A beautiful weekend

Burglary aside, it was a beautiful weekend. A sunny Sunday, not too cold, made it ideal for digging over the corner of the plot reserved for my eventual greenhouse plus herbs, flowers and containers. Because I have one of the few trees on the allotment I tend to spend a lot on wild bird food. At any given time my apple tree hosts one hanging bird bath, a sunflower seed holder, a peanut holder, two coconut halves filled with suet and a suet ball holder. As a result, whenever I go down the the allotment I startle away a small flock, most of whom head off to the trees to wait impatiently for me to go. Not the robins, however. I've discovered that there are two of them, bold little things, quite willing to watch me do the digging and then swoop down and hoover up the worms as if they were spaghetti. They hover in front of the coconut shells like hummingbirds. I had no idea they could do that. A few other birds eventually overcame their shyness. They have clearly realised that 'the blue shed lady' is a harmless sucker who buys her suet balls in tubs of 50 from Petsmart.

Not to go into too much detail, but work was a nightmare this week. I've moved into a technical job I'm worried I'm not capable of doing. I was on call over the weekend, tied to my BlackBerry (not the good sort), watching the database error messages mount up. I wasn't sure whether I should go into work or if I'd be able to fix it if I did. Going to the allotment and just digging made me feel calmer, somehow clean.

The snow started about 1600, just a few flurries but enough to leave a thin layer on the ground. I carried on digging, just breaking up the ground more than anything. The last opportunity I think I'll have for a week, heavy snow is forecast, but at least I may have unearthed a few thistle roots and slug eggs. The sky cleared afterwards, and I saw a kestrel hovering in the air above me, just underneath the new moon. Whatever happens, life is still beautiful. Even if I get fired, even if I end up as a mad cat lady living in a caravan somewhere, sans marbles, I'll probably still be able to afford my allotment. Sometimes I dream about selling up, heading up to Scotland and buying an island croft, or spending three years on the National Trust careership gardener scheme and becoming a head gardener somwhere. Secretly, I suspect I'd be rubbish at it.