I GOT CAUGHT... IN A NET / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / MARCH 2021

Good morning guys, welcome to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I am here the very next day since my last vlog, so there will be a day in between when I put this up, and the weather is completely different. So yesterday it was blue skies, sunny, I was worried I was going to get sunburnt. Today, rainy, grey skies, quite cold, that's why I've got my hat on as well, and you can see very windy. One of my jobs today will be securing everything and making sure my ground sheets don't fly away, like that one there, he's really trying to fly away isn't he, look, there he goes. Stark contrast from yesterday, I've already got two wheelbarrow loads of wood chip, just going to finish a couple of little areas, get it done. The wood chip pile is like a quarter of what it was yesterday, so I think a lot of people came in the afternoon and just topped up their sort of wood chips, god I can't even talk, that's what happens when I get here and do a job straight away you see, I'm just knackered. I might just get some of the weeds up around my plot and just neaten it a little bit, I think now's quite a good time to do that because it's a bit of a boring job, and it is March, so we should be doing all the boring jobs so we can do all the fun jobs ASAP. I'm talking about, not weeds but grass, and just making it neater, and then down here, just neatening that a little bit before I put my wood chip down over it and just, you know, just get that job out the way really. I feel like it's going to really rain in a minute, I'm like a cow, I can sense it, cows sit down when it's going to rain and I can just sense it, I can just feel the rain is coming, maybe it's something about being British, I don't know. Sometimes you can just pull weeds, we all learn new stuff all the time don't we. You might think I'm being a little bit harsh about pulling all this up, but the thing is, if I leave it, it gets bigger and bigger and it starts growing into my raised beds, and also, when things are growing right along the raised bed, it's the perfect place for slugs and snails to hide in, and then they obviously come slithering out when they smell all my cabbage and stuff, so I just really want to get rid of everything that's up against the raised bed, though it's so windy, I don't know if you can hear me, but yeah, just want to get rid of all of it really, and wood chip it. I'm wondering if it's worth getting a little fence put around my plot, or even just some wood, like you know how people make little wooden barriers around their plot, not like what he's done, and that's the flipping fortress of the allotment isn't it, I don't know what he's up to in there, you see his fence, it's just made of panels of like pallets and everything, it's like a fortress, like I don't want to make a fortress, I've not got nothing to hide in here, but it would be nice to deter pumpkin thieves, because my pumpkins got stolen last year, so it'd be nice to deter people, but also just to have a border so that the weeds don't grow over it, can you see how much better it looks now that I've taken up the sort of grass that's overgrowing, right I'm going to sweep up all that stuff I've cut out and put it in a thing, and then I'm going to put the thing over the thing, oh all this time vlogging and I'm still like completely tongue-tied, I'm going to take the stuff to the compost heap, and I'm going to put the wood chip down, okay we got there, all right is that recording, sorry it's so bloody windy, it's like the flipping apocalypse, apocalypse number two, windstorms, oh god don't say that, right wood chip, I'm caught in a net, bloody hell I hope no one saw that, other than all of you watching at home, bloody hell, oh god, ow, it's one of those moments where I've now got to look around and see if anyone saw me fall over a flipping net, I was like a trapped animal then, I was panicking, oh my ankle, no one saw, I'm safe, I've got to stop leaving stuff out for god's sake, it said rain this morning, like all day, I think that's why no one's here, because they all assumed it would rain, but I'm not afraid of the rain you see, I'm fearless when it comes to water from the sky, so I come here regardless, and just think well I might get lucky, and today I've got pretty lucky, it's not really rained that much so far, so I'm going to finish my archway now, I know it's like the same vlog as before isn't it, except I fell over, so it's one of those jobs you just got to do and get done, I often wonder what I'd be doing right now if I hadn't found gardening, I wonder what my life would have been if I didn't have this, because this has become such an important part of my life, and like if I go a few days without being out in the garden and doing something, I feel really down and really anxious, which is probably why I've been a bit down recently, you might have noticed in my latest vlogs, because I just wasn't able to get here that much, I definitely think my life would not be as fulfilling without gardening, and it's funny because I used to really care about what people think, and I'm quite young, so taking on an allotment, you know my early 30s, a lot of people were sort of like why are you doing that, gardening is boring, it's rubbish gardening, and I wasn't much of a gardener before anyway, so I sort of agreed with them a little bit, but there was just something in me that just wanted to do it, and I'm really glad that I went for it and did it, because you shouldn't care about what other people think, and I think the older I'm getting, the more I'm realising that, it's actually a really hard lesson to learn, because you do care about what people think, it's just like human nature isn't it, but if you love something, you should just do it, and don't care about what anyone else thinks, and I bloody love gardening, and I love my allotment, and I dedicate all my time to it, and it's just my life now, it's just who I am, I'm one of those crazy allotment people now, and I'm really proud, I'm really proud to be actually, if I can get this bloody thing up otherwise I'm a failure of an allotmenter, oh god, it's got really windy out there, there's a storm coming I think, I'm gonna get my sweet peas out next week, and put them into the soil, and then I'm probably going to put little bottles over them, to try and keep them a little bit warm, but I think they need to start going out now, I think they can handle a little bit of cold, and it's going to warm up a bit next week, by warm up I mean like 12 degrees, instead of like three degrees, so that's warm for me, I hope you enjoyed this vlog, sorry it's like repetitive at the moment, but these are great great jobs to be getting done in March, if you're at, you know, you don't know what to be doing, and you're just waiting on your seedlings to grow, just get the paths done, do the weeding, do sort of like quite maintenance type jobs, it's just a great time of year to do that, I will see you in my next vlog guys, I hope you enjoyed it today, see you next time, bye!