Winning the battles.

I think we're winning the battle this week - or battles perhaps that should be.    2 weeks ago John was away for a couple of days and 4 days after he got home he got the dreaded lurgy that seems to occur after airline travel.  The sore throat,  stinking cold,  chesty cough,  aches and pains,  sound familiar?    Not content to keep it to himself,  last Sunday  I woke with the start of a sore throat and now 6 days later am still coughing,  chesty,  blocked nose and trying so hard not to wince and pull my back muscles again.   That was a problem for a couple of weeks,  but helped enormously by doing 20 minutes of exercises twice a day - luckily I'd kept the book that we got about 18 or so years ago when I had bad problems.

So the other battles are - or were - the sweet peas which are well on their way to a better life reseeding and rotting on the lower land,   a broad bean patch which collapsed in the winds of last week and the beans are not going to get any bigger with broken stems,  John cut them all down this morning and I de-beaned and podded -  3 lots in the freezer and the rest for the weekend,  and the rocket.  Well,  that was just a few plants that seeded themselves in the wrong place and that I moved into our raised bed.  They then grew and grew and grew and produced so many flowers and now so many seed pods,  that if they are allowed to seed themselves where they are,  they'll totally take over that vegetable plot.  I cut off all the flower / seedpod stalks this morning and put them in a bucket.  It's a large bucket,  one of those black rubbery ones that we all have loads of over here,  cheap and long lasting.

Tomorrow I need to de-seed the rocket so the big pods can dry out for next year,  and get planted where we want,  the rest will go to rot with the sweet peas probably.  Then the vegetable patch can be dug over and composted for our summer veg - the lettuces are still fine in there so we're going to add peppers, cucumbers, chillis, courgettes  and what ever else there is room for.  We try to keep that area as a kitchen garden as it's the closest to the house for when you just want something quickly,  rather than the rest of the veg patches which are for more long term stuff such as strawberries, squash, beans and peas.

Beautiful day yesterday and today, until about 4pm when a big cloud came over,  dropped loads of rain and disappeared.  Sunshine above us,  sunshine down the valley,  and the cloud just went once it had dropped it's rain.  Stopped me digging though!

More tomorrow - weather permitting.  It says a chance of rain,  ie 2mm - sometimes that just means heavy cloud which is good digging weather.