25^th March 2018

Dear All,

There has been plenty on this week without a single night in one way or another. On Monday swimming was followed by the dentist, allotment digging (after kale), and erecting four bird boxes which were part of Esther’s birthday gifts. In the evening I was at Mepal for a Garden Club talk on “Alliums”. This caused a little excitement as they were expecting a talk on flowering Alliums and I was talking about Leeks, Onions etc.!

Kate has designs on re-carpeting my office while I am in Moldova so we had to visit Dentons in Cottenham to choose a replacement on Tuesday – this was fairly painless as we chose from the first book we were offered. The garden had dried out enough to start planting: early potatoes, onion sets, peas from a gutter, and sowing beetroot and carrots. In the evening we had a long church meeting mainly about changing or stopping the evening service – predictably there were enough of the elderly who are not keen on change!

On Wednesday we went to St Ives on the guided bus to finish Moldova shopping then a bit more digging in the back garden after leeks. In the evening it was our annual 10 pin bowling expedition to Pidley. This is always popular with 24 bowling and another 4 or 5 just there for the meal.

Spectators Agog!

Action shot

Thursday’s jaunt started at Shepreth and followed clear ex chalk streams through Barrington, Meldreth and Melbourn. It was an excellent walk illuminated with daffodils, violets, kingcups and primroses. In the evening it was the first Over Fruit & Vegetable Show Planning meeting of the year. As ever the minutes and agenda were of prodigious length.

River Mel

River Cam

Meldreth Mill

Kingcups

Our final “Biographies” of the year features “James Murray” a Scottish lexicographer who was heavily involved in starting the Oxford English Dictionary. It was predicted that the first edition would take 10 years to produce on 7,000 pages; in the end it took 60 years and 12 volumes with 301,000 entries. This was followed by a meal in “Cote Brasserie”. The service left a little to be desired as after one and a half hours we had only had starters and some people had not ordered a starter so were getting rather hungry! I was presented with a couple of bottles of wine for taking my projector in when needed which made for a tricky bike ride back from the guided bus with the projector, wine and another bag. In the evening we had a Deacons & Wives meal at Kate & Gordon’s at Haddenham followed by more long discussions.

James Murray

Riverford have been in touch for some more work on their cropping programmes so I spent much of Saturday morning working on “Winter Brassicas” mainly savoys and purple sprouting broccoli. They find with mild winters in Devon, crops come in too early giving surpluses in the autumn early winter and running out later on.

Football this week was Cambridge University Press 0 v 2 West Wratting - for the 4th time in 5 weeks a player was sent off.

Love

Mike & Kate