After much deliberation (ie do I just stick the damn thing up or do I ask the council and get the obvious ‘no’) I decided to go down the route of asking council permission on the allotment today. Fortunately it seems there is a parish meeting tomorrow – therefore I’ll get the answer on thursday, then if I _do_ get permission then I can go over to Ernies house (the donator of the greenhouse) and take it down. Then of course I’ll have to make the obligitory gesture of helping him put up a replacement shed (as most the stuff in the greenhouse is shed material hence why he wants to replace it…) Of course it won’t be as much use as it would have been in January, but it’ll make a nice shelter for some of my plants (though it’ll probably fry everything else) I’ll be counting down the days till the vandals break the first window though! On the other hand of course, I probably won’t get permission from health and safety concerns and/or insurance…

Following the reduce, reuse and recyle method I did a bit of late afternoon scrounging today. On the way back from a London with the full intention of working from home I walked past a fairly full skip of which on far off speculation was a half wooden barrel. Not stopping to probe further, I walked upto the house nearest, knocked and asked if I could pinch from her skip. The answer was ‘yes but the skip pickup people are on the way’

So I ran

And ran

And ran (yes my house is a long way from the station when you’ve got a potential skip pickup looming…)

So still clad in my best suit I manically drove up the road and started throwing things into the back of my car whilst it snowed and rained on me in a way that suggested the term ‘cats and dogs’

Whilst a bit damp I managed to pinch:

2x old but serviceable sprung folding chairs
lots x old garden pots
1x plastic half wood effect barrel (broken but that’s drainage isn’t it???)
1x long tray
1x reel of garden wire
several x miscllaneous vessels
1x plastic dog basket (will use as potting shelf)
1x folding wallpaper table
1x rake (rusty but good handles)

And plenty of short bamboo canes.

Woop! Unfortunately she’d thrown away her greenhouse a week beforehand (something I’ve been searching for a while now!) but this haul easily filled my little fiesta. I popped home to change out of my lovely wet/dirty suit and took the stuff down the allotment – as I went past the skip was gone! close call or what?!

Getting to the allotment I discovered someone has been at my tool store. Not only were the tools all dug into the ground standing to attention but the plastic sheeting was in general disarray and all the wood had been moved. Wind may have ripped the sheeting away but I suspect it didn’t put the tools in a row and free standing.

I removed a lot of the plastic manure bags and took them back to the stables (something they encourage but I was too lazy weeks ago to do – and paid for, my car is full of wet manure water) so now everything looks bizarrely tidy.

This weekend I hope to find someone ripping out their windows to build cold frames.