Stunted growth

After getting a little too cocky with my hops growth, the normal order has been restored. In a month, my largest vine has barely grown three inches.

Looking at pictures of them, they were a lot happier last month. Then again, April was a much sunnier month, then there was a wet May, and June looks set to continue with this.

The people growing hops up the road started slow but are now almost double the height of my lot.

Arguably mirroring my progress on the comedy circuit, the hops reached a certain level and then got too comfortable and stopped growing or developing any further. Then others who started the same time later have gone on to comfortably surpass this.

Thus far, anyway. I’ve added some fresh manure to the soil and I’m watering them regularly. You may continue the metaphor if you choose to.

Fortunately, I have a couple of other sites for the hops and the middle one is quickly making gains on its taller neighbour. I’m just saying, I have other projects on the go too, and I will keep telling myself that.

But it is a reminder that comparing yourself to others is a fruitless task, or perhaps flowerless in this case. Regardless, I’m still beating my progress from last year when I was spending most of the time trying to encourage the vines to grow on an obelisk I’d assembled.

In gig news, I have another gig this week. It was a fairly last-minute edition and is also in Cheltenham. It’s an alternative book club night, so I am going to have to try and write some literary-based material.

Then the following week, I have another gig in Cirencester to maintain my unwritten requirements of only performing at nights close to home. And I’m fairly confident that I haven’t done gigs in consecutive weeks since January 2020. Later in the year, the plan is for this to be a regularity. And with any luck, I’ll have a decent amount of hops by then too.

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