Work on the allotment is coming along with the creation of a number of beds. I've been taking several approaches to this bearing in mind the allotment is overgrown with grasses. First step as you see on the above left is covering areas with black landscaping fabric. The grass dies or is at least suppressed by the absence of light.

 On one small bed I removed the fabric and applied a 'lasagna mulch'. First I covered the area with a couple of layers of brown cardboard from various delivery boxes. On top of this I laid a thick mulch of half rotted leaves. Any kind of compost will do but I happened to have bagfuls of soggy leaves from a Christmas tidy up which were well on the way to becoming leaf mold.
 The idea is that the cardboard lasts long enough to suppress the weeds but in due course rots and the mulch merges with soil. I've worked with this method on several community projects and it seems fairly effective. It's part of the 'no-dig' school of thought of gardening and growing. In a nutshell you keep adding to the soil structure rather than constantly turning it over thereby damaging it.
 I remember the first gardening book I bought in my teens advocated not just digging but double digging. Instinctively I thought it seemed counterproductive to be digging and turning over to the depth that the subsoil was being bought to the top, and the fertile top soil was ending up on the bottom.
Since then I have learned more of the extraordinary nature of soil structure and I think there is a lot of merit to no-dig approaches.

 Then again I do think there is a place for digging where it can help with overgrown areas and compacted or claggy soils, particularly early on. And digging can I think open up the soil structure in a beneficial way rather than simply obliterating many of the beneficial relationships which exist within it.
 So on this bed I removed the fabric and did some weeding and turning and sifting; first with a mattock then with a fork. The mattock is a great implement- it's basically a grubbing out kind of tool. I suspect something like it would have been among the first tools developed by our ancient ancestors.
 Anyway the aim of the exercise is to have several beds ready for spring planting. It's a work in progress but it's getting there...  

 Spring is in the air? Snowdrops coming into flower at the back of the garden. Then again Snowdrops are a flower of late winter really and a week or two early this year so perhaps January is a bit early to be heralding spring. But it's coming...

 Simple things make me happy, part 2. Like feeding the birds. I have 3 hanging feeders in the garden that I keep topped up with sunflower seeds, peanuts and suet balls.
 A gaggle of goldfinches are particularly raucous when they come to feed, tits flit back and forth, sparrows come and go and even robins have a peck. The smaller birds slip in and out of the bars with no difficulty. Bits and pieces of food drop to the ground where they're mopped up by the larger ground feeding birds like blackbirds and wood pigeons.
 The caged feeders are a necessity round here otherwise squirrels and parakeets will scoff the lot.

 Postscript  I posted this entry a few hours ago and I'm happy to say a woodpecker just came to the join the party!

                                                                  Hope!

 Simple things make me happy, like knocking up this frame to make a planting bed for the allotment. I cut the wood to size in my father's back garden then screwed it together down at the allotment. A local builder gutting a roof gave my father a stack of timbers a few years ago so it's good to make use of them.
 It's not tanalised (i.e pressure treated to prevent rotting) which I prefer where edibles are concerned. Manufacturers insist that tanalised timber is safe in that regard- after all what harm could result from wood impregnated with deadly toxins?
 Going back to my days as a landscape gardener I've always enjoyed simple rugged modes of construction. In the USA it's sometimes referred to as "chainsaw carpentry" though it can be even more basic than that. I have a fond memory of laying some steps into a California hillside, made by cutting railroad ties in half with a two man hand saw.
 The rectangle is the way humans have organized their world- beginning in the West and now globally. It's also the way we view the world, as now for example when I write this on a screen and you read it on one. The shortest way from A to B is a straight line they say.
 One of the things we experience outdoors and working with nature is that nature doesn't do straight lines. In nature we have patterns- spirals, spheres, branching, webs, nets, waves, cycles et al. I have been on several permaculture courses taught by Aranya, who really knows his onions so to speak. He noted that nature makes these patterns because they are the most efficient ways for nature to organize function, which makes perfect sense. So far example a root system branches to gather the most water and nutrition.
 Aranya also observes that humans are intent on making linear systems in a curvy world (or words to that effect). Plug: Aranya's forthcoming book will be about systems and patterns in nature and permaculture.
 Going off at a tangent (non-linear thought?) I had a similar realisation at the end of my talk last year at the South London Botanical Institute about hiking in California and Oregon. I had shown around 70 slides of lakes, mountains, streams, trails, woods, flowers and such then rounded it off with a photo taken at the railroad depot in Klamath Falls waiting for the train back to San Fransisco. I say realisation but it was more a remembrance of the shock of returning from Crater Lake to civilization:

      

 Happy New Year! I take the view that the Winter Solstice is the true turning of the year and time for celebration but Christmas and New Year's Day seem to have become quite popular so I don't mind joining in. As someone remarked to me recently an occasion like the Solstice needs a fire and since I didn't light one that day I lit one in the garden this morning in a small brazier.
 It's hard to beat the feeling of well-being one gets from the warmth of a fire on a cold, damp day. Partly it was a symbolic gesture but also I had some willow charcoal left over from the summer and the thought occurred to me to conduct an experiment in home made biochar.
 There is interest among ecologists and horticulturalists in 'biochar' as a soil improver. The porous nature of charcoal retains nutrients and provides an environment for mycorrhizal fungi to develop. The concept derives from the existence of 'terra pretta' in the Amazon basin- the agricultural practices of the indigenous peoples circa 450-950 BC involved a slash and char approach which created a rich black soil of weathered charcoal infused with decaying plant and animal matter.
 It's a big topic for a short post but there's a lot of information out there on the subject and on methods that are being developed to utilise the possibilities in our day and age.
 Probably my little experiment will be too rudimentary to be considered biochar or terra pretta in the true sense. I am going to add some very well rotted farm manure to the charcoal to provide the biology. If nothing else it should make a decent compost if covered or bagged and left to sit till spring.
 So begins 2018...