Thursday 26th March 2020

The new cooker turned up today which was AMAZING given that Boris has decreed that all non essential work must stop.There seems to be a lot of debate about what IS essential work-at the minute some building trades seem to be going on. Of course I would argue that having no cooking facilities is an essentialwork.The builder doing the kitchen work sat in the van for two hours watching to see when the cooker people left.
'I don't want to be around strangers' he said..
I wondered if strangers were any more likely to pass on the virus than family or friends and recalled the weird Madonna in the bath video rant that I'd watched earlier on in the day about how 'coronavirus is the great equaliser'.
Well exactly..we all sit naked in the bath filming ourselves wearing nothing but rose petals on our bits in times of national crisis ..
As usual Chef asked me what my plans were for the day.
I turned off the news.
'I'm going to trim the prickly bush'
Which raised a slight titter.
I spent the whole day on the garden again, weeding and cutting back HARD rose bushes and climbers.I don't worry too much about the buds they always seem to come back stronger from a good prune 18 inches above the ground if you're interested.
And if you have your own organic compost which you've lovingly fed for two years ALL THE BETTER.
What you need actually is two compost heaps.One to decompose and one to fill with all the veg trimmings, some cardboard-egg boxes are great, newspapers, teabags, coffee grinds and also the aforementioned secret ingredient..
When you start off it takes two years for the first to be ready, but once you've got to this stage you have one to fill and one that you're using.

Quality sieved compost

I have HIGH hopes for the produce this year as we also had a shitload of manure delivered a few weeks ago which we spread all over the veg patch.Bit whiffy at the time but you get used to it..

Whatever you do though DO NOT,I repeat,DO NOT spread farmyard mature on the area that you plan to plant root veg such as carrots.

If you do the tender young carrots will not be strong enough to fight their way straight through the bits of straw and you will end up with RUDE carrots..chortle..

*plants carrots in manure* 

News today;Prince Charles has Covid 19 this promoted a deluge of jokes most of questionable taste which I dare not repeat on here other than :

'Prince Charles has tested positive for COVID 19, however Prince Andrew has decided not to be tested and just sweat it out' haha.

At 8pm we all went outside to clap for the NHS which was nice if a little lacking in atmosphere up here,I couldn't help thinking it was a poor substitute for sufficient protective clothing for them.

I saw a  woman on the news in Russia who was happy to go into church and not observe the social distancing rules 'as the virus could not be spread in church' ..and Reader, SHE WAS A DOCTOR..
Maybe it's time we all found God.

Planted the early potatoes today; Maris Pipers and Pink Firs and returned the rancid compost heap specimens we found yesterday back on this years compost....