Today was in the high 60's and nothing was going to stop me getting on with my garden. It was a beautiful day.....insects droning, planes droning, a pheasant got itself up onto the roof of the bungalow behind us and shouted and shouted for over half an hour. I wondered if he felt he was stuck but reasoned that he'd got himself up there so he was probably best left to it. He was gone when I next thought about him.

As it is still a bit too wet to dig at the allotment, and I really wanted to get the compost heaps shifted, and I didn't want to do any more sieving for obvious reasons; I decided to use Plan B!!!!!
This was to use it neat, without sieving. But I didn't want it spread like that as a mulch because it is so twiggy....so I have dug and filled a trench for the runner beans down the middle of the first raised bed. It was 10 inches deep.

Because I was looking after my back I worked from my stool alongside the beds and shifted all the soil using a trowel rather than a spade. It took a while but I can still move this evening.

I put a good layer of newspaper at the bottom of the trench and topped it up with about 8 inches of the compost, twigs and all. Then I returned the soil to the bed. This has all brought the level of the soil to the top of the board retaining walls. The middle of the bed is rather higher, but I know this will settle quite soon.

Tomorrow I will do the opposite bed for the Climbing French beans "Borlotti". Then I'll do the next bed for the tomatoes, and the next for the courgettes, etc. This method should use up all the compost from the two made composters. Then I can turn the fresher stuff into the empty composters and start again.

At some point I must also deal with the wormery. The two lower layers seem to be finished but are still full of worms. I must find a way to get them to move up the layers. They are very slow at dealing with the new stuff, but I have put that down to it being winter...I think they'll speed up in the spring.