Some prep work in the garden

The spring weather here in London has, shall we say, been a little mixed! In the past week we have had bright sunshine, cold northerly winds, hail, snow, rain, thunder and frogs. OK we didn't have the frogs although there are some tadpoles up at the allotment centre!

Given that the weather has been a bit better this weekend and I have broad bean, runner bean and courgette seeds germinating in the shed I thought I had better get started and prep the vegetable bed.

As usual you turn your back for a couple of days and all the weeds wake up and try and take over!

The Before Picture

As you can see there are plenty of dandelions which I wanted to dig up before they seeded themselves everywhere. Amongst them were horsetails and bindweed as well as the dried stalks of the Jerusalem artichokes of last year.

Two hours of hard digging later (spread over two days)...

That Looks Better!

Now all I have to do is the same with the much larger bed. It helped that the soil was moist - when it gets dry it sets hard being London clay based.

Of course I was supervised by two of our cats...

Fitz - The handsome one!

Latte - Who had been rolling in the dust!

Tara - or She Who Must be Obeyed / Evil Mistress of Darkness / The Vomiting One was asleep upstairs and only came out when the work was done!

Hopefully the weather will be good next weekend so we can get out and do the other bed. Otherwise by the time we come back from holiday we will be facing fully grown triffids!