[growth] the fourth squash hatched!

The other two were clearly not going to, and indeed had made no moves towards so doing, and have been relegated to the compost.

At the allotment this evening I/we:

• unloaded all the topsoil from Freecycle from the car
  
• picked a few handfuls of raspberries and pulled up a bunch of bindweed as I went
  
• positively identified the blackcurrants, which are getting on ready for harvesting
  
• established that the redcurrants have mostly gone over
  
• found that there??? is an apple tree???
  
• confirmed that the raised bed does not have weeds growing back through it
  
• cheerfully met some more of the plot holders, and won some lettuce and some bay leaves out of it (in addition to some garlic from U)
  
• ate some of the first blackberries to be coming ripe

The various Ribes bushes are, I think, not quite where I'd have chosen to put them, but so it goes (and the blackcurrant is not the cultivar I'm used to, which will be an adventure in itself). I'm still trying to get a sense of where, underneath all the teasels, the raised beds are (and how disintegrating they are). I can't work out if the Stuff under the pile of carpet is topsoil or compost. My fancy compost bin, it tetches, Has Not Yet Arrived, and I want to PLAY with it.

At home, I rotated the tomato growbag to persuade them to behave a bit better, and I only need to oil the bottom of the picnic bench once more (possibly tomorrow but possibly Friday, depending on whether I feel up to supporting a friend in court tomorrow). Thereafter all we have to do (... all!) is, er, extricate the remaining bolt that wouldn't come; fill the holes with wood filler; drill the wood filler out to sit the housings in it; turn it back over; and reattach the benches.

(The mortgage application is, or very nearly, at a point where all we can do is hurry up and wait.)