My wonderful, lovely cousin is coming home early.  She’s been in Kenya for the last four months volunteering in an orphanage in Nakuru.  She went to the beach for Christmas and before she got back everything blew up (literally in some cases).  She can’t get back from the beach anyway as there’s no transport but it would be too dangerous for her to try.  She was meant to come back at the beginning of next month but her parents have arranged for her to get to an airport and fly out sooner - should be back next week hopefully :-)  Can’t wait to see her - we love her very much and have been very worried about her.

Because I think that comment conversations get lost among posts, I’m going to respond to comments here

1. Yes, a raised bed might be the only option, but I understand that the thing about comfrey is that the roots go really deep and tap into the nutrients that can only be found in the subsoil and then these nutrients are then returned to your veg beds when you used the leaves as a mulch/compost.  Soooo….I’ve discovered that the large rock thing I’ve found is actually a lump of concrete and it’s surrounded by lots of smaller pieces and ‘grains’ of cement.  I don’t know how deep the cement goes, but it’s easy to clear and the concrete lump appears to break up when it’s banged very hard with a spade.  I’m going to borrow my Dad’s sledgehammer to make breaking it up easier (and safe-guard  my spade that is in danger of being broken!)  and hopefully then the comfrey roots will be able to reach past the crap to the good stuff deeper down (if there is any!).  I think I’m going to start a campaign for builders on new-builds to not make a horrid rubble heap of the garden!

2. Green manure is plants that you sow solely to nourish the soil - legumes that fix nitrogen for example, or plants that you cut down and dig in when they’re very leafy.  They’re meant to keep the ground covered between crops which is better for the soil, and some improve the structure because of the way their roots grow. 

There’s loads of it in our garden (our house is only 6 years old).  I’m getting quite used to digging out huge paving slabs and bits of house brick but I’ve just started digging over an area to plant out some comfrey and hit a really large bit of red stone stuff.  I don’t think I’ll be able to dig it out and if I leave it, the bed will be too shallow for the comfrey which, according to an allotment website, needs a deep bed :-(  Not sure where else I can put it now…will have to get my thinking cap on!  Stupid garden!  It had better produce some very good veg after all the back-breaking work I’m having to do to prepare the ground!

Wow!  I haven’t blogged for what seems like thousands of years!  Well, here I am again, all excited because the New Year’s begun and I can get on with our plans for it.  We have Mopsy’s birthday in a few weeks, then mine.  We also have a very important wedding coming up at the end of January for which the girls are being flower girls and I am doing a reading.  It’s a very, very special friend of mine getting married and I’m so excited to be able to be there with her and her husband-to-be and to be a part of it! 

I’m now branch secretary and, as we have a new chair who is a good friend of mine, it’s a nice easy job, at last!  Something I *can* do that I actually *want* to do as well!  I’m hoping to attend NCT Conference this year for the first time as it’s the closest to us it’s been and I’m really excited about that

In February I’m attending a weekend course to train me to train breastfeeding peer supporters so I’ll be able to train new ones and offer refresher training to our current ones at the support group I work at.  At the moment the peer supporters have to rely on the other BFCs within the network of groups so there’s often travelling involved for them.

I’ve ordered my organic gardening catalogue so I can order my seeds for our first veg plot!  I got some gorgeous wellies today so I tried them out by starting to dig our second plot - we’re hoping to end up with three over the next couple of years.  I can’t decide what to grow yet.  My green manure is starting to grow now on the first plot so I’m very pleased about that - hopefully that will help the atrocious soil to be a bit more helpful to the veg we grow along with all the manure I chucked in there over the autumn.  DH got a bird table for Christmas so he set that up today then sorted out the two sheds to make them more usable for the next year. 

More exciting than anything else is what’s going on as I write.  We got a doughnut maker for Christmas and DH and the girls are trying it out.  I’m very excited about eating one as they’re making a cinnamon sugar coating for them - we are all addicts of the cinnamon sugar pretzels you can buy in Cheltenham so to be able to make our own version will be very pleasing

Oh, and Cotton-tail’s 1 now