Mid winter and a year on...

So, it's the middle of the winter and it's not particularly cold today. Well, it hasn't been particularly cold at all this winter- yet! There's been the odd frosty cold day but not many. Today was around 8 degrees. So not bad really. 

 There has been a lot of rain though- even for us- on the north east coast of England rain wise we're not majorly effected. Yes we have weeks where it just rains none stop- but fortunately we don't ever get effected by flooding unlike other places. 

 This is a year on in the life of my allotment. It had never had an owner before me. It had been empty land for several years and before that it was a car park! So it's interesting to see how the land is effected by the things we do.

The soil is very thick clay soil- and at this time of year it's horrible to work with. You could mould shapes out of it!!

But we went along today- to plan tomorrow when we will begin working on it.

 We would have started sooner but my husband dislocated his shoulder and so has been out of action for a good while now. 

As you can see, it's looking like a bit of a shambles. Though the sprouts are still happy enough.

We plan on starting on the left hand side tomorrow in front of the shed. The council have kindly dropped off a lot of woodchippings at the entrance to the allotment site- so we will collect those as well to neaten things off and stop weeds from coming up in the spring.

My pond seems to be quite happy. It's the area I leave as wild- and it certainly looks wild right now!! But the actual pond seems happy enough- some of the pond plants are dying back but it took a long time for the winter to kick in! We had a super warm November! In the spring I plan on getting some more pond plants- I'm thinking more grassy things. 

We also saw these beetles today. They're called Rosemary Beetles. We've never seen them before, but it would explain why they're on the Rosemary!! They're so pretty- I was quite mesmerised. When I Googled them to identify them it came up with he RHS website; which says they're pests. They're meant to sort of destroy the plant while they eat it in late autumn to late spring- though my Rosemary has never looked better so they may have just arrived! I don't want to get rid of them though. Everything has a place on my allotment- and if it means I have to sacrifice a few plants every now and then to certain insects then so be it. I don't like to consider anything a pest if I can help it.