I decided to take most of Monday off and wandered down to the allotment well after lunch. To find that one of the other plot holders had been sweeping down “that road” and had moved most of the remaining leaves. Well fair shares for all I suppose. I still managed to move a final nine bags for my collection.

Between the two of us by Wednesday afternoon, about 80 bags of leaves had been moved. There was hardly a leaf showing when I looked. I wonder if the council leaf sweeper has turned down that road yet and discovered that it is clear.

Not bad going for two old age pensioners with nothing more than rakes, brooms, wheelbarrows and garden sacks.  But leaves are free to clear when they fall on roads and anything free that makes good compost is always welcome.

Eventually and slowly the council workmen have turned their attentions to clearing out the town’s decorative tubs and flower beds. Goodbye to the dead summer bedding plants and assorted weeds and hello to the winter staples of spring bulbs, pansy, primula and wallflower.

Better later than never. But just a little observation. Every year the council workmen clear the pavements of leaves and take them away. Now to save us money you would think that these leaves would be taken to a central point and composted for future use on flower beds. Surely there is nothing difficult in tipping leaves into an open wire container and leaving them to rot down. As the lorries used by the teams doing the planting out carry bins for collecting weeds, it must be possible to top up these empty bins at the start of the day with leaf mould to be turned into the flower beds due for attention on the day in question? But no, the lorries are loaded with bags of commercially purchased compost instead.

For goodness sake, is there no financial incentive to be environmentally friendly in this situation? I’m hardly surprised that green issues are not very high on the agenda of a council with serious monetary problems. But if green meets financial interest? Obviously not – just charge the tax payer it seems.

Overnight the watch stopped. No obvious reason, no recent and obvious mistreatment, no warnings, no recent errant behaviour.

Sure the strap was coming to the end of it’s useful life but the battery was only about a year old and watch had not been in line of water during the previous flood.

Had it just needed a new battery and a new strap that would have been about £10 locally. But nothing so obvious. It cost about £28 5 years ago, been as good as gold at timekeeping, had one new battery, one new strap and had now sentimental value at all.

With using it mainly to ensure that I catch the bus back up the hill from the allotment, back from the garden centre and on outings where I want to know what time it is so that I can catch the bus home – leaving it at a repair shop didn’t appeal. Not at that price and with a new, almost identical model costing £19.99!

Talk about a throw away society where it is cheaper to replace than to repair unless you have the appropriate skill. Nope I know nothing about the inner workings of a wrist watch.

Funny but many of them apply to other groups in the country as well.

So the heating bill is high? It’s the same for people on the minimum wage and people on jobseekers allowance who don’t get an allowance in the winter.

So the food bills are high and many of the offers are for families? But there are single people such as students too.

So we are beginning to wear out physically? Arthritis, false teeth, deafness and failing sight happen to younger people too.

So we feel shut in, housebound and lonely? Now if you are older and very frail that I can understand but there are a lot of older people who don’t make the effort to do what they can.

Maybe the GP doesn’t always consider that you need to have something done to make you better but are you sure that you are doing what you can to help yourself?

Perhaps the two areas where real reform is needed are in care facilities (which apply to younger, disabled people too) and suitable housing if you can’t afford to buy a retirement home for yourself.

But then again – housing is a hot potato for the local authorities and the government at the moment due to the fact that many more people are asking for social housing. Which means that it’s not entirely an older people’s issue.

I wonder how often things become issues because older people don’t have the option of going to work any longer and have more time to notice things.

The dehumidifier has left the building. That’s because the plaster and woodwork is dried out from after the flood.

Now all that is needed to clear up completely is:

1. plastering to repair a couple of damaged patches
2. the tiles on the bathroom window ledge grouting back into position
3. three rooms redecorating

Not a lot really. There’s no need to hurry for the landlord to do the plastering as I’m going to have to save up to get the decorating done as there are ceilings involved.

Besides, there might be another flood. Things are apt to come in threes aren’t they? Or does two floods and plaster damage from an overflowing gutter count as the three?

Nope not in some important cricket match, but in my road sweeping activities. Leaf collecting is definitely on hold at the moment due to rain.

The forecast if for windy and very wet this morning. It might just all calm down by mid afternoon just as darkness begins to deepen.

