You can't eat dahlias

Weirdly enough June managed to follow May again this year which meant that it was time to start thinking about the veg patch, mind you it was a tad tough to think of it *as* a veg patch seeing as how it was several feet deep in weeds ... and parsnips. We've decided that at the end of this year we're going to try putting some form of green manure in to see if that makes things any better for next year. If not then I'll just sterilise the beds when I do the dahlia beds next year ... I'm not exactly passionate about weeding ... well I am, but it's all negative. With our usual genius abilities Vicky and I picked Sunday as the day we'd introduce the vegetable patch to the sky as it sounded like the sort of day that ought to be full of sunshine. Sunday arrived and we meandered down to the field with our biscuit tin full of packets of seeds and a car full of veg that was just dying to be planted.

I really hate weeding

We enthusiastically started pulling weeds out by the handful but by about the third wheel barrow full it got a smidge boring. So, out came the lawn mower and after swift traipse around the beds most of the weeds had gone and it was time to fire up the trusty old rotavator for it's last task of the year. You should have seen it smile when it saw the veg patch, it knows it's the last thing it has to do before it can relax for the rest of the year. A swift pull of the ripcord and it was happily gurgling away and positively flying through the ground. It was at about this point that it started to rain. Faaaaaaaantastic, now we have a conundrum, do we continue on and hope that a miracle occurs and the rain stops, or do we call it a day and try again later. On the grounds that the veg would be better in the ground and the rain was only light and a smidge intermittent we decided that hoping for a miracle was the best decision.

Do miracles happen ?

Do they buggery. We decided to finish the rotavating because it was unfair to get the rotavators hopes up and then make it work another day as well, but after that we called it quits, mainly because it's bugger all fun being in the rain ... actually, that's not quite true, *real* rain, you know the sort that bounces 6ft off the surface and requires a single drop to soak you to the skin? now *that's* fun to be in, but this poxy drizzle crap that you get nowadays is just annoying ... I must be getting old .... anyway, the drizzle was annoying enough that we called it quits. A couple of days later we managed to synchronise available time and weather that remotely resembled sunny and slapped all the waiting veg into the newly prepared beds ... it's even cooler than planting all the dahlias, 'cause we'll eat this lot ... now all that was left was attacking the bombsite ready for our new greenhouse, but that's another post huh?

Anyway, time I wandered off and cleared the space for it,

¥