Resting and waiting

The bad weather continues, I wonder how long it will last, there has been so much rain. There's not much work we can do down at the allotment or in the garden when it's so wet.  The soil is too wet and soggy to do anything. It's really dirty weather.  But I'm not too worried, the garden doesn't look too bad, there's still autumn colour about. I don't cut back the dead plants until late winter.  The seed heads  provide homes for insects and food for the birds and some of them provide winter interest in the garden especially when touched by a bit of frost.

At the allotment we've cleared and manured most of the beds except for the leeks and brassicas, which we will be picking through the winter. The pond has been overflowing with all the rain--I hope the frogs haven't left home! We've had some storm damage, the old plastic growhouse got blown down in the gales, but we were going to pull it down anyway this winter to make way for a new greenhouse. And in the garden we have a fence needs replacing after it got blown down by the wind. All jobs for the new year when hopefully the weather will be better


I love getting the allotment beds all clear of dead plants and weeds and covered in manure or compost.  I think of it as tucking up the beds for the winter, clearing out the old and preparing for the new.   As the plot rests over the winter and waits for the spring we think about what we want to grow next year and we plan  projects. We think about what mistakes we may have made or what improvements we can make.

 So  there is now a sense of resting and waiting on the plot. Resting time for us before all the hard work starts again and  resting time for the soil while the nutrients from the compost and manure do their work. And as we wait  for the weather to improve, we also watch for  new growth to appear, we make plans and we look forward to starting work again.