Rain has softened the ground making digging an even more pleasurable activity. As I dug up a dock, levering it up with my fork, it made the oddest hollow cracking sound as though it were somehow connected to an underground tunnel. I also found a bone and, as always, wondered if it belonged to many more in the same bit of ground.
I’m digging thick yellow nettle roots that creep along just under the surface. These were, I remember, under a piece of old carpet that I presume was covering a compost heap. The nettles obviously found there way there and made themselves at home. Last year as I was cutting back the brambles (that entirely consumed my allotment when I took it on) I piled the fronds on top of this carpet on top of the nettles on top of the compost on top of earth. The pile of brambles remained there rotting with new brambles and nettles growing up through them, that is until March this year when for my birthday present (my request) we hired a chipper and made this pile and others into sacks of chippings on one of the wettest weekends of the year. So, this area I am digging has not seen the light of day for many a year until now, which adds to my curiosity at what may be lurking in it.
The light is growing warmer and subdued as the sun sinks, birds are singing out the day, swallows and blackbirds in pairs, honeysuckle giving off its scent in response to the evening.
Like animals, birds and insects I love the wildness there still is here – however much I want to use the space to grow more food I wonder if I’ll like it when or if (being more realistic) it eventually becomes organised and tidy here.
The sky is now pink and violet, light is falling fast, I’ll have to pack up and leave soon.
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