7. Water Water Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

It's been a while since my last post. I keep meaning to update it at home where I can add photo's but never seem to get round to it.

Plenty of work has been done. We replaced the top half of the water pump and it worked...for a week of so. The bolts that hold it in place at the base have very little thread left, and quickly worked loose. Currently, the water pump is lying in the greenhouse, feeling sorry for itself until someone comes up with an idea to fix it!

Luckily on the same day as fitting the water pump, we also put some guttering on the side of the outhouse and set up a water butt. So for now, nothing is going to die of thirst. Obviously, the rain is also helping with that situation!

Finally after three years or so of doing various voluntary work, I had my own volunteers. Our friends Jo and Dickon helped out a couple of saturdays ago. They were hooked before they even stepped into our allotment, having a bit of a nose around first and picking out a vacant allotment that they would like to work on. I thought we would never get them to leave, and we would have squatters at the site!

Once they got in our allotment though, there was no stopping them. Dickon managed to dig in an afternoon, the same amount that I had done in about two months! Jo busied herself weeding and made sure Matt had enough cuttings to keep the fire going.

Yes, we had our second fire, it seemed a good idea as there was five of us at the allotment all afternoon. The pile of cuttings did go down, but there is still enough for about 10 more fires! The fire was also a good way to get Matt to the allotment. I have struggled to get him interested in the allotment for a couple of weeks, (mainly due to my nagging everyone about digging!) but mention of a fire and he is straight there! It's a man thing, I believe.

The digging began on Mark's section of the allotment, but progress was hampered a little due to the smoke from the fire blowing into his eyes. For the time being the fire pit is on Mark's side of the allotment!