Of wind and vegetable plotting

It's blowing a gale. If you're reading this somewhere in Blighty it's blowing a gale with you too.

We knew this was approaching. I was warned by my Godmother (who lives in the North West where they speak of 'buggerlugs' and 'sodpots' - she taught me such colourful language when I was a very small girl) that the isobars were looking a little tight for this week.

I went out, with mum and two rolls of tape, to repair a few gaps in the cover of the old polytunnel. It was a bit of a performance, it being wet, but we managed. Then I looked up from the small gap I was patching and spotted that the plastic was ripped right around the end hoop. I stuck my hand through it and waved a cheerful red gloved hand at mum who was fixing it from inside.

"Ah," we said and abandoned our taping attempts. We left the wind to do its worst. That cover has been on for much longer than 10 years so it doesn't owe us anything. Having spent last summer fighting for gaps in the weather to build the big polytunnel and vowing 'never to do that again' it looks like we'll be re-covering the little one this summer. It'll be a doddle compared to hauling the acre of plastic required to cover the big one though.

Oddly enough the cover is still there after three days of gales. I was expecting the spectacular, but it's hanging on, stubborn old thing that it is.

Instead we had other excitement when the Bouncing Garden briefly became the Being Flattened by a Flying Trampoline Garden when the wind tossed the trampoline into the Drying Garden. It landed on (and was fortunately caught and held by) the twirly clothes line.

The Drying Garden, summer 2011.

We unplugged the netting on the trampoline, having returned it to the Bouncing Garden, weighed it down with the rocks I've been collecting for walling projects and put the arms of twirling thing down (something I said I'd do days ago but forgot).

In the meantime I'm staying indoors with seed catalogues, vegetable plotting.