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Here is a shot of the left behind hinge that the door was yanked from - sigh. Some work left to be done! However, next up was external matters and the poly tunnel took my attention away from the coffee lounge for a while. When I balanced the planks on top a white foot stool and sawed at them, it was quite easy to cut the wood Liz had given me correctly ready for the poly tunnel - but it is currently stored indoors, as Liz was busy one week, I was busy the next, and...

However, that area is now to be used for tools, both garden and cleaning, and so forth - so the planks of sawn wood are not too much of a problem until I come to wash and paint and carpet the inset. Which might not get done until after the poly tunnel - as the poly and poly tape are also in the coffee lounge...

In the kitchen, on the sill, is a dish of soil with various items stuck in - some growing and some not. You can see a living and a dead chili cutting, some dead flowers, a living geranium, a dead rose, and some living flowers that came from John's funeral card seeds. There are also a plastic tool and a feather.

My next task was to sort out the untidy shoe rack areas. Above, you can see my shoe rack by the front door - erm... AKA an empty beer carton. Below is the 'real' rack in the coffee lounge.

Covered in mud, half the plastic worn off and the iron showing through all rusted. I did not want to bother attempting to clean it up - so went out to buy a replacement, with the idea of having it in the front of the house and away from my coffee lounge - which is still in the process of being cleaned up ready to redecorate and furnish.

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Today's post continues with the allotment shots of early October. Strawberry bed #2 and nasturtiums are on the left, with artichokes, mooli, turnip and leeks, and a dug over area central, and my weed pile to the right.

Next up, my first strawberry bed and nasturtium patch need attention - as does the weed bin and weeds next it. The sprawly thing is a zucchini plant, which has yet to bear fruit - although plenty of tiny fruits are in situ.

Back home, and here is the poly tunnel situation - my next major plan is to recover it - as you can see, much work needs doing. weeds to clear, roots of weeds to dig out, poly and wood and poly tape to buy....

Liz offered me some wood that she had found in her garage turn out. I took my measure along - and YEH! The wood will suffice to cover that needed to fix the poly tunnel's new roof/cover - AND fix my broken (strawberry) raised bed at the plot! I also ordered some poly and poly tape online, as none of our local garden centers have anything...

Next step - awaiting arrival of poly supplies/sawing wood/buying nails/grabbing Liz to assist me to hang the new roof! November drew to a close, and as it did so I took a few more photos down the allotment plot. I had done some hard digging and the result looks great - for now.

The bed in front of the shed - which needs a Cuprinol that I didn't get done before the cold weather - is the dug over patch that has now been topped with a layer of fresh horse muck to winter in ready for a quick spring forking and 2018 growing season. You can see a border of weeds around the shed, but otherwise all is pret.

Going around the corner - the weed bin, which is totally filled has a few roots to dig and pull. I have composted one part of the first strawberry bed - which I will mend soon. The nasturtium bed beyond is now half covered in strawberry runners. Around my leeks and setting onions I have dug the soil over and you can see I even dug up most of the path and weeded most of the raspberry patch.

Still to go, a few patches of grass/weed, some roots, and a proper dig over that which has only been roughly dug so far. Otherwise, I am ready for spring! Well almost - the pile of weeds/old path/pruned fruit bushes in the center needs to be covered over when I finish the weeding.

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After reordering my pantry yet again, the next task was to decide what to do with the alcove in the coffee room. If I can picture it as it will become in my mind's eye, it is far easier to search for items to get it to look the way I wish it to. I definitely do not want old brown wooden furniture and hanging beer mugs, as my Father left it.

I discussed the matter briefly with Liz, who thought that, out of my options, to hang a curtain across and use it to store cleaning tools and garden tools would be a good idea, so that is where I will aim.

One problem in the coffee lounge will be the brickwork - some of the paint is flaking off. Some is just stained, but other parts are flaking. A thorough polyfill of the external walls, wash down of the internal, and polyfilla-ing the internal cavities will hopefully suffice to allow any paint applied to remain.

A small task I have since completed was the removal of one of my two kitchen hooks from the inter kitchen/coffee lounge door, and its repositioning on the pantry door. This is because of my plan to remove the former door, yet need to have two hooks in the kitchen - one for the tewtowel/hand towel, and the other for wet coats.

You can see that I have managed to apply the hook to the pantry, now - leaving a horrid messy patch on the old door, which thankfully is due to be yanked off its hinges and dumped.

That was my next task, also now completed. The photo above shows how I managed to dislodge one half of the hinges and wobble-yank apart the other set. The door then came off and was carried outside - leaving me a dirty gap to attend - dust, dirt, stain, and draught excluder...

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Yes, some of the junk has been removed from the coffee lounge - but some remains, in this shot. In the next picture you can see what awaited me in the upper closets - sigh - more garbage!

As a breather from junk, here are a few of my mini-zucchinis from the allotment. It began to get colder, so I knew they would all rot and die soon - so I picked them small and young. I actually found them yummier that way.

Looking at the bedroom - you can see I have extracted a small olde fashioned rose from the garden to naturalize and brighten up the bedroom - and my new modem, as I changed ISP.

