That manure's rubbish.

The road back to the allotment site, over the railway bridge.


I’m beginning to think I’ve become part of a surreal soap opera down at the allotments, and keep looking out for the cameras.

“Where you going with that barrow”? Old John called out to Mary, who was heading towards the gateway out of the allotment site. She retraced her steps, back to us.

“I’m going to that house for some horse manure”, she said gesturing towards the village, where a man has bags of it for sale on his front drive, marked up for a £1. I think he must have a paddock round the back.

By the way, the allotments are a good 600 yards outside of the village, and the walk there and back entails going over a fairly steep railway bridge (shown in the photo), so no mean feat for a lady of her years pushing a wheelbarrow. She doesn't drive you see

“I thought you went for some the other day” said John.

“I did…….” she replied, lowering her voice almost to a whisper, “but it was all rubbish”.

My curiosity now raised, because I had been thinking of getting some myself, I asked her why it was, and if so why was she going back for more ?

“You’re not going to believe this, it could only happen to a silly old fool like me”, she said, self deprecatingly, and the story duly unfolded.

She had trudged all the way to the house with the wheelbarrow and knocked on the door, the man took the money for two bags, told her to help herself and closed the door. At this, she went to where the bags were and spotted the only two lots that were conveniently in tied black bin liners, the others all being in open topped old compost bags. Thinking they would be the easiest to handle on the barrow without spilling the contents, she took these and trudged all the way back to the site again. You may be guessing where this is going by now.

“Well, when I got back and opened them….”she said, red faced, “ they were both literally full of rubbish !”

She had only picked up two bags of household waste destined for the bin man, hadn’t she.

The French Connection

I planted out some Brussel Sprouts the other day, bought from the garden centre. One type was Brolin which I put in last year and were excellent, and another type, which caught my eye because it was an earlier maturing variety, called Breton.

As you may have seen from my previous blogs, I’m always on the look out for those little curiosities that can turn up whilst digging. Occasionally I have dug up things that look like coins but disappointingly never are, sometimes it’s a stone and other times it’s been a button. Well this time, whilst dibbling a hole for a sprout plant, the real thing turned up.

Here’s a shot of it still in the soil.(Click photo to enlarge)

This is it cleaned.
After a bit of research it turns out to be a 17th century French coin, issued during the reign of Louis the 14th. You can just make out the denomination, a Liard de France. Unfortunately, you can’t see the date, but by style it falls somewhere between 1650 and 1700.

Now back to the connection bit. It happened to be one of the Breton variety that I was planting at the time. OK, I know that’s a bit tenuous to say the least, and I could well have been planting out French Beans or sowing early Nantes carrots I suppose, however there’s more.

It seems that old Louis was more than just interested in gardens and loved his vegetables. So much so that he had The Potager du Roi (fr: Kitchen Garden of the King) created near the palace of Versaille, to supply the King's court. A massive enterprise covering 25 acres, “it required thirty experienced gardeners to tend to the garden plots, greenhouses, and the twelve thousand trees”(full Wikipedia article here), to supply the King’s court.

The Potager du Roi.
Now that's what you call an allotment.

Now that's a bargain.

It’s like the first Cuckoo call at the beginning of May.

“Shall we go to the carboot ?” she asked last Sunday morning. That inevitable little question we hear at this time of the year.

“But it’s going to rain, look at those clouds”, I try.

“We’ve got an umbrella, and you’ve just bought that new waterproof coat with a hood “, she reposts.

(Second attempt, try sympathy). “My knee's playing up a bit, I don’t think I’m quite up to it you know”.

“Rubbish, the walk will do it good, it’ll only seize up sat in that chair all day”. So much for sympathy then.

I thought of trying the Icelandic volcano as a last resort, but that might make it too obvious that I didn’t really want to go.

It’s nine o’clock, and on entering the field a wonderful aroma of mixed animal bits fried in rancid grease gets up my nostrils, and I can’t shift it all the time I’m there. Surely nobody’s eating them at this time of the morning I thought. But it’s not long before we’re passing a family scoffing burgers, that could only be described as biology lessons in a bun with cheese on. In a touching scene I catch sight of dad breaking a bit off for the dog, which helpfully licks his fingers clean, then breaking some more off for the toddler in the push chair.

Snaking our way around the tables full of this now unwanted ephemera, it strikes me how much rubbish we buy in our lives. There are countless figurines of sad little old men and women sat on benches, plates with flowers on and jugs from Majorca (didn’t it used to be Skegness).

I’m struck by how positive these sellers are, real “glass half full” types, because most of it would be better off in a skip quite frankly. I mean, who wants a rusty old Sky dish, or a jigsaw puzzle proudly labelled with, “Only one piece missing”.

At last something interesting, there’s a stall selling tomato plants, not that I need any as I’ve grown my own this year. It’s a bloody good job as well, 70p they wanted for them, and they weren’t even labelled up which variety they were. Daylight robbery if you ask me.

Sometimes there are bargains to be had and I suppose that’s what drives us to go to these events, but bargains are quite a subjective thing when you think about it. For instance I’d be very happy to find an old rake for a quid, and you might even squeeze another 50p out of me if it had a handle.

