welcome home

Friday 6th July

Great harvest just in time for a feast tonight with my partner home after a week away and 2 of 3 daughters. I feel like a hunter-gatherer.

Finally planted my cucurbit seedlings, climbers in amongst the barren currants and gooseberries and the rest between the soon to be harvested garlic. Also planted out sunflowers providing an edge to the main path.

liberation deliberation

It’s clouding over again after a hot and sunny start. I’m continuing where I left off yesterday, I suppose you could call it weeding - although this always conjures up a picture of kneeling at the edge of a flower border pulling out freshly germinated weedlings (which maybe says more about my family than anything) – my kind of weeding involves pulling up willowherb, nettles, thistles all about shoulder height and some creeping stuff, that must have been the inspiration behind Velcro, together with columbine binding it all together. However, apart from creating hard to dispose of enormous piles of debris, there is an amazing sense of liberation because it means I can start to walk around my allotment again and, more importantly, the plants can experience the light of day. I had no idea how many nearly-ripe blackcurrants there are.

What I think was a kestral just flew over clutching prey in its talons.

grasping nettles

4th July 2007

I’ve spent the last 2 days at home waiting for a significant pause in the rain, unrequitedly. I decided last night to come here this morning regardless of the weather and it seems to have been a good decision – only one brief shower in 3 hours – despite a glowering sky.

I’m very conscious of my neighbours since my plot has turned into a wilderness, a wonderful, fruiting, flowering wilderness but from outside I realise it communicates a total lack of control. This, of course, isn’t a great concern to me but I appreciate I am unusual in my approach to gardening. So, I decided during a fit of paranoia earlier to engage in some community-building and delivered broad beans and raspberries as well as sunflower and tomato plants to my bungalow neighbours. This gesture has been very well received.

As well as this I’ve been ‘grasping nettles’ - a therapeutic activity – and filling one of the 3 sections of my compost bin. Now I’m wondering where to plant my cucurbits (marrow, pumpkin, squash) and brassicas (kale, turnip, brocolli) seedlings. There’s digging to be done!

I’m wondering how my rhubarb is but visiting it would involve negotiating a spiky, impenetrable jungle of thistle, nettle and teazle and will have to wait for another day.

Just had a friendly visit from one of the recipients of my harvest earlier who’d come to thank me again and see what I’m up to. I showed her round as far as is possible and asked her to tell me if anything my side of her fence ever causes her a problem. She assured me she’s very easy going. “if you enjoy it that’s everything”, was her comment on my preference for digging rather than rotovating

3pm – Just made some coffee and snacked on broad beans- it’s a long time since breakfast – thunder is rumbling (as well as my stomach) and rain seems more determined than earlier today. It’s time to go home.

unaided progress

28th June 2007

I’ve felt I’ve been absent for months and on returning this seems to be evident. One of the advantages, however, of working with living media (as opposed to paint/canvas etc.) is that it continues the process of creativity without me…

…a blackbird carrying a lump of white bread as big as its head just flew into a patch of nettles and bindweed to the left of me and now to my right there’s a young bird in my potato bed being fed by its parent…

…I’m quite sure my allotment neighbours must all despair at my lack of desire for control within my plot, but they can’t deny its fruitfulness. When I remember a couple of months ago I was waxing lyrical about how I would miss the wildness if I ever eventually manage to control it, the chances of this ever becoming an issue are laughably microscopic.

Anyway, for the first time this year (apart from a few radish) I am harvesting – broad beans, endive, chicory and more radish