Now how am I supposed to finish my road sweeping duties down by the castle on behalf of my compost heap before the other allotment holders decide to join in and take their fair share? Mind you, the covering of leaves is considerably less than it was on Wednesday morning when I started off with broom, bags and barrow. A couple of hours working every day every day has cleared a lot of road and pavement whilst adding to the ever growing pile of bags of leaves.

I’m surprised at people who think that I am just sweeping the road for the benefit of the local walkers, the community or because I’m putting in community service time due to some misdemeanour. Only one person – an older gentleman on a mobility scooter – came passed saying that the leaves would be good compost before I even said hello to him.

Such is life – people so often don’t see the use of free things that come their way.

I was up and out of the door early this morning – well for me – sweeping up some leaves from under the nearby trees to take down to the allotment.

“You carried those all the way down from home?” said a passerby as I arrived at allotment gate with my three large bags. “Get away down the road next to the castle, there’s plenty down there. And it’s only over the road.”

I fetched the trusty wheelbarrow, shovel and bags from the shed and went to investigate. My word – I was pointed to a little gold mine of leaves. Another five bags onto the heap already. And plenty more for tomorrow and the day after and the day after. Never turn down free goodies. Long may the town’s leaf sweeper be far too busy elsewhere to discover the road down to the closed castle. I could have a job for as long as the weather permits in the next five days.

Thing is – the resulting pile will be seem awfully small after it has rotted down. But it will still be cheaper than buying that amount of soil improver from the garden centre. Moral is – when the container is full, if there are still leaves to be had then put them in bags to rot down.

Truly there is always something useful that can be done on allotment or in garden. It’s a bit like the old saying about painting the Forth Road Bridge, you get to the end and it’s time to start again.

It’s the first time of growing and a bit of a learning curve with this new to me vegetable. The kohl rabi have not done very well at all down on the allotment – it looks as if I should have taken notice that they are a member of the cabbage family and treated the soil as for cabbages before I planted them. Well I shall know for next year. Oh and I shall know that the slugs absolutely adore them. Great.

That lesson seems to be required for the good old staple of the winter soup, the swede. So next year more attention will be given to soil preparation here too.

As both kohl rabi and swede are inexpensive packets of seeds and prolific growers, it seems a shame not to make the most of both crops.  Especially as come this time of year, anything that can go in the stock pot for another variety of soup is especially welcome.

Considering that I have done far better with the cabbages, calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli than in previous years, I should have taken heed of the information given so patiently when asking about cabbages and taken it to heart for the whole family. If I had  done as I was told for all of them not just for the obvious ones things might well have been better.  It’s odd to think that cabbage, beetroot, broccoli, swede and kohl rabi are all members of the same plant family.

But then potatoes (edible), tomatoes (edible), chilli peppers (edible) and deadly nightshade (poisonous) are also members of the same family. Which is why the disease of blight is such a problem for both potatoes and tomatoes.

Now I need to go and find a leek grower who will teach me how to just grow leeks for every day eating and not for the show bench. Just nice middle sized leeks not those fearsome monsters that take two men to carry into the show.

There’s more to this vegetable growing lark than I thought. Mind you – I’m trying out things that we didn’t grow in the garden when I was a youngster. So some crops are ones where I have no experience to draw on. But that is part of the fun of trying out new things. 

Apparently the light in the bathroom has been illegal since I moved in here – and probably previously too.

The one declared unsafe after the last flood was your average hanging down on an electrical string item where it is easy enough to add lampshade and bulb.

But regulations require an enclosed unit to prevent sparks meeting water. “Not that it would have been any better in a flood like you had” said the electrician dourly.

So now there is the one required by regulations installed and you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s not energy efficient.

But I shan’t get electrocuted in the bath then. It will act as an excellent collector of water next time that the bath in the upstairs flat overflows with consequences yet unknown.

Oh that’s all right then.

A shorter person here needs to know whether the bathroom ceiling is dry. It sounds a silly question but the plaster still looks damp around the light fitting.

When the bath overflowed upstairs, there was standing water in the bathroom before it decided to arrive downstairs in my flat. Now where did it go other than into the light fittings in bathroom and bedroom?

How do I know if it’s worth letting the electricians return so that I can have lights in two rooms and an extractor fan in the bathroom again?

Where’s a tall man with a damp meter when you want him? Why looking at other people’s problems of course.