Now...back to the coffee lounge and serious work - an antiques dealer paid me £35 for a few bits and Liz took me to the tip a few times - and I was left with some space to sweep and clean! Other than my work and paint items, little is left in the room now.

You can see it looks much nicer in the niche without great big wooden objects full of junk cluttering it up!! My imaginative mind conjures up what will go in there - a computer space - table and fruit bowl - bookshelf - make doors and use as a shed....hmm.....

My favored chore rewarded me for spring cleaning my bedroom, toilet, upper hall and stairs - reordering the pantry!

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It is a very rare occasion that there is no laundry to do - but here is proof that it has all been done - three empty laundry baskets! It was warm and windy weather and while my son was away on vacation for a week, though.

Here is my mid-October wine collective. The next major project is my coffee lounge - as you can see, I have let the room go somewhat - mostly because its the last place with junk left in the house. The below picture shows my way from kitchen to back door - and the rest of the room is basically ignored.

Liz gave me a lift to the tip - twice - and we removed some of the junk including the stereogram. This left me the chest of drawers, upper closets....and a pile of 'stuff' to sort out...

Gradually, things are getting cleared...3-4 bags of books and some bric-a-brac have now gone. There are still things to go though. The first photo below shows some of the stuff we cleared last week - along with my sons gum boots and my paints...

This is the hook secured to the inside of the kitchen door - which leads to the coffee lounge. Eventually, when the antiques guy visits this week, and Liz helps me get rid of more stuff to the tip after, I can clean the room over properly. At this point, I will remove the door between the coffee lounge and kitchen and place the hook on the pantry instead. (I need it to hang wet coats on - but I do NOT need the door)

UPDATE: The antiques guy came last night and spent £35 clearing some junk - I now have to sort out what is left, clean, paint and furnish the room...

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Here we go again - with a day's harvest of autumnal produce - a green lumpy squash, a few raspberries, 1-2 tomatoes, a 'hot lemon' chili, and a handful of runner beans. And again, have another similar selection from a different day of early September - beans, tomatoes, chilies, raspberries - and hazelnuts. The nuts are actually from someone else's yard - the gentleman I clean for once a week offered me some.

This brings me to my main October project - re-covering the poly tunnel. The first step is to cut down the weeds surrounding it - as you can see in this shot, there are tons of them. You can also spot some garden spiders with large webs that I have enjoyed observing near my kitchen window recently. In the meantime, I have been grabbing crops -

- a recent outburst of turnips and mooli are topping up the veg, along with the chilies and a few tomatoes. I have not got many tomatoes this year - as ants munched my seedlings. You can also spot a few autumnal raspberries. In the second shot, bramleys from the tree in the yard join the mooli, turnip, 2 spuds, and 6 green lumpy squashes collected on the 3rd day of the month.

And we are back to a range pf photos taken down the plot in early October - the first shows my old rhubarb and black compost bin up the far end - the neat patch beyond, before the fruit bushes, is where I have my broad beans, garlic and shallots planted. Since taking this picture last week, I have now dug out the rhubarb crown in 5-6 lumps and deposited it down the end where 'freebies' are put for other plotsters who might want it.

This shot shows the other clump of rhubarb at the other far end of the plot - the new crown. As you can see, it is doing well enough for me to have faith in it producing my crops for next year - so long as I surround it in horse muck and rhubarb leaves and remove weeds. Also in view are the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes - with raspberries beyond.

my final shot for today's blog post is of my 2 blueberry bushes, my onion patch, and some dug over/weeded ground - read to grow in 2018. My aim is to remove grass/weed paths and make them all as seen above - trodden mud.

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Uh...more crops! As raspberries thinned to the odd half dozen, blackcurrants and gooseberries filled my freezer bags on plot trots. The gooseberries are now ripe, so better eaten than stored in the freezer for cooking later on - hence gooseberry crumble was the breakfast menu for a week or two, 4-5/7.

This is the front pathway. Most local people who scream in horror and start cutting back the plants, fixing the concrete base to conformity, and then relax. I like it as it is. I cut back the brambles from the path, so it isn't prickly, but 9/10 I let other things overflow from border to path. There is no reason to cement up the path itself in my eyes either - why should it be smooth? What is wrong with bumps and dips - unless you have a wheelchair going over it, which we don't?

Another round of crops! I pulled quite a handful so I had a good selection to enter the local village show with. Pictured above, the stalks I did not enter and below my entries - for 'rhubarb' and 'longest rhubarb'. I did not win 1st, second, or third place though.

Here are another batch of crops, from August 2017. Amongst which you can see a couple of large spuds. The large white one was perfect inside and out, while the biggest spud I have as yet grown red potato was half rotten inside - the other half tasted good and was enough for one potato though!

Tomatoes are coming at around 2-4 a day at present - but I am keeping up with them so far. Finally, for today, Let me share with you 9 packets of seeds that I purchased at the local Wyevale towards the close of the month.

Wyevale have a sale where seed packs only cost 50p each annually - and alerted to this at facebook via the allotments group, I ventured out to grab my bargains for the year, arriving just after 9am on the second day. I paid £4.50 in cash - but if it were not for the sale, this group would have cost me £26.50!!!!