Still in the war against the machines!

          The camera has broken down. They don't tell you that when you buy them. This digity thing never breaks down, son. Hardly any moving parts, eh? It freezes. Just like those computery beep beepy things, all of them.

            I'm still digging. There's lots of diggings at the diggings still to do. Just digging the whole allotment from top to bottom is not an intellectual activity, but only an idiot would have to do it. Only someone who didn't know anything about allotmenteering. There's a small hill emerging near the middle of the allotment, built from the weeds, clods, and miscellaneous grassy tufts, the result of the diggings. If I don't pay attention to the weeds this year, I'll end up with just the hill and a kind of moat round it.

          I was going to show you what some of the really nice allotments around me look like, but my camera has broken down.

More digging!

          It was a lovely day today for the diggings. I think it was the warmest afternoon so far. I've managed to  dig  about a quarter way down the second side, so I'm hoping to have it all dug by May.

Charles Bukowski

          Some hailstones fell as I walked to the allotment, so I took a wee walk round the Botanic Gardens instead of going to dig.

          I think I wrote in the blurb for Are You Boys Cyclists? that it might be enjoyed by someone who liked stuff by Charles Bukowski. Of course, Cyclists is not like anything by Charles Bukowski. I'd never read any Bukowski till I'd finished Cyclists and the first stuff I read by him was poetry. It was on the Holy Isle about eighteen years ago. Every now and again I come across a book by him and I almost always really like it, though sometimes the quality is a wee bit uneven. But Ham on Rye is a great book. The one I'm reading just now is called Hollywood. He tends to write the novels about versions of himself. He drinks a lot. I understand his despair. There's something desperately authentic about his stuff. I'm a big fan. He wrote this book when he was sixty five. There's hope for us yet!

Another bit dug!

          I started on the other half today. The stuff inside the green netting in the bottom photie is supposed to be broccoli and kale, but the plants went bananas and turned into monster mutations due to the weird summer we had last year. Let that be a lesson to us!

          I stripped away the netting and dug that section. I'm going to plant brussel sprouts in there and cabbages. Usually, we plant seedlings, but this year I'm trying to grow them from seed. I've rigged up a kind of seed propagator in my bedroom, as you do.

Half Dug!

          I've been digging this allotment for about seventeen years, but this is the first year that I'll be able to attend to it properly. Previously, I had a jobbie to go to or family matters to take care off for some of the week.

          I'm doing things differently this year. Normally, I dig and then plant the bit I've just dug. This time I'm going to dig the whole allotment before I plant anything. This won't make any difference if it rains like it did last summer when  the allotments turned into one gigantic slug restaurant.

           There's not much chance of me starting to write again until this allotment is sorted.

Blogging again

         
          It seems that I can post photies on this blog. Hurrah! So I'll post my photies here and when I get back into blogging, I'll blog about my writing business and such like. My main pre-occupation these days is with vajrayana buddhist meditations, and because of this I haven't written anything new for nearly a couple of years really. So I'm much more a meditator than a writer these days, but I'll try not to post anything about meditations on this blog.