For those who don’t live in the UK this weekend was a 4 day Bank Holiday. We don’t usually get these, but we were celebrating our Queen being on the throne for 70 years so they added a couple of extra days holiday in.

Being a Bank Holiday and being self employed, if you don’t work, you don’t earn any money. So with that in mind I did work both the Thursday and the Friday. If you’re thinking that being a 4 day weekend that must have been relaxing (even if I was working 2 of those days) think again. I don’t think I’ve been busier. Not only working, but on the Friday, Saturday and the Sunday there was lots of celebratory bell ringing for the Jubilee. I’m sure that many of you heard church bells ringing over that weekend, and that was the reason. Basically it was a chance to ring loads. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but needless to say I was backwards and forwards ringing here and there all weekend. I rang some celebratory ringing at my home tower, 5 quarter peals (the shortest took 39 minutes, and the longest took 46 minutes to ring) and 1 peal (which took 2 hours and 46 minutes). All these sessions were of constant ringing, and your brain is working at 100 miles an hour concentrating so hard. There is a bell ringers site that you can view these on, but for the privacy of the other ringers I’m afraid I can’t give you the link. But if you’re a ringer you’ll know where to look.

By the end of it all, my fingers were very sensitive and sore, but I only ended up with one popped blister on one finger so that was a bonus. The only way to help your fingers after ringing so much is to wrap them in bendy micropore, I use Mefix, but by the following morning most of them are fine again and the tape can come off.

I sent a photo to my parents and sister of my hands wrapped in tape and my sister replied with a picture of Dobby from Harry Potter saying, “Dobby had to iron his hands!”

With all that bell ringing I wasn’t able to get anything done in my garden, just a little done in the greenhouses. I managed to plant up all my tomatoes.

Last year I grew them all outside and they all got blight, so this year I’m growing most in one greenhouse, and the rest outside.

They’re all potted up into 10 litre pots so their roots have plenty of space to spread and grow. If you don’t have 10 litre pots then slightly smaller will do fine, or tomato grow bags. The bamboo canes don’t go down very far, so I have to attached them to my staging frame which works brilliantly. The ones outside I’ve constructed a solid frame and attached them to that. Hopefully this year I’ll get some tomatoes at least and they won’t get blight.

Here’s a video with a little more information….I know I say 2 litre pots in the video, which will do fine, but if you’ve got larger pots then even better…..

Hope you managed to get lots done in your garden this weekend and had a relaxing 4 days off. This coming weekend is just as busy as we’ve got to collect our son from university as he’s finished his first year already. He needs to move out his uni digs so we have to pack everything back up, put it in the car and bring it all back home for 3 months before taking him and all his bits back to his new digs in September (he’s sharing a house with a few other people). Hopefully if they all get on he’ll be there for 2 years. I thought things were supposed to get easier when they got older?

TTFN

Claire xx