A time to prune

With the exception of a cold blip a couple of weeks ago, it has been a warm, bright spring so far, after the wettest winter I can remember. And it was another beautiful spring day today. There's something special about the gently warming spring sun, and the freshness in the air that frequently accompanies it at this time of year.

The 60 vines on my allotment were in need of a haircut - this season's pruning is long overdue. I've sort of deliberately left it late, because late pruning can help avoid frost damage by retarding budburst of the bits you want to keep. And the vines are about 20 days advanced this year, so the risk of frost damage is very high. But I also found it hard to schedule in, even though spending time messing with vines is a source of great fun to me.

So this morning I spent cutting back last years growth, to leave just a couple of buds on each spur, and in some cases just a couple of canes with a replacement spur on the vines that I'm can pruning. It all feels rather brutal, but it's much needed: tough love for vines.

The afternoon was spent in casualty at West Middlesex hospital because Fiona did something nasty to one of the muscles in her rib area. She was in a lot of pain. An X-ray confirmed it wasn't a pneumothorax, but they couldn't do anything else for her. No painkillers, even. And that was after a 2.5 hour wait. The kids were kindly looked after by some friends. RTL, too - and our friends have chickens, which were out when they let RTL into the garden. She got a mouthful of feathers from one of the chickens, but fortunately that was all.