We've just returned from a busy morning at the allotment. A fresh load of stable manure had been delivered this week - huge excitement! So I continued the digging and muck spreading for a while. Nils collected barrowloads of steaming manure for me and made several new chums at the muck heap! There were differing views on the state of the manure from "This is a good load this week" to "Not much good, this stuff" so we really don't know what to believe, but it was full of droppings and not too much straw/hay and steaming most beautifully so we collected and spread. We have also started a manure pile of our own so it can rot away and be perfect for next year.

Other jobs we did were to cut down some of the comfrey and put it on the compost heap because I read somewhere that it makes very good compost - also we wanted to put the new muck pile where some of the comfrey was growing. I weeded a bit and Nils tidied up the edges of the beds and path. Nils started mending the rake, but needed more tools for the job so it will have to wait for next week now. We began tidying up the strawberries - cutting off runners and dead leaves. We took quite a few plantlets home to pot up to make new strawberries. I have no idea what variety they are but they look very healthy.

Another task was to create a container for leaf mold (mould?). We have several large trees in and around our small garden at home and they produce the most amazing quantity of leaves in every autumn - so we thought we could bag them up and make use of them. Nils has fashioned this nifty little chickenwire container - which might hold about a tenth of what we have collected! I think he will have to make a couple more, at least.

And finally, last week Nils made friends with a fox and this week it was a very friendly robin who came to join us in the plot.