we're spitting feathers now

just a quick update on the allotment invaders. well it turns out that the rabbits weren't to blame for our damaged cabbages. it was a squadron of fighter pigeons with a taste for half grown veggies. needless to say we have taken evasive and hopefully they will not be tucking into our produce again.

watch this space to see what happens!

rabbit pie anyone?

we've had a little visit from some of our neighbours, and they didn't come round asking for a bowl of sugar! we've been invaded by rabbits, and by the look of what they left, i think they'll be pretty fat by now. the top picture shows what remains of one of our cabbage plants, which should have nice large, green, lush leaves by now.

so we've decided to sure up our defences to try and prevent another attack (and if that fails i'm gonna get me some of those wmd's!). the bottom picture shows our new perimeter fence along our northern border. we are also planning to construct a second line of defence around each of the individual beds. we will never surrender!

i don't like cricket...

...i love it! (or so goes that old song).

well last sunday was my first game for elmswell and i did pretty well. we lost the toss and were put into bat first. i was a bit shocked to be asked by the captain to bat at number 3 but i didn't really mind. i managed to score a fairly solid 15 runs which i was quite pleased with that. we got a grand total of 121 for 9 off 40 overs which we thought might not be quite enough, even though the pitch was playing very slowly after all the rain we'd had.

as the opposition were preparing to come out to bat we had a bit of a warm up and a couple of the guys were hurling balls at me to catch (i'm a wicket keeper by the way, that's not some kind of sick initiation thing they do to new players!) which was quite helpful really as it was a while since i'd kept wicket.

i made some pretty good stops and only let a few stray ones past me so i was very happy. we manged to bowl them out for 70 so it was a fairly convincing win in the end and i thoroughly enjoyed it.

adding that to previous results now means that we're top of the league and have an unbeaten run stretching back to the start of last season. no pressure then!

this weekend we've got two games (friendly on saturday and league game on sunday) so i'll post some results here afterwards.

did you know... (#2)

...in chinese, the words for crisis and opportunity are the same?

get well soon sir bobby

ipswich town fc fanzine those were the days is running a page to send your best wishes to former ipswich & england manager sir bobby robson who has recently been diagnosed with cancer for the fifth time.

give it a look and leave your own message for one of the greatest figures in sport this country has ever produced!

get well soon sir bobby!

the fruits (& vegetables) of our labours

we went a bit mad today and got another bed dug and two beds planted out with mainly cabbage and broccoli.

things are looking good and hopefully very soon we're gonna have something to taste for our efforts.

we're now planning our next expansion, with a couple more beds to dig beyond the two we've done today. they'll probably be planted with some green fertiliser and then used next year (or later this year).

beyond that we plan to have a long thin strip of land for some climbing plants like runner beans or similar (we're open to suggestions).

did you know...?

at least once a day (usually much more) i will start a sentence with the words "did you know...?" this is then followed by the people present rolling their eyes in preparation of another one of my gems of wisdom.
well now i'm going to extend this onto the iplow blog, so beware!

so here i go. the first of many is;

did you know...that squirrels can peel bananas?

and there's plenty more where that came from!

dig for victory

well we've only gone and done it! me and sue have gone and got ourselves an allotment! here's a little 'before & after' shot of our little plot.

we're trying to be as organic as possible so we're fully prepared for some very funny shaped carrots (i'll be sure to get photographic evidence and post it here).

hopefully i can use this little blog to keep a record of how we get on and any successes and problems we have along the way.

those of you interested in allotments and growing your own veg should check out the organic catalogue (link in the "i like" section to the right). Its got loads of things to buy and its nearly all organic and very cheap.

post 1 of ???

welcome to the iplow blog and thanks for having a look at my page.

I'm shiny and new to this blogging lark so its probably gonna change a lot over the next few days and weeks but hopefully i'll settle on a style and focus all of my own.

keep checking back here regularly to find out what i'm up to.

cheers