2 x 8' AT - hard + cricket + gardening

I had the day off rowing yesterday after a relaxing visit to Jainser. That meant I had missed three sessions in the last 5. Sunday is usually a harder session so I did that. If I skip my day off tomorrow and row I should not lose out too much. The 2 x 8' AT (172/26) was very hard - I found it difficult to keep the split at 1:45 in the first one for much more than two minutes. The second was a mental battle as much as anything and I wanted to handle down. But I didn't. In between the two I had a terrible problem with "seating" and needed to rearrange my seating quite carefully to be comfortable. I was quite tired after this and had a longish warm down whilst watching the cricket. England vs West Indies has not been a good series though. Weak teams playing weak cricket. I think England have gone downhill since the Ashes series. The Windies are the worst side from the islands that I have ever seen with only 2 real test class players.

This year we have dug a vegetable garden and we are starting to reap the benefits. Only lettuce so far though. My master plan was "sister planting" where you bung a bean, squash and sweetcorn seed in the same hole and they all help the others out in a variety of ways (the squash shades the roots and reduces weeds, the bean nitrifies the soil and the corn gives the bean something to climb). But unfortunately by rather naive "bung in the same hole" technique has not paid off too well. Only in two of the holes have all three plants survived. I worked this out quite quickly and last night planted up some of the spares from their seed trays. Not in the same holes! Hopefully we may get more than one corn plant. It is something I have always wanted to grow for myself. Anyway, I tried to get a good picture with MBH's new mobile but it clearly has a "dodgy vegetable sensor" and refused to take pictures for some time. Finally I scored with this blurry effort. I was trying to show that once sweetcorn gets a hold it is "off" but you can't even see the corn in this!


The vegetable patch was grass at Easter and now it looks like we'll have beans, sweetcorn, squash, carrots, onions, spinach, peas, basil, parsley, chard and lettuce on tap before long. Yay! That and the elder flowers we have been eating recently make me feel very "country side alliance".

Metres today: 8,949