This morning I spotted next door's 'innocent' chickens on the lookout for free grub....
...and then caught one of them in the act of swiping one of my nice juicy worms.
I think they see the allotment as a bit of a fast food joint. Whenever I'm weeding near the fence they tend to associate my voice with the imminent arrival of a slug or snail overhead (apparently the recent influx of snails has coincided with all of them laying now, so I was pleased to accept a box of half dozen eggs in exchange for a few marauding molluscs ;) Worms, however are off the menu as they're too valuable in the soil....
Despite being told it looked 'awful' by both Peter and Alan, I persevered with my layer of sheep fleece over the soon-to-be pea and bean bed (above). It will warm the soil up nicely (I've just cleared it and raked it over) and hopefully keep the weeds down until planting time too. I think it looks like a patchwork (shame about the bricks, but with the winds we've been having lately it's a must).
One of the main reasons for moving the fleece already was the demise of my seed potatoes. As if it wasn't enough that loads of them were rotting due to suspected frost damage (possibly before they even got to me), now a mouse has taken up residence and has decided to pop into the polytunnel for a midnight snack or two. Mind you, if I was a mouse, I would find a pile of sheep fleece in a polytunnel with potatoes on tap a pretty nice place to set up home too.
We had more tea and biscuit breaks than work completed today (we'll blame Paul for the distraction), but then it was a nice sunny day for standing around and the wind had even dropped. For the last few weeks we've been on the go simply to keep warm more than anything else.
However, Peter did manage to finish weeding the high raised bed, and make a start on cleaning the mountain of plastic pots we've been donated, so all was not lost.
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