop being a wuss. I’ll have to don the fetching combo of my oversized blue rain mac under a snowboarding jacket, leaky (spotty) wellies and woolly hat. Well, it can’t be any worse than my pyjama-spotty welly combo. That’s my usual morning summertime get up.

Oh, and I’m off out tomorrow to buy the wood for my greenhouse staging. Which Rich is going to build next week, he says. I think I might just fall over.

Hopefully I’ll have a more interesting update tomorrow!

Tags: greenhouse, planting, Polka raspberries, rain, raspberry canes, repairs, spotty wellies

Feckin’ grey weather. I can’t stand it. It’s bleak and dull and sucks the life and colour out of everything. BOO. I’m over it. I’ve had enough of jumpers, and wearing three pairs of socks. I don’t feel snuggly and warm and certainly not festive at all. I’m fed up of having to wrap up in a million layers before I step foot out of the door. I feel frumpy, pale and uninteresting. I’m craving some sunshine and warmth. I am so very, very ready for spring.

I’m not in the best of moods this evening It’s Monday evening, it’s coming up to 10pm and I think I’m going to go to bed in a bit. I’m so tired and grumpy. Thanks to my crappy shoulder and neck, I didn’t sleep well at all last night, despite the fact that I’ve been like a whirling dervish for the past four or five days.

It was Dad’s birthday at the weekend so I had a good excuse to poke around the shops, and I ended up buying myself some Stella McCartney (half price, reduced, but no less scrumptious) perfume. Sod it - I haven’t done anything like that in ages, and… well, believe it or not I am a girl, and I do enjoy it on the very, very rare occasion when I get to be a bit overindulgent. When you think about it, it’s all a bit silly. I could have spent that money on something else far more practical, or charitable. But in a way, I don’t mind investing in Stella. She has good ethics. I trust her. (The only downside was that the perfume had a stupid amount of needless packaging that went straight into the recycling bin).

Anyway. Enough about my (pretty) smelliness.

I could tell you all about the insanely boring jobs that I got up to. I could, but I won’t - lucky you! No, I’m going to tell you all about the one job that I did that I was pretty damned proud of. Actually, thinking about it, I should be ASHAMED. You’ll see why.

Inspired by the likes of Soilman’s ‘The compost heap from hell‘ and Manor Stables Veg Plot’s ‘Welcome to my messy shed‘ posts, I thought I would outdo everyone and attack the festering pit that is (well, was) my greenhouse.

Are you ready for this? Have a look. See what 12 months of being a vacant, abused dumping ground did to my greenhouse:

I think I could take first prize in this particular contest.

But I spent a good few hours on Sunday afternoon attacking, weeding, yanking several hundred yards of ‘underground cabelling’ (evil nettles, bindweed,  and more bindweed) out, digging, raking, rubbishing, and re-organising my disorganisation, until I was left, in the dying last few minutes of sunlight, with this:

I mean, I’m nowhere near finished. I have to re-lay the floor, lay the floor properly outside the greenhouse, dig up all the underground cabelling around the perimeter of the greenhouse, clean all the pots and trays, wash down the glass, replace two missing panes, and GET THE BLOODY GREENHOUSE STAGING BUILT.

But, still - a vast improvement, non?

We also managed to finish putting the wooden borders around the big veg plot too:

Now all I  need to do is find a few tonnes of manure and soil to fill it all in with. Mum has some numbers for local stables, who are more than happy for us to cart away their poo. Good-o!

So, although I’m bored with the weather, fed up with the cold, positively sick of the damp and drearyness, I’m forcing myself to keep going. I have a list of jobs to complete as long as both my arms and legs put together. I know, that come spring and summer, I am going to be incredibly busy, both with my Smallest Smallholding, my house, and my work. Sometimes it gets all a bit overwhelming and I feel like I’m getting nowhere fast. But I have to stay focused on the job that I have chosen to do, and just get on with it. Hopefully all this chipping away will start to pay off.

So I just need to keep up the momentum and get as much done now, whilst I can, whilst nature is slumbering.

Or is it? Despite appearances, it seems spring may well be just around the corner…

Weight: 11 stones 2lbs (must have been Dad’s birthday cake… and that pizza… oops).

Tags: borders, cleaning, cold weather, greenhouse, grey, spring, tidy, veg plots, winter

So. I said I would write about my new job, and so I will…

To be honest, I can’t really say too much about it. You know how it is - in the world of blogging there’s a fine line between being open, honest and personal, and being really personal. It’s a creative content writing job, so I’ll be working in e-commerce, internet marketing and the like. It’s an area I’ve always been interested in, and my freelance work has certainly been going in that direction in the past 18 months. So when I was offered the job, I felt quite strongly that it was a positive move in the right direction.

The company I’m going to work for are much, much more local than Northampton. My commute into work should take me around 25 minutes - so petrol costs will be lower. Great for me, great for the environment. Travelling to and from Northampton (a 60-mile round trip) even just 4 days a week didn’t sit well with me at all. I haven’t met all my new colleagues yet but the vibe I get is good; relaxed, informal but energetic and professional. I think it’s a good balance.

I’m also going down to a three-day week, working in the office Mondays to Wednesdays, which means I’ll be able to allot more time to freelance work when I’m not working there. What I hope it will mean is that I’ll be able to commit to going after the kind of freelance work I dream of - writing articles, features, columns, maybe some involvement in tv , tv production or digital production. I don’t know if the way I write or what I do is particularly creative, intelligent or thought-provoking, but I just know that generally, it makes me happy. And it makes me even happier when I get positive feedback about it, or change perceptions and encourage people.

What I’ve realised over the past two or three years is that I REALLY want to get people into their gardens, encouraging, supporting and living alongside wildlife, growing their own food, help people tune into nature a bit more and just really respect what we have, and realise what we could lose. I want people to turn their back on intensive food production and find ways to fit a bit of the good life into our rushed, gadget-filled, busy modern lives. Because I know that there is space to do it. And I know that for me, and many others, it’s all part of a healthy lifestyle. That’s partly why I blog. To try and raise awareness, find that happy medium between what we now describe as ‘modern living’ and full-blown self-sufficiency, to learn from other people, and to pass on what I’m learning and experiencing.

I don’t know if I’ll always feel like this. But right now I think that my new job, which I will start on the 1st March, is a great way to support myself whilst I try and make my mark on the world. I’m not a huge fan of working in offices but I’m feeling positive about this move. When I was a teenager I swore blind that I would never be a ‘desk jockey’. I’d never be one of those people that lived for the weekends. And for a while, I was. But then on the flip-side, freelancing full-time is by no means stress-free or stable. So the stability from this creative job, and being part of a creative team, is a positive change for me. It’s a good middle ground. I’m hoping it’s going to work out well. Time will tell.

My new job is also good news for my Smallest Smallholding. I’m going to be able to dedicate more time to it. Which means I’m going to be able to learn new techniques, grow more food, encourage more wildlife, and write more about it. I’m excited by that prospect. So let’s see how this year unfolds. Are you ready?

Weight: 11stones 2lbs (whoop)

Tags: creative writer, new job, time