In Praise of Luther

I reported a week or two ago that my back had gone on strike. I was playing touch rugby when I bent down to place the ball on the ground and my spine just locked solid. I managed to straighten up and get home but after the weekend I could still barely move. Digging was slow and laborious and Mrs Moog Keeper had to do the lion’s share of any allotment work. Then a friend at work said he’d been suffering with a stiff neck and recommended a good clinic, so I got the number and made an appointment as soon as I could.

Enter Luther the Chiropractor. Managing effortlessly to look smart and casual at the same time, he didn’t look old enough at first glance to have completed the training. Nevertheless he has three sets of letters after his name and I’m left in no doubt that he knows what he’s doing. After an initial consultation he proceeded to fold me into various positions of the sort you might find on an ancient Egyptian frieze, before performing what seemed like a cross between emergency heart massage and sitting on your holiday suitcase to get it shut. My spine made a noise like a Rubik’s Cube going through a mangle.

And now, what joy! After one visit to Luther I could move and sleep again, and after a few follow up visits I’m happy to say I’m totally mobile, and what a difference it has made to my work rate. I dug over three of my abandoned beds last week, all 3m x 1.8m, without having to keep stopping every other spade-full. “Ooh, you’ve done loads,” said Mrs Moog Keeper. Long may it continue. Thanks Luther.

And So To Bed

As it is fast approaching planting time for most of this year’s crops I urgently need to get my beds sorted out and decide where things are going to go. With this in mind I took Mrs Moog-Keeper and a notepad down to the plot at the weekend. My intention was to make some sort of plan or maybe start marking out.

We decided we needed a clearer view, so with considerable effort from my other half, and manly supervision on my part (I have a bad back this week and can’t bend in the middle that well) we got the carpet removed and exposed the plot to the light of day for the first time since last September. What this has revealed, now the tall grass has nearly rotted away, are the outlines of beds that haven’t been used for years. I knew the ground under the grass was lumpy, because I kept turning my ankle, but seeing it for the first time without weeds was a very pleasant surprise.

The joint decision was that the most economical way of using the space would be to follow the line of the existing beds with paths in between. As the plot hasn’t been worked for years and years, hopefully soil-borne diseases and pests will not be a problem. Also digging should be marginally easier if the soil has been dug before.

We got to work marking out the beds with string until the string got hopelessly tangled after one bed. Then we started using wire until the wire got hopelessly tangled after one more bed. We could have tried the Alexander the Great trick of cutting the knot but that would have left us with lots of tiny useless pieces of wire/string, so we just started digging the first bed instead. I was reminded of Monty Python’s String Sketch - what to do with 122,000 miles of string in 3 inch pieces. "Simpson's Individual Stringettes!"A MILLION HOUSEHOLD USES!" but I digress. One bed down, many to go!

All in all a successful weekend of activity.