Only 48 more days . .

. . . until the nights start getting lighter! One could make a chart and cross them off, like someone in a prison cell. It makes it seem not SO bad. Well, I did make a chart, but it wouldn't paste in, as it is full of cells in a Word Doc. Here it is, scanned:



Today I got out at 3.00pm. This is a steady improvement, but yet the darkness moves on us inexorably. The hour before that got used up sorting out a load of smelly old gardening gloves and rubber gloves and liners, and I pegged them in pairs on a line in the potting shed. It's not a potting shed. It's a rubbish shed, right up to its ceiling. The day might come when it will get sorted out.

The gardening thought for today is a decision that fleece is the way forward. It's not cheap, when you think of how many vegetables you could buy for a roll of it, but I'm sick of losing stuff over the years to slugs, cats, pigeons and caterpillars. Anything else? Drought, flooding, burning sun. It sounds like the Old Testament.

So, a lovely row of shallots went in and then the red onions that I've had waiting for a month. It feels nice to be in here knowing that they are out there (with yesterday's garlic), cosy under their fleece, and that they're not going to be tossed about by blackbirds looking for worms beneath them. For fifteen years I've done them all with sticks and black threads and still have had to go out days later to find some of them missing and most of them lying all over the place. And the rains and frosts and things haven't helped. I look forward to reporting on the progress of this lot. I've known about fleece for decades but have never got round to using it. That's all it is. I had to get Electric onions, as there were no Red Barons to be had. Let's see how they go, too.