Clearing the way

At 11am yesterday, we dropped the kids off at my parent's house, eagerly packed the car and went to spend our first morning at the allotment. The rain didn't dampen our enthusiasm as we parked up and set about unloading the car. Our first job was to cut the locks off the greenhouse and shed (we'd bought new bolt cutters especially) to give us somewhere to dump our stuff and take cover from the rain. To aid us with our job of clearing we hired a beast of a machine, a bit like a petrol powered circular saw blade on the end of a long stick. It was an unruly beast and noisy as hell but it sure did the job. And I managed to cut a lot of the bushes back while I raked and gathered the cuttings.

Left : before - Right : After using the brush cutter

Before long we'd cut everything down to around 30cm in height and then we fired up an old petrol lawnmower my dad kindly gave to us. He said he had two mowers and that this one he had bought for 20 quid, so he was happy to give it to us. We gratefully accepted and got to work with getting the grass right down. It was really hard going on the uneven ground and the mower kept getting snagged on piles of mud and stone in the ground. We also discovered that the 20 quid mower also had a buggered drive shaft so it didn't propel itself. It needed to be shoved around the grass, adding to our exertion.

The mowing was my job as Andi had been weilding the petrol brush cutter for a few hours.

I'd just finished mowing our planned out 8m section when I decided to mow the quite overgrown path on the left hand side of the plot. I stuggled pushing it over the clumps of grass when suddenly the mower got caught on some stones. Cue lots of clanging and trembling from it when suddenly bits of metal flew at my face. Thank Christ I had a visor on (it came with the brush cutter) or no doubt I'd be blind. Turns out, the top of the mower was totally rusted and the churned up stones had totally penetrated it and blew it to pieces. I immediately stopped the mower and inspected the damage. It was bad. The whole metal section holding the motor was rusted, as thin as paper and that it now had a few rather large holes in it. This meant that everything the mower cut would now be propelled out of the top (and towards my face)!

Needless to say our gardening session came to an end... The above picture is before and after. The ground is now ready to be turned over and raised beds added. We gave ourselves an almighty pat on the back and revelled in our hard work. It was so lovely to be productive, outside and together child-free!

Tomorrow, we're going back with the kids to try and turn over some of the ground and maybe borrow my dad's better (more expensive) mower to cut the bottom half ready for covering with plastic sheeting.

I know I'm going to sleep well tonight!