Wired

One small bird floats from the wire

then a flurry of more, like autumn leaves,

and a final gust taking the remnant but

as though held by elastic

back they swing

to write two more lines

one above the other.

Hens against compost!

This morning in an ordinary back garden in Truro, Cornwall, discontent was brewing. Three hens were campaigning that their right to water had been denied them. Their water source, usually within their perimeter fence, had been left within sight but inaccessibly on the other side. The hens protested that the powers-that-be had neglected to provide them their basic poultry rights because of the distracting demands of another local enterprise - the compost heap.

When confronted by our reporter the power-that-be blamed another party for having previously neglected to position the water supply in its usual night-time position the previous evening.

Finding meaning in retrospect

I have been busy this summer, too busy to visit my allotment. About a month ago I delivered a second hand hen house with the intention of enabling our daughter, who lives close to the allotment, to look after the hens for us when we are away, at the same time as the hens digging over the plot. Three days ago I called at the plot to see if there was anything to harvest. I fully expected blighted potatoes, rotten onions and broad beans past their prime. I was pleasantly surprised and gathered bagfuls of healthy aforementioned vegetables and some remarkable carrots, the best I have ever grown. The rabbit proof fencing had clearly done its job. As I was leaving I had a brief conversation with one of my allotment neighbours about his glut of courgettes and I said ‘In case you’re wondering, the hen house is our hens’ holiday home’. He replied, ‘It’s certainly had people talking’. This comment of his has stayed with me and I have realised it has relevance to my process both now and in retrospect. Since I delivered the hen house to my plot I have been feeling negligent in terms of maintenance of the plot and also in my lack of neighbourliness. However, I realise, the hen house has been working on my behalf, people have been developing narrative around it, in the form of allotment banter (which, I have learned, is unlike any other kind of conversation) because of its unexplained presence.

In reflecting on the unexpected agency of the hen house I have been reconsidering the similar agency of a caravan I acquired in 2003 with the intention of housing my MA show inside it. I was at that time exploring the notion of ‘infrasense’, a term I used to describe ungraspable, yet affective, sensations occurring as the result of finding oneself in a liminal space. I contacted the university to let them know that I would be bringing the caravan onto site but was told this would not be possible. Since I had nowhere else to store it I decided to take it there anyway and managed to park it up in the disused corner of a car park. I placed a sign in the window stating ‘This is a temporary sculpture’, to allay the institutions fears that it may belong to, or be squatted by, travellers. Some months later I was asked to move it and so I took it to the smaller car park outside the MA department and covered it with a tarpaulin to indicate that it would not be used as a residence. I finally conceded the caravan as housing for my MA work by giving it to someone who was in need of a home and who came and towed it away. In the end the space of my show consisted of a dark corridor through a storeroom that arrived into a liminal space with a light space adjacent to it, throughout all of which I layed turf. I made the caravan’s absence visible in my MA show by yellowing an area of turf the size of the caravan and hanging the key on the wall next to it.

This morning I have been reading again a conference paper, ‘A Dis-operative Turn in Contemporary Art’, delivered in Rio de Janiero in 2001, by Stephen Wright, which he concludes by saying, ‘The creative experiments carried out by contemporary artists merely sketch a horizon, stopping short of fleshing out what lies beyond and thereby setting limits to our imagination. And that, no doubt, is their use value.’ (http://www.apexart.org/conference/Wright.htm)

I was walking along Fore Street this morning and a man smiled at me and asked me when I was going to be digging again. I recognised him to be one of my allotment neighbours and confessed to not having visited my allotment for some time partly because I had assumed the ground was frozen. He told me that rabbits have eaten most of what is growing there. Our brief conversation reminded me that I had worked through wintery weather in Derbyshire and therefore went up this afternoon equipped with my recharged cordless screwdriver.

I discovered the feathery remains of a fox or cat's Christmas dinner and, as I'd been warned, that rabbits had indeed made a feast of all my cabbage seedlings. I finished constructing a simple 2-bay compost bin from the 5 pallets I'd salvaged some months ago. I then investigated my box of equipment and realised that a kind neighbour (possibly the man I met this morning) had anchored the roofing felt that keeps my tool box dry as well as moving my weeding bucket to support the side of my part-made compost bin.

free artichoke and baby brassicas

Four hours on the plot today allowed me time to begin building my compost area with the palettes I salvaged, a few weeks ago, from a nearby garden centre. However, I hadn't charged the power packs for my electric screwdriver and had to abandon this project for another day.

I took with me ten jerusalem artichoke tubers that I had discovered on a recent trip to St.Martin's - Isles of Scilly, where they were on a little stall with a sign saying 'free'. I was particularly pleased as these were the one crop I had wanted to harvest, before I gave up my previous allotment, but it was the wrong season. I planted these in a row along the North (sea) facing end of my plot as they grow into very tall plants that will serve as a windbreak.

I also took with me a tray of brassica seedlings that I have grown from last year's seed and potted on. I have planted these rather too close together but intend to transplant them when I have dug another bed for them. Rain is forecast so I am trusting they will all be watered in naturally.

on the plot again

a new and long-awaited allotment

Re-locating to Cornwall from Derbyshire in 2008 meant I had to relinquish my allotment and adapt instead to gardening at home. However, on 2nd August I once again took up an allotment tenancy at a newly-founded site here in Cornwall and I have resumed my process of digging. My new plot is a sixth the size of the previous one and one of sixty, marked out by posts with narrow paths between. The overall site was previously arable land on which maize was grown last season. The soil is rich, dark and well-draining. My first task was to mark my boundaries with string and then to gather specimens of the plants currently growing within it. Couch grass is most predominant and I have come to admire it and recognise why Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari single it out for attention in 'A Thousand Plateaus', in their explanation of the term 'rhizome'. I am aware that couch grass will always be with us, a constant reminder of underground resistence.