Wahay – the fence man showed up……now all we have to hope for is that:

a. his prices are not ginormous
b. he keeps his word and can do the fencing in a couple of weeks.

If all goes to plan, by mid-Feb we will be fenced in and the beds will be laid out – I can’t wait. Now to get online to Marshalls and order up my stuff to plant…….I reckon I’m going to have roughly double the space I’ve had this year and about 50% more than in Sandhurst. I have to work smarter though and use my cunning to suppress weeds and so my physical effort is reduced. If I can do that, I’ll have less to do once it’s all planted up and will only need really intensive effort at the beginning of the season when I’m planting.

When I say cunning, I just really mean that I’ll use weed control matting and mulching materials to ensure they don’t get chance to get a grip.

Even if all I do is fill up half of it this year with potatoes, at least we’ll be making good use of the space in as much as it’ll mean we don’t need to buy any. It’s going to take a lot of effort to get it done and planted up but that’s OK because then we reap the rewards later.

While I was out in the garden explaining what we need, I spotted this – it’s a tatty old bit of fencing around a dead pond – dead because it’s obviously holed about six inches below what should be the waterline so it only ever gets above that level when it has been pelting down for weeks. I suppose we ought to thank our stars that the muddy remains are fenced in because there is nothing Arch likes more than to be coated in slimy, gloopy pond sludge. If the pond had been accessible by him, he’d be in it every day, wading about and getting smelly. So, the fence that keeps Archie out is one piece of old tat to be thankful for.

Anyway, the sunshine on it caught my eye and here it is.

I was having trouble with big hairy bottoms last year!