Page 33 - ALG Issue 4 2020

local and not-so-local brickworks and collieries. Bob the Apprentice had great fun last year finding the stamped ones, cleaning them up and counting them and reading out the names. “Found another one!” was the cry. Did you know that there are people who collect bricks?
As I work, I hear the robin serenading me, see the tits flicking in and out
of Sean’s bird box, listen to the feral pigeons (my arch enemies) billing
and cooing, am scolded by chattering jackdaws, and I melt listening to the liquid song of the blackbird. A wren visits. I enjoy turning over the earth with the lady spade and seeing the startled earthworms escape, the over-wintering grubs wriggle and the bright orange centipedes scurry away. I resist the temptation to play with the earthworms (though I do still seem to get very grubby), and instead I content myself with obsessively removing every scrap of discarded glass. I found the top of a broken Vaux beer bottle, complete with its early vulcanised screw top dating from 1901 still doing its job. I have kept that.
When I get on the plot, I can be there all day, absorbed in this delightful other dimension which I have named “G-space” where time doesn’t really exist and the only reason to leave is because I can no longer see to dig or weed. In fact, I have had to put a clock up to stop me being late again for supper!
The lushest part of the garden is of course the wildlife corner, complete with wildflowers, permitted weeds (bindweed and Himalayan Balsam
are eradicated), birdbath, hedgehog house, pile of sticks, little insect houses, and my old kitchen sink installed to entice toads for the purposes of slug eradication. I await my first resident. In the meantime, the birds seem to like the birdbath and the insects enjoy the creeping buttercups, mallow and great mullein.
This year’s main experiment is to grow Carlin peas, courtesy of Harry James who kindly sent me some. I am looking forward to passing on these peas to other plotters and to eating some. The germination rate has been excellent so far and I have started to erect a frame ready for when I can plant them out. This all started with Harry’s intriguing article on the Carlin pea in this magazine. Borrowed back copies of said magazine, along with an old copy of the RHS’s Vegetables and a 1938 gardening book have been my ‘bibles’.
There is nothing better, is there, than seeing and sharing the fruits of one’s labour and munching on a wholly home-grown organic meal of freshly cropped onions, courgettes and tomatoes fried up together? Not many of the strawberries make it off the plot, and frankly the greenshaft peas were comprehensively eaten on site too, though I confess I had help from Bob the Apprentice and her sister.
There is nothing better, is there, than seeing and sharing the fruits of one’s labour
I still like hand weeding.
I still like digging.
I loathe the feral pigeons which have forced me to net up my crops.
I love being in “G-space” on my plot. I still have a lot to learn!
Years ago, I played with the worms while dad did the digging. Who knew that decades later this Gardiner would find her inner gardener and put into practice knowledge I must have unknowingly absorbed by my father’s side?
Sarah Gardiner
Allotment and Leisure Gardener 33