All I can say is that the allotment is in far better state than the flat – and allotment is only worth about 7 out of 10 at the moment if committee did an inspection.

Sigh.

No not your little household dehumidifier but a great big industrial one is parked in the hall running at full blast.

Supervisor from repairs at housing association sent for it at once and in a hurry yesterday afternoon when he appeared to see just what was going on. He says to run it till the bathroom and bedroom are dry – for as many days as it takes. 

At the rate that water is coming out into the bucket I’d say that it will still be here on Monday when the electricians return to see if they can restore the light and extractor fan to working order. The electrician put his little test box onto them yesterday evening and shook his head saying that there was still water in the ceiling affecting the wiring.

Now there’s a beastie to walk round to get to the toilet from the bedroom (stage right) in the middle of the night. 

Right then I’m off to see the allotment and do interesting things as the sun has come out.

How to get a Thursday morning off to a good start – get woken up by cascades of water pouring down from the flat upstairs at 5am. To find that the tenant can’t be woken up and that the housing association out of hours emergency repair service can do nothing as a result except to tell you to call the fire service who can break into properties in such situations.

Funny how flashing blue lights wake some men up fairly swiftly though. Fire engine and police to sort out the source of the water.

Of course water in the electrics will cut off the power supply – 5.30am with no tea and the out of hours repairs people saying that no - they can’t call out an electrician to make the electrics safe because everything will be wet. You’ll just have to wait till normal office hours unfortunately. Funny how the fire service could get an out of hours electricians to attend.

I was actually planning to clean out the bathroom anyway but not on emptying the cupboard yet again as that was done last time there was a flood.

And just to make life properly enjoyable – it was raining that steady, wet rain that goes right through everything. Now isn’t that just going to help to get the flat dried out.

Just add the re-plastering to be done in the bedroom if the leaky guttering can be cured then, the pointing on the outside of the bathroom wall to the plastering that now needs doing in the bathroom. Oh and the decorating that is now required in bathroom, small hall and bathroom due to floods and leaks.  So much for frugal living and balancing the income against the outgoings. It’s the unplanned £££s out that don’t help at all.

.. to the leaking half barrel that passed as a water butt, the wire for stretching between fence posts, the lengths of hose that haven’t found themselves a use in over three years, the polycarbonate covering to the frames on the contraption that was pot storage and the chipped panes of greenhouse glass.

They took their farewell ride to the community tip in a Ford Focus this sunny afternoon.

… to the rest of the rotten timber, the dangerous nailed frame from the top of the contraption that was pot storage and a large container of thick twigs from the now moved compost heap.

The pile was another fire in the brazier this afternoon.

So there are still two large, long planks holding down plastic sheeting over compost heaps which really should have been sawn up for burning. Due to the lack of bricks to do the job at present they have had a reprieve.

There are two interesting, elderly benches which are needed for sitting upon in the sun eating chocolate, drinking fizzy pop and admiring the allotment. They will be sent to the tip when the remaining wood eventually gives up the unequal struggle to support people. But they might live long enough to be used as frames for drying onions

And there’s the fire hose reel that is not going to work as a hose reel unless the handyman otherwise known as the son-in-law becomes really artistic – time is a wonderful thing and perhaps there will be some this winter.  There are obviously going to be future farewells before all is perfect but perfection is that bit nearer.

Autumn has certainly stamped its footprint on the weather now. Mornings are chilly and the mists are beginning to hang around until after breakfast.

The view out of the back window this morning was obscured again by low lying mist over the river valley which took it’s time to lift and to clear away to allow the view to the hills beyond.

A trip down to the allotment at lunchtime showed that the plot had taken on a damp and autumnal look. But at least it cleared away the three large bags of plant pots that have been stored unused in odd corners since I took over three years and seven months ago. If I haven’t used them in that time it’s unlikely that I shall do so in the future. Therefore the community allotment may as well see if the gardeners there can find a use for them.  Plant sales happen regularly to raise funds so plant pots come and plant pots go it seems.

I have wondered, when looking at these pots, who last grew Berberis on my allotment as the previous tenant was a vegetable grower.  But there was a pot in the stack that claimed to have contained a berberis bush once.  Definitely not edible, the clan berberis and mostly far too prickly to be friendly.

