It’s Monday and I should be working but the midday sun pulled me out into the garden so I spent an hour shovelling earth and pruning old raspberry stalks instead. Which I should have done last autumn but didn’t. The raspberries got almost no love last year and barely grew. I thought it was nearly impossible to not succeed with raspberries, they’re supposed to grow like weeds, but not these ones. More water and more fertilizer this year, I guess.

One of this year’s garden projects is to replace the planting boxes with strawberries. The boxes themselves are ten years old and nearly rotten through. The soil in them is also full of a particularly unpleasant weed, with thread-thin stalks that break as soon as you try to pull them out, that spreads like crazy. I hope I can get rid of it by replacing all the soil, and lining the new boxes with a higher-quality weed fabric.

I’ve shoveled out all the soil now so the next step is to buy new boxes and new fabric. And then start shoveling again.