Page 56 - ALG Issue 3 2023

South West
Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset
REPRESENTATIVE
Mark Joynes
01884 243559 mjoynes.nas@gmail.com
DEPUTY REP/MENTOR
Allan Cavill
07748178964 allan.cavill2@gmail.com
Welcome to our new members...
Obridge Allotments Limited
Place Lane Organic Gardeners Society Quinta Viewpoint Allotments
2 Individuals
1 Landowner
Bleadon Parish Council
Bridgwater Town Council
Sturminster Newton Town Council
Calls to 0845 numbers cost 3p (ex VAT) per minute plus your telephone company’s access charge
Dorothy
I was turning the compost heap on the allotment on the late spring bank holiday when I noticed the roses were in bloom and it made me think of Dorothy, the lady who planted them.
In the 4 or 5 years I knew Dorothy, she was in her eighties, a physically slight lady with a long-term spinal condition that made her walk with her body almost at right angles to her legs. But she had an indefatigable spirit. She lived in sheltered housing and had had allotments for many years. She had moved from one site to one closer to where she lived but found the soil there too heavy ‘to work’.
After much pestering of the Estate Manager, Dorothy was given a small plot on my allotment site, where the silty soil was much easier to dig over. She immediately set to work, clearing
a part of the plot, and then planting
up that patch before doing the same with the next patch. Summer and autumn raspberries went in, along
with blackcurrants, strawberries and rhubarb. She grew some vegetables, but her greatest love was flowers.
She planted rows of daffodils, gladioli, asters, dahlias, and a rose bed to use as cut flowers for the common room of the sheltered housing scheme she lived in. Dorothy quickly filled up the small plot she had been allotted and resumed her pestering of the Estate Office until they offered her additional space.
And so, the pattern went on. Dorothy cleared and planted and pestered, cleared, and planted and pestered. I
got used to seeing this diminutive lady, bent double, pushing her 4-wheeled shopping trolley past my house on her way to the allotment. Initially, she would pop a note through my door asking
me to contact her about some issue
or other, but after a year or so would knock on the door and ask. She always called me ‘Mr Joynes’ even though I was some 30 years younger than her. She always insisted I call her ‘Dorothy’.
She had cleared a patch of ground down to the boundary of the allotment site, the final section having taken over an area of some 200sqm over a 3-year period. Before she had time to plant up that final section, she died peacefully in her sleep.
In accordance with her wishes, there was no funeral or memorial service. She was cremated, her ashes scattered, and her few possessions disposed of. She had no family and there is now little to remember her by. Except for these
She roses. planted
rows of daffodils, gladioli, asters, dahlias, and a rose bed to use as cut flowers
56 Allotment and Leisure Gardener