So gardening will be down to continuing with the clearing and tidying because the autumn mists do not encourage growth except of the last sturdy weeds before the soil cools down.  Rubbish is being stored in the leaky half water butt for future visits to the tip. Chipped panes of glass from a long greenhouse that hasn’t been on plot these many years, short lengths of hose that aren’t worth connecting up, fencing wire that is used tensioned between posts (in a plot with hedges round these last 40 years) ….. There must have been some hoarders over the years. But considering that a Ford Prefect was found buried on one plot on site in years gone by, I maybe should not complain hey?

This morning the zip on the suitcase of the handbag broke. 

Now being a girl who needs a big handbag to lug half the household goods around, this was a disaster. Especially as it happened just as I was dashing out of the door late and not able to put off the going out. It’s a good thing that the charity shop down the street opened early and had a new bag for £1.50! Not big enough but good enough for an emergency.

It was a quiet morning in the gardeners association hut. Not many customers at all, so the two nice gentlemen who were there to help to deal with the crowds of customers (!) set about seeing if there was a way to repair the zip. They failed. It’s teeth had come to the end of their useful life. Sad to say, many of us know what happens when teeth come to the end of their useful days!

And no – I decided that I didn’t  to hunt high and low to find a shop to fit a new zip to a handbag that had cost me £5.99! The local cobbler only does shoes and won’t even do leather belts so that was the most likely option out of the window.

As it costs £6 to fit a new zip into a pair of jeans locally, the likelihood of finding someone to manage a zip in a leather handbag at a sensible price doesn’t seem worth the waste of a good Saturday afternoon. It’s a sad reflection on how things are today that something basically solid should fail the user for lack of a decent repair – and no I don’t have the skills. I have never yet in my entire life managed to put a new zip into anything decently and am certainly not advanced enough to consider working with leather even if I had suitable tools. Which I don’t – the last time I had to sew something onto leather was about fifty years ago and there were leatherworking tools in an obscure outhouse on the farm.

So the handbag has gone to join the collected leather pile in a garage locally and may yet live to have other uses.

I ALWAYS put my house keys in one particular pocket when going out of the house so that I know where to find them again. Today I put them into the left pocket not the right pocket. So they were lost!

I turned the place upside down looking for my keys and eventually went down the allotment with the spare pair in my right hand pocket. Didn’t think of looking in a different pocket did I?

On returning home, quite by mistake I put my hand into left hand pocket and found my missing keys.

Doh! Women!

Yesterday the sun shone, the wind dropped and the start of autumn turned up in all its glory – cool then sunny then cool. So bonfire it was!

The brazier isn’t shiny any more after four hours of continuous work. There wasn’t much ash to show for all the feeding of the fire either when I went down to empty it this afternoon. But it was fun whilst it lasted. And the pile of rotten wood disappeared so that can only be an improvement on the clutter lying around the allotment. There is more rotting wood turning up from various corners but it requires a man with a saw to cut it into manageable lengths before we can go have another fire and this could be a long time in the happening.

I’d just finished throwing wood into the brazier when the nice family turned up at the allotment gate bearing compostable material, cardboard and nine bin liners full of leaves that had been blown off trees in the winds on Saturday. They had been doing some community service sweeping the street outside the front garden in order to bring down something to make into compost.

At least I gave them red cabbage, kohl rabi and the last of the carrots in exchange. After they had gone on their merry way to the household tip with the rest of the rubbish in the car (and taking the three bags of non burnable and non compostable rubbish of mine with them too), I spent the next forty five minutes ripping up cardboard, throwing it on the compost heap and covering it with red cabbage cuttings and carrot compost and generally clearing up. Then I came home smelling strongly of bonfire!

Today has been unromantic jobs like planting out the two curry plant cuttings that have taken root, weeding and clearing the area under the fruit trees and starting to spread the now unused compost heap into the cleared spaces. Not as much fun as having a bonfire but far more important in the long term.

Yesterday was just wet and miserable but there was a delivery due down the allotment. So no way could I stay safely indoors. Despite the rain I did a test on erecting the new mini poly tunnels which will be used next spring to help to protect and bring on seedlings. With a little help from my friends or Don from the next allotment anyway. Putting the new water butt in place and filling was no problem.

And finding places to dig in twelve bags of compost was even less trouble – much to my surprise. There was an old strawberry bed which had never been properly composted, this year’s potato patch and the newest strawberry patch all in need of attention. All were easily turned and composted in quicker time than expected. By the time it was done though, I was a lovely shade of mud and even the bus driver on the way home up the hill had to laugh.

