Well, it's wall-to-wall carpeting for our allotment! Nothing but the best for it. No carpets at home, the floorboards are much more to our taste, but in the allotment it's carpets all the way.During our wanderings around the site we have noticed that all the best allotments are carpeted, some wall-to-wall and others merely have the odd rug scattered here and there, so when school was throwing out two rugs, it seemed a chance too good to miss. I rescued them, transported them and cut them to fit the compost bins, so now our compost is the best carpeted compost around. Hopefully, apart from looking grand, they will keep the compost warm and cosy.

As well as this, the other interesting bit of news is that we met another three neighbours this week. One announced he was a reluctant gardener, and judging by the state of his plot, that is no exaggeration! He didn't look completely at home gardening. Another one we only met briefly, but he keeps a fine plot, and the third turned out to know one of my colleagues, but more importantly was able to help on the subject on the raspberry canes. He said that they were autumn fruiting and that we should be pruning them down the ground, and putting a mulch around them. This was just the sort of advice I have been looking for, so without further ado, I did just that and the photo below shows the result. My Valentine's Day gifts were, as you can imagine, allotment based - two sheets of black polythene, some garden twine and the most beautiful, custom-made, hand-crafted measuring stick. The Tame Photographer has many, many talents. This stick should prove very useful when planting out and sowing seeds, as I find it quite hard to judge distances. It is 12 inches long and divided into inches - gardeners have yet to go metric, on the whole. I used the black polythene to cover a seed bed so that it is nice and warm for the seedlings when I am ready to plant them out.
That was more or less it for the allotment last weekend but two photos follow just because they are nice - one of the friendly robin and one of some ice.At home, in the nursery, all is going fine. The potatoes are chitting nicely, the cabbages are beginning to grow their second leaves, the broad beans, brussels sprouts and lettuces are have all germinated and are growing well. All that hasn't germinated yet is the parsley, but that is notorious for taking a very long time, so I haven't lost heart yet.