In the Meantime

I had high hopes for a jumpstart on the planting this winter season, to set me up for spring, but have moderated my aspirations; medium hopes will do.

Here's the excellent reason for lack of prompt garden time-keeping: painting the house. The smaller the surface area the longer it seems to take to paint e.g. window frames, eaves, chimneys and the front door. Paint demands the warmest, nicest weather and has first call on the day for this year anyway. By the time we paint the house again, we will be pensioners.

I did tidy the shed and that was worth a photo. I've found I can fit alot more in now...

It looks like a plum tree to the left but it is only red orach, seeding. I figured if I let it seed freely, by the time I move the chook house back here there could be a carpet of orach to eat.
The lettuce have been under a plastic cloche through the late summer: a happy picture.

Club root: a very sad picture. The photo doesn't do justice to the distortion. It is an ugly sight. The brassiccas were failing to thrive and would wilt during the day even in the rain. I finally dug one up looking for grass grub, alas no.

Fortunately at that very moment Rose arrived with a bucket of lime and some pinecones. One of those items will help the ground considerably and the other will light the fire.
We had another perfectly timed visit when an electrician came to our house this week by mistake (looking for another house) and we were able to call him in to solve an electrical puzzle for us before letting him get away. How often does that happen?
I wonder how he wrote it up on his time sheet.

There is a beginning and an end to this photo which I see I've left out. The beautiful loam was a black sack of dock seed heads a year ago; it rotted into a crumbly, lovely mix  over 12 months, although mid-way, I do remember peering into the bag and seeing little seedlings, then tying the bag back up again.
The end photo, if you can imagine a green fuzz of zillions of little seedlings emerging here. It seems the motherload of seed was not nuetralised after all.
In a garden, there aren't many disasters, just plan B, plan C, plan D and ever new resources to redirect around the property. 

I had redirected clusters of onion weed to the compost bin. Midway through turning the pile I found them.  The photo doesn't do justice to the particular light-starved green as they regrew in the middle of the heap. Nae bother to flick the bulbs off into a bucket and compost the tops. You can't drown the bulbs, they grow, so I may splash out and pay to put these out in  a rubbish bag.

I do that now and again.