Today the weather man certainly hit true with the weather forecast today! The recordings at the local sailing club put us nicely at the bottom end of the Gale Force 8 levels. There was no dinghy sailing today despite the national sailing competition planned. The black flag of cancellation and stay off the water was flown.

I can’t say that I have tried walking since earlier today before the winds reached a crescendo to test out the serious impeding that such winds are supposed to cause but it was not a day for gardening. And certainly not the day to have the bonfire that I had promised myself.  Sigh – I do so want to have a bonfire.

There’s that nice pile of wood left over from demolishing the floor of the contraption otherwise referred to as the cold frame down on the allotment just stacked and waiting to be burnt. There’s the nice new brazier stacked safely away from wind damage which I had planned to use today.

The daughter drove me passed the allotment and everything was still in place earlier today but there was no way that any useful work could be done on the jobs outstanding. Like having a bonfire. And tomorrow may be little better as the wind is likely to be only marginally less gusty looking at the forecast. Sigh – I do so want to have a bonfire.

Yep the junk mail delivery has landed again. Early this morning there was a young lad delivering the usual armful of flyers from a well loaded bag. I don’t want a new bed thank you (and still less with two flyers from the same firm). Neither do I have room for a showroom clearance sale Steinway piano or even a pre-owned one.

I don’t want to know that my GP’s practice has extended it’s opening hours yet again or that budget blinds are having their biggest sale ever (going out of business and getting rid of their stock perhaps?). There’s a war on between the two Asian restaurants down the street with prices and no I don’t want to pay £5 for the new £5 coin post free – I’ll get one when I get one.

My insurance isn’t due for renewal and I’ll be checking that firm for prices too anyway. and thank you Mr Postman but nope I don’t want to go all the way to Hexham on the bus to load up a trolley from the food hall in the big department store – it’s only Nisa after all – to rush back on the next bus to be ahead of the delivery. I can go down the street, do a shop at the Co-op and walk home before the delivery more easily knowing that if I spend £15 it will be delivered free. Price difference and stock difference? Not a lot.

I suppose that The Advertiser is vaguely useful if you are looking for a local trades person. There’s a new on this time mind you. The website doesn't appeal to me but it’s not cluttered. I’m a little surprised at the idea of a rural area such as ours wanting or needing a consultant to visit to help us to declutter our houses. I’ve never thought of us like that in this town. But maybe some of the other villages locally would be upmarket enough to call on such a service.  Who knows? The lady can only try it and see. Must consult the daughter and see if she thinks her neighbours would be interested – her village is much more upmarket.

Hey ho – so there’s a whole heap of junk for the recycling bin then.

I’ve had my beady eye on a bit of destruction all gardening season. And yesterday I got down to it.

I inherited this construction that looked like a cold frame but which turned out to have a floor and to be no more than a container for pots, rubbish and a hosepipe.

It’s been on notice ever since as the space between the floor and ground was a haven for rats attracted by amongst other things the adjacent pigeon lofts. It’s the time of the year when the rats come down off the hills as the grain harvest is in and the fields ploughed. The pigeon men have had a clean up of their act so I thought that a little destruction of this last haven would be fun and good neighbourly.

Even the woodworm had left the flooring and it came apart within the hour with the use of no more than a cheap Woolworth’s hammer. The sides are still standing as these are sturdier and it was hurling down the rain a treat by the time I turned my attention to them – yep they came away from the base whole with one swipe of the hammer.

The flooring will make a nice fire once the brazier is delivered. I’m far too near the road and houses to have a normal open fire – it upsets the neighbours. After it’s all burned I shall have some nice wood ash to add to some compost heap.

But what to do with the cleared space? The soil below said contraption looks as if it has never seen the light of day for many a year – well at least the last five so far as I can tell. It’s pure clay, full of pebbles, and has possibly been under pavings or pigeon loft for many a year before container was built.

If I worked on the soil and kept the sides I could have a decent cold frame if a proper home made top could be invented. Or the sides could just be used as a container for a compost heap till it rots (either the heap or the sides). But the base soil still needs a little help first for that – I suspect no drainage at present as it looks to be very solid and unpleasant.

So many options and another winter job! There seems no end to the work on an allotment.