Active for the Greens - and allotment, year 2, post 1

On Saturday I was active for the Greens - leafleting in Redhill West. As I have missed loads of meetings recently I was very keen to get out and help. That was a lot of walking on Saturday but I did walk with Liz - whom I liked very much and I met a super guy called Derek who sorted out our leafleting routes. We had lunch in a pub together. Ended up all walked out, exhausted!

On Sunday I was active in the allotment shop, and then, went home with some compost and did my own garden, which involved moving some self-seeded forget-me-knots and some campanula, also self-seeded, to places where I hope they will look lovely.

On Monday it was pouring down and I didn't do much except suffer with my bad cold and buy food at Sainsbury's.

Today I went to the allotment and dug up the last of the potatoes - quite a lot of them - and a few were rotten because the frost must have caught them, but a lot of them were buried deeply so they were fine. I gave some to Bill.  I moved one of the gooseberry bushes so we can put a fence around them and protect the fruit from the birds and the rats. Anne came up and told me that after storm Doris she and Bill had collected our black compost bin from where it had blown to and showed me the sheds that had blown down. Our shed was fine and its roofing felt was fine too, hallelujah. I put some rubbish out for the collection on Friday but I could do with putting out more. I put out a rusty old incinerator. Some of my stuff would be good to burn but we never get a good, calm, dry day!! So I think I will just put it out for rubbish collection.

Virginia Water, Allotment part 7, and Half-term

This week I have been doing a number of things about the house and the allotment, and I have also begun a new writing project so I am less disposed to write anything here; I have some notebooks on the go.

I have a new favourite book: Why be happy when you could be normal? which is something Jeanette Winterson's mother actually said to her. Somehow, it made me feel as though I could be more happy and less normal, so I have given in my notice again at my job, and feel as though I will go dancing and skipping into the future ...

...until I suddenly feel worried that I will actually start to feel very introverted when I don't actually have to go and meet people; I worry I will become a miserable recluse - and perhaps worse than unhappy. But I can write my scripts. Which is something I've been putting off for a long time.

It's very hot today. We have just been to the allotment to cover the strawberries with a net. The net went onto a hooped structure which Ashley constructed this week. He was happy that he had built something. It's a light structure that you can move around easily made of blue plastic piping.

The main disappointment at the allotment is that there are six completely dead raspberry canes and about the same number that are very weak. Another is that the strawberry that looked a bit ripe turned out to be mouldy, and Anne said this was because we had watered it, and she told us that we could water not too often.  She also said not to water the parsnips because these could stretch down into the earth to get their water and should be encouraged to do so. What a mine of information.

Unfortunately she also mentioned tomato blight which sounds a miserable thing and said she had planted hers a metre apart, and I realised that I had made a mistake and planted mine too close together so that they are all sure to cop it if one does, and apparently the allotments do usually get the tomato blight. So I am glad I've got six growing at home as well.

May is the best month at Virginia Water because of the azaleas and the rhododendrons, and here is a selection of pictures of the month's delights. I am now so well acquainted with the place that I can roam around all the unmarked ways - it's much more interesting than plodding around the lake, although that's OK sometimes.