March 4th.

The most exciting thing in the garden which has happened lately has been inside the compost bins.  On the allotment I have four, in varying stages of decay and regeneration into usable material, and the first one, piled up with layers of all sorts of crud and corruption has transformed itself over the winter into the classic sweet-smelling dark brown  feathery compost you read about in books!  Easy to dig out, light to fork into the soil, it has produced enough to cover my two big main beds, mulch the current bushes and gooseberries and provide feed for the  raspberry canes I inherited when Jayne decided to dig over her raspberry bor4der and grow flowers for bees instead.  When I think of all the vegetable peelings, weeds, old leaves, eggshells and even the odd mussel shell which went into this bin, I feel I have shared in a little magic. Bins 2, 3 and 4 are younger and therefore less experienced, but the scheme obviously works.   I have produced compost in previous years but this has been  the best by far.  Now we just have to produce the crops!