February at the allotment

I dragged the children down to the allotment today. It had been a while. There's not much to be done down there when the soil is wet, but today was perfect weather for weeding. It went surprisingly well. The littlest boy tidied all of the old brown foliage from the strawberries and then snipped things with the snippers. Some of the snipping was useful. The biggest boy took a very long time to do a small amount of weeding, but nonetheless weeding was done and I was grateful. The middle boy tidied up sticks and put away netting and hoops and generally helped out.

After a while they all disappeared into the woodland and stream bit with knives and saws and snippers and it was just me and a robin. I weeded and tidied and even found a couple of rogue potatoes. I pulled some of the biggest boy's leeks and when we got home I made leek and potato soup. At this time of year allotment/home grown vegetables are a rare and precious treat.

I talked to the littlest boy while we worked together in a moment of complete harmony about how it would all be worth it in a few months when we would be carrying home full trugs of fruit and vegetables. He particularly likes the fruit part of it all, most especially strawberries.

I'm feeling quite positive about the allotment today. It's a rollercoaster ride, sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me. But there was clear soil in places when we left, and some bits were even almost neat. I've mentioned before that I'm not aiming for show garden perfection, just a fair amount of produce. If I can just about keep (loose) control over it that's good enough.

It's the time of year for big dreams of bumper harvests and summer abundance. All the failures are forgotten, pests are a distant memory and the coming year is going to be amazing. I'm off to sort through the seed box.