The longest day is upon us, and it’s a scorcher!  The past week has been fabulous; it feels as though we’re getting a proper summer, hurrah!  Summer might just last a week this year, but better than hee-haw! So this month has been good so far.  A last-minute visit from one of my lovely nieces a couple of weeks ago was great, and we were fortunate enough to have good weather so managed to get out and about each day for a wee wander which was nice.  I’ve walked to work a few times too, and want to keep that going as I definitely need to move more in general.  My back has been really bothering me though which has pissed me off no-end.  Unfortunately it’s meant I’ve not spent as much time down the allotment as I’d have liked, especially in the heat of summer.  As a result the bastarding weeds have regained overall control!  All the kale, cabbage and lettuce planted was completely decimated by snails or slugs.  RIP poor wee veggies 😥 On the plus side though, the tatties, garlic & onions are doing well, so much so that I did a test-dig of the potatoes and got some lovely Charlottes to eat.

Yesterday I also dug up some of the other variety i’d planted – International Kidney (like Jersey Royals but you can’t call them that if they’re not from Jersey) –  and they look good, if a bit wee….I really need to leave them be for another few weeks to let them all grow!  Anyway, it feels fab to have actually grown something myself 😀  I also got another haul of rhubarb which appears to have rallied even though in May it looked as though it was on its last legs.

What the allotment has really given me an appreciation of is, well, just food.  The fact I planted something over 2 months ago, and it’s now giving me food is amazing.  The fact it takes so long in a way is what gets me.  It just cements for me how bad it is to waste food.  We are so used to popping to the shops to be faced with rows an rows of stacked veggies (and all the rest), that you become immune to the fact that the produce is the result of weeks & months of hard work.  Okay, so you could say that mass production takes a lot of the graft away, but not entirely.  Anyway, I’m sure you get my point.  It’s humbling to me, coming to this fairly late in the game, and it being such a revelation and novelty, but growing your own food really is something special.  I’ve got so much to do to wrangle control the allotment from the weeds and what not, I’ll not be planting anything else in the immediate future, but that’s okay.  (Oh and I know i’ll never actually be the one in control here!).

The flip side of my allotment love is that I think this is also primarily one of the reasons my back hasn’t been great.  I’ve been doing whole new movement patterns on a slightly dodgy back with crappy core strength and limited flexibility etc., so as much as I love it, it’s not loving me.  I’ve not been able to stick to my weight-lifting plan as a result, so I’ve taken the sensible position of dialling it back and getting some help.  I was at the gym earlier tonight for an assessment/chat about what I wanted, so I’m getting a new programme that I’ll do myself, and it’ll focus on increasing range of mobility/flexibility and ensuring I have the correct movement patterns.  It’ll be a 12-week plan, and might be that I don’t lift anything heavy at all in that time, but that’s okay.  If it helps get me in the right place, then it’ll help my lifting no end, and my lifting goals will take care of themselves in the long run.  So i’m looking forward to getting that started, and hopefully sorting this back out.

Money-wise has been a bit of a disaster this month.  Well, actually not bad compared to where I used to be, but the new money-saver me has ballsed up this month.  I had a couple of unplanned expenses that have wiped me out and left me overdrawn.  It just means the spare case from July’s money is no longer spare, and will get eaten up by the overdraft.  Not the end of the world, but it’s a place I don’t like being in anymore.  The good thing is I’m bothered by it – this was a monthly occurrence before.  Also it’s meant having to say no (again) to another weekend event with some lovely pals I’ve not seen in a while.  One even offered to pick me up on the way, but since I would only ever have been going for the day, while they were staying for the weekend, I had to decline the generous offer.  It sucks, I feel like a boring twat, but it is what it is.  On the plus side my debt is now less than £10K, meaning i’ve paid off over £7K since August 2016.  It’ll likely take until Jan. ’18 to finally get shot of it, but I can live with an extra month.

So in the meantime it’s nothing but free entertainment – allotment, gym and swims in the beautiful river near my flat.  I can live with that 🙂