I have prevailed!

Daz managed to get his works van and grabbed a couple of pallets from somewhere near them, so Friday after work I met him up at the plot and we unloaded them. On Saturday morning I managed to get up there by 08:30 with Gemma and we finished bagging the carpet up, along with some assorted rubbish from the old 'compost' pile (how anyone thinks plastic sheeting will compost, I don't know). I'd just finished dragging the bags to the end of the row when Daz & Jen arrived (my shoulders are now suffering).

The four of us got a little relay going up the lane and got the van filled with about 30 bags in total. We left the girls on the plot and we took off toward the tip. Everyone else in Sheffield had apparently decided to go to the tip that day too, some spring cleaning instinct I think. We had a small bit of hassle trying to get allowed in with the van, apparently they have a booking system for vans now. I managed to sweet talk the foreman though and he let us through. I was ecstatic when the final bag fell in the skip. I felt like I had defeated my mortal enemy.

Back at the plot the girls had made good progress in levelling the top part in readiness for sorting that out and clearing a space for compost bin number two (the reason for the pallets). More lifting and shifting happened, Jen and Gemma planted up half of the first bed with shallots and mixed salad leaves. We wanted to just get something in and growing, and by leaving half the bed we can do a successional sowing thing, putting another three rows of leaves in in a couple of weeks along with something else in the mean time. I used Jen's nail gun to nail some carpet tiles which we'd saved back to the pallets and Daz and I dug trenches and constructed the basis of a bin. We also managed to measure out and skim the top off the second bed, this one being almost the full width of the plot.

Photo by Daz