So much for New Year's resolutions!

My penultimate post stated my intention to be more vigilant on the plot and blog. it is now nearly 3 years later! I hesitate to make another promise to myself but I am hoping to have a more productive year  in fast approaching 2016. I now have a very splendid shed, since last Spring and I have prepared some of the ground by covering it with weed suppressing fabric to make it so much easier to dig. Olive, black labrador, is now 2 years old and more sensible on the plot than the 2 previous seasons.
I was there yesterday, briefly, planting 8 raspberry canes (4 summer and 4 autumn) given to me by Michael the week before. It has been extremely wet the last few weeks and what with gale force winds it hasn't been ideal weather for gardening. However, I had forgotten how good the soil is and that despite the deluge the ground is still possible to dig and it is particularly mild so no excuses for staying away.

PS During the previous 3 years I have published a few allotment posts to another blog that's connected to a project called 'Roaming': http://roamingon.weebly.com/allotment.html

two apples

Wednesday 20th February...
...I spent a Christmas garden voucher and a bit more at a local garden centre that gives 10% reduction for allotment association card holders. I had no idea choosing apple trees would be so complex. I had to consider if I wanted eater or cooker, what size I wanted it to grow to and if there was no self-fertilising tree to fit these criteria I would need two or more that had to be within one point of each other in pollination group category. I came away with a Blenheim Orange, culinary apple, pollination group 3, rootstock M26  and a  with promised final height of 6 feet and width of 8 feet and a Herefordshire Russet, pollination group 3, desert or culinary apple, rootstock M9 that will grow to 5 feet height and width. So I have planted them 8 feet apart in the middle of my plot in between the fruit bushes and flowers. I remembered on my way from garden centre to allotment that I would need stakes and hoped to find something suitable. I used the timber that had, until it collapsed, formed the support for a simple bench, which I used to sit on in my shed in Derbyshire and which previously to that came from my installation 'headspace' in 2002.

new years resolution

I'm back on the plot and resolve to visit not only it - but also my blog - more frequently this year. So...

4th and 5th January
I have discovered this winter that it is possible to come by money for seeds by selling produce from my plot. I have been selling jerusalem artichoke and some pink fur apple potatoes to one of the local greengrocers who supplies the more up-market restaurants in town. When I delivered a trayful this week he handed me a bag of garlic that had begun to sprout. This was the impetus I needed to get back on the plot and start digging again. I now have about 50 garlic cloves in the ground and I have dug and replanted 12 jerusalem artichokes in a corner by the rhubarb.

believe it or not this is a radish!

garlic for planting

resilient cornflowers

Hoping our Christmas tree will live on outside

new rhubarb and artichoke markers

...and three rows of garlic

artichokes for the greengrocer and kale for tea

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.

caterpillared cabbage for lunch?

Some of my cabbages have been almost entirely decimated by caterpillars so I am feeding the cabbages to my hens who enjoy holey cabbages and caterpillars and then produce eggs with richer yolks.

failure or not?

I proudly sieved my homemade compost this spring and used it to sow a variety of seed that had to be started off in the warmth of the house, then hardened-off in the greenhouse. I decided this year for economical reasons to use up seed I already had, rather than buy new. I watched and waited for the seedlings to emerge and develop into the plants described on their packets, however they appear, amongst a variety of weeds, to be tomatoes! Clearly what has happened is that much of the seed I sowed was deplete and the compost I made never became hot enough to kill the seed within it. This resulted in a situation I couldn’t have anticipated, beyond my control. In gardening terms, it would be deemed a failure whereas for me, an artist exploring inter-subjective becoming, it presents an unfolding opportunity for encounter. These tomato plants can be potted up and distributed to friends.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in the garden planting potatoes, sieving home-made compost and sowing seed into it. I began documenting various packets and envelopes of seed given to me by friends and friends of friends over the last few years. I've decided as a positive action in response to being short of cash that I will not buy any more seed this year (I have already bought seed potatoes, garlic, shallots and onion sets) but sow the leftover stock I have from previous years as well as seed I harvested last autumn and that given to me by others.

Today as predicted by the MET Office it is raining and I am glad I planted the potatoes yesterday. I am at my desk looking out at bedraggled chickens and considering Deleuze and Guattari's 'body without organs' (IN: A Thousand Plateaus) and the power of passivity from my recent experiences of working in collaboration with others, in particularly at a conference in Salisbury.

blogging again

I am approaching my last 5 months of PhD research/writing and decided it would be worthwhile to log the process. Heath Bunting's 'Day Planner' has been the inspiration as to how to use time effectively. Unlike most planning, the criteria of Heath's model is subversively everyday. http://www.irational.org/heath/day_plan/

Since it is now Spring and time for sowing and planting the vegetable garden I intend to log my written research process alongside the processes of the garden.

The hens are now laying an egg each a day and having spent the winter digging over and manuring the back garden they are now in the business of removing moss from the front. The picture shows Betty (Blue), Suzi (Gablik) and Sophie (Calle). Luce (Irigaray) must have been busy laying her egg in the ark.

first in the ark

I’ve introduced the chicks to their new home today. I thought they would enjoy being out on the grass but once they worked out that there was an ark to go into they all made their way up the ladder… Suzi (Sussex) first followed by Betty (Blue) then Silver (Silver Link) and finally, last but not least and surprisingly not first Cuckoo (Cuckoo Maran). When they first arrived Cuckoo was the boldest and definitely top chick, but she seems to have been usurped by Suzi today. Time will tell.

new perspectives

I’m back in my shed and with a different view, that of the 6 week old chicken. Yesterday we collected four pullets from a delightful organic farm in Devon and they are living in my shed for a couple of weeks whilst they grow a little stronger and become ready to live outside in their ark.