Highly Recommended!

Oh my goodness!  I went to the Parish Council Allotment/Tennants meeting last night where they gave out the awards for the best kept allotments.  We got Highly Recommended!  I actually wooped when the Chairman announced it.  Then embarrased myself in front of the whole gathering by doing a happy dance.  The Chairman asked what I might have done if I'd won!
To be honest, I felt like I had.  I was so excited!  I give myself a hard time for not being as far along with the master plan as I hoped.  It was judged not by the council this year but the neighbouring town allotment association.  So a bit of external validation was a good thing!  I have to remember what we have come from:

This was March 2008.  Before the ditches were dug. We are the bottom plot of a gentle slope of heavy claggy clay.  It was a quagmire! My first year (2007) I tried to grow without doing drainage. Big mistake. So the second year we went back to basics & dug ditches & put up rabbit fencing.  When I say We, you understand who actually did most of the hard graft, right?!

My Hero! With alot of help from my brother too.  I potter around & my boys do the hard work.

This was us the next spring 2009.  The apple trees in tractor tyes & raspberries went in. My husband put in an asparagus bed, which is his baby.  Beautifully manicured.  Hopefully we will get some harvest from it next spring.

This was taken last week.  Unfortunately I forgot to take any at the time the judging happened.  It did look pretty but I just didn't think we were far enough cultivated to get a commendation.  Tintin was very excited about the competition & I had to keep saying to him that we weren't really in the running. Apparently we weren't doing too badly after all!