Sleep At Last !

Finally I Get Sleep

   Yes, it happened, for the first time in months I had a good solid nights sleep and do I feel better for it ? do I hell haha ! I feel like I could get back to bed a stay there for the whole day, it must be my body telling me it enjoyed a real sleep and wants more. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours clearing the area in the garden where the new raised beds are to be constructed this winter, there was a lot of timber to move and the old beds to dig out so it was hard work but well worth the effort. The area looks so big and once the hedgerow that side is cut down I'm sure it will look even bigger.
   So I'm guessing the fresh air and hard work helped in the sleep department last night and I'm hoping to get out there again this evening too. There is still a lot of work to be done before I can start getting timber delivered for beds, lots of those wonderful garden bonfires to have in the evenings and lots of topsoil to move ready to mix with compost and dung. The work will take up a good part of the winter but the end result will be a really nice kitchen garden that I hope will keep us feed for most of the coming year. I'm still playing with the idea of chickens but after having them in the past and knowing the efforts of keeping them I feel it may not be worth the trouble as fresh free range eggs are so cheap around here with so many being sold at gates and local farm shops. As for keeping chickens for dinner birds, well we tried that a few years back and after getting the birds ready for cooking, Yvonne decided we couldn't eat them as they were once our little fluffy chicks, so that was a no no. So taking this all into account and the fact they would take up a good bit of room which could be put to a better use with growing veg or herbs I think the chicken idea will stay just that, an idea.
   It's strange really when I think of those days as a kid, helping on my grandads garden, feeding the hens and collecting eggs, watching how every month had different jobs to be done, from sowing and weeding in the spring to harvest and clearing the ground in the autumn months. I remember one job that I always had to help with, the muck cart. Every year there would always be one afternoon after school in late autumn when I would get to my grandads only to see that the pigs dung had arrived, this huge trailer load would be standing there in a heap steaming away all ready to be spread over the garden. It's only now later in life that I understand just how important it was to the garden, in those days were wasn't all the bags of treatments you can buy now, these days you can just cast some tiny pellets over the soil and dig it in. Then it was hard work and you used the raw materials which meant this little lad in his wellies carting wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow off to the veg garden and do you know what, in a way I'm looking forward to doing the same here with my garden, tho I have a feeling most of it will be free bags of horse dung and not a mountain dumped in the drive.
   This morning I hope to get a few pictures of the pumpkin harvest, a lot of the farmers here grow fields of pumpkins and for the last few weeks a steady stream of trailers have been passing by with what must be thousands of these wonderful orange squashes. If I get some nice shots I'll list one on here, the sight is amazing when you pass these fields, but hey, I'll leave that until my next blog.
   Looks like we may get another nice sunny day here so I hope you all enjoy the weather while it lasts and get out in your gardens, I'll be looking to see whats happening around the ponds as yesterday there were a few dragonflies around having a late play in the sunshine.