Weather Watching

We log onto the Met Office's web site daily, so that we have some idea of what the weather is going to be like over the next 5 days and very often depending on what is forecast can decide the priority of work we have to do. So according to the Met office it was going to rain heavily on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and as I said in my last blog we've been re-routing a ditch, which on Monday morning became Priority No.1!!! Between us we got a lot dug, leaving Tim with about 3 or 4 yards to tidy up at the top of the ditch, which he finished on Tuesday. He also finished off the fencing along the ditch line, in readiness for the expected down pour.
Wednesday was fine, so was Thursday and Friday. The rain finally arrived Saturday afternoon, but not with any great force, but as I sit writing this blog, it is absolutely tipping it down. The sad people we are, we have been out to check that the ditch is running O.K and it is. Though it looks like we will have to clear some fallen trees further along the beck so that it can take the extra water.
This weekend, between the rain showers, I've been working in the veg garden. The heritage tomatoes are now planted in grow bags in the greenhouse, (and thanks to my friend I travel with on the train between Redcar and Middlesbrough, we've found a glazier so we can get the extra panes to finish off greenhouse number 2), the sweetcorn and butternut squash plants are planted out, the kale and red cabbage plants are being hardened off in the cold frame. I might try and plant them out into a nursary bed so that they keep growing, and a whole load of weeds got their heads chopped off. We also paced out the deep beds for the veg garden proper and I'm sure if you Google Earth'd our land you'd see blue electric posts marking out the beds. With any luck I will have 12 15ft x 6ft deep beds to plant in over the coming years. They will take some creating, but once done experience tells me they are a doddle to manage.
The two Shetland fleeces that I washed last week have dried beautifully and so has the Masham x Shetland one I did yesterday. Tim has come up with a great idea for where to permanently site my fleece washing trough with very little effort. Tim has also made a small table, on wheels, that my large carder can stand on, so I can at long last process my fleeces. As I said in my last blog I've come back with lots of ideas from Woolfest and having full access to the carder is essential to what I want to do.
According to the Met Office it's going to rain right through until Wednesday, as long as it is fine for next Saturday as the Hedge Laying Hollands are here to help scythe some rather wild areas we have on our land, one of which might reveal a small water catchment area, which might make a wildlife pond!!!!!!!! More next week.