This year has been very "challenging". Most notably because of the serious health issues I faced this year. At one point I was only a few hours away from death and it took a long while to recover. However it has shown that in the face of adversity then a lot of help can be had from friends.
I would particularly like to thank Michael for his offer of help which we gladly took him up on. His work allowed us to keep on top of things and make sure that the plot did not get too badly overrun. Also I'd like to thank Richard and Annette. We've been feeding them spare courgettes and beetroots for years so we made sure that their help in dealing with the plot will keep them in courgettes for years to come.
I'd also like to express my appreciation to other plotholders who all enquired after my health throughout the year.
So how did the year go?
January - Frankly, nothing doing. Only basic visits to drop off our home organic waste into the compost bins. Nothing worth blogging about.
February - Starting to get the plot into shape ready for the year. Culling weeds and cleaning. This is possibly the start of where everything went wrong.
March - We started planting. I broke our old garden fork back in 2018 so this was the first chance of using the new one, an all steel construct, which was far sturdier than the previous one. It made short work of the beds. But we did manage to get our seeds started.
April - This is where things started going downhill rapidly. I had been coughing for a couple of weeks. I am a severe asthmatic so I really didn't give this much thought as it is common for me to have breathing problems from time to time. Especially living in London - the only place you can get your daily intake of minerals in one breath. So when I took a week off work to do an Allotment Week, I didn't manage to complete it.
May - This was my first hospitalisation of the year. I saw one of the leading lung specialists who immediately admitted me to the Royal Brompton hospital. I spent a week in there on some pretty high strength anti-biotics, undergoing daily blood tests, a CT scan and lung tests. Overall I left hospital a week later with a different medicine regime (actually the new medicines have worked really well) and a gradually reducing steroid programme.
June - Very weak still and trying to recover. However the last week of June saw me rushed into hospital almost at Death's Door. My wife managed to keep the plot alive, but she was far more worried about me than the plot.
July - Meh. I did absolutely nothing but try and live throughout July. We didn't pot things up properly, nor keep up with watering. So the plot from here on out was pretty much neglected. Anything that did manage to survive this neglect was tough and resilient.
August - I did manage to get back to the plot but it was pretty much a weed infested jungle. The courgettes were not performing as well as hoped, but they did produce some. The beans did generate some results, as did the Patty-pans.
September - It was during this month that I started doing pulmonary rehab at St. Georges in an effort to try and get back to reasonable shape. The change of medicine from my Royal Brompton stint, and the rehab has worked wonders. But sadly the plot by this time was seriously neglected.
October - December - with nothing doing on the plot now, we pretty much left it alone and concentrated on getting my health back.
I'm glad to say that I am now fully recovered. I can now blow over 500ml on my peak flow (which is pretty good for me) and now use less salbutamol than ever before.
There is a lot of work to be done on the plot to get it ready for planting again. Weeds must be pulled. Paths must be replaced. And the rear of the plot which hasn't been touched for a couple of years will definitely have to be sorted out before the Committee start complaining.
