Preparing the way!

Work at the lottie has been sporadic this month due to other commitments but I do have a backlog of photos to post as a mini review of the month.

Here you can see the work I did today in preparation for planting the apple "Annie Elizabeth". I have been doing a lot of work on family history recently and have discovered that "Annie Elizabeth was the apple at the bottom of my grandparent's garden at 1 Kenton Gardens. Google Streetmap shows only too clearly the apple is no longer there - and my Uncle Peter admits to digging it out years ago as it was on it's last legs. the apple is a cooker at it's best from Christmas 'til May.

First I cleared most of the rubbish...

...peeled back the carpet...

...and dug!!! This area has been under carpet for over 10 years now and was used as a dump when the houses at the back were under construction. It feels good to reclaim it as productive land again. The soil was as expected very compacted and pretty clay-ey with no apparent weeds at all apart from copious quantities of shocking white convolvulus roots. I dug these out with a goodly quantity of rubble and was very satisfied! Now I have to get as much as possible out of the gnarled old blackberry in the right hand corner....