At a car boot I went to last year, a young lady I overheard speaking very loudly to her other half on her mobile, really summed it up.

“I’ve just picked up a brilliant breast pump for a fiver”, she told him delightedly !

The Sunflower Election.

I simply can’t make my mind up who to vote for in the general election, so I’ve come up with a solution. I’ve sown three sun flower seeds out of the wild bird seed bag, and whichever is the tallest on polling day will get my vote.

This method may not meet with the approval of any passing political activist, but given the antics of MP’s recently, it seems as good a way as any. If they can’t take it seriously then why should I ?

I’ve put Dave in some of the very best compost I had, I think he’d struggle in anything less.

Gordy looks as if he'll be the most demanding, and may turn out not to be sunflower after all, a thistle I suspect.

There's something else growing alongside Nick in his pot, I think I’ll call it Vince.

All I need now is some bull s--t to fertilise them all with.

Farmer Tom

The allotment 24th April 2010
I have a confession to make, I’m not really a very good gardener.

Don’t get me wrong, in all the many gardens we’ve owned, I’ve planted swathes of Alyssum, Marigolds and Petunias over the years, but never seem to have got it right. It always ends up looking like something the council has just done. In fact, this present house has an open plan front garden and we came home one day to find a young family having a picnic on the grass amongst the Busy Lizzies I’d just put in.

Growing vegetables on the other hand has always come as second nature to me, ever since watching The Good Life back in the 70’s, (Felicity Kendal had nothing to do with it). I remember my first attempt in a little flat we rented in Filey when we first got married, which was on the ground floor. I sowed some carrots into the tiny patch of soil round the back that never saw any sun at all. These poor spindly examples were a total failure and I had to resort to growing beansprouts in a jar in a cupboard instead.

As the years went on, the gardens we had grew bigger, and I have successfully grown vegetables in all of them whilst battling with the flowers.

Getting the allotment has brought this into focus somewhat, and these being new allotments it’s interesting to see how they are developing in this respect. All have their vegetable areas obviously, but the great majority have flowers planted, and even the occasional departed cat shrine (yes, she did), with a little ornamental shrub on top.

Mary's cat's grave.

However a staunch few are dedicated purely to the production of vegetables, and mine falls squarely into that category.

It has troubled me at times, and I never felt like a real green fingered gardener, maybe I lack the artistic gene I don’t know, but a book I am reading at the moment has solved the problem a little.

It is called A Handful of Earth by Barney Bardsley. The story of a lovely woman who sadly lost her husband at a relatively young age, and how she found solace through her garden and allotment.

In it she talks about there being two distinct sorts of people who grow things on allotments, the “Gardener” who grows flowers as well as carrots, and the “Farmer”, who’s regimented rows of vegetables make room for just the one flower, the cauliflower.

So there we have it, I am a “Farmer”, and it feels good to have an explanation after all this time, such a relief.

Where's Fred ?

Old Joe, Bob and myself were having a natter the other day on the site, when Mary came over looking a little sad.

“Can you bury a cat on your allotment ?” she asked, in all sincerity.

What a strange question I thought, did she go home that day and vent her anger on the poor thing ? (See last blog). Thankfully, she went on to give a somewhat teary eyed explanation.

Apparently her old cat was nearing his end and she was going to the vets to have him put down. But the cost of disposal was so expensive that she was thinking of other ways of getting rid of the body, and living in a flat with no garden limited her choices.

“Put it under yer rhubarb, it’ll grow like buggery”, was old Joe’s offering, ever the pragmatist but a little lacking in counselling skills.

“But I’m a bit worried a fox dig might him up again, I dread the thought”, she replied.

“Not if you bury it deep enough”, he said, “I remember when I buried Fred’s dog for him, in his back garden, he had a pacemaker”.

“What, the dog ?” she asked, without a hint of a smile.

“No…… Fred, and it wasn’t long I tell you before I buried him on top of t’dog”, he replied.

At this point I thought I’d entered a parallel universe, but things cleared a little as he went on to say that Fred’s widow, Ethel, had asked him to bury his ashes in an urn, near his beloved pet as he’d requested.

Eventually Ethel also died and as the family lived away, they wanted to take both parent’s ashes with them, and inter them nearer home. Of course they had Ethel’s, but where was Fred ? They knew he was in the garden somewhere, but there were no signs of a grave.

Luckily a neighbour heard of their plight and remembered old Joe digging in the garden that day, with poor Ethel by his side. Two and two were put together, and someone paid Joe a visit down at the allotments to explain their circumstance and ask the question.

“Oh he’s in t’rockery wi t’dog”, he told them to their relief, “But he’ll not be very happy being moved, he loved that animal you know”!

A woman's wrath.

Where else would you find Charlotte sharing a bed with the Duke of York, and that brazen hussy Desiree bunking up with Maris Piper (Billie's sister)? On my allotment of course, yes, all the spuds are now nestled comfortably into their beds.

Now for a little rant.

There I was working on the next beds, breaking them down into a fine tilth, what a lovely word don’t you think, when I noticed a large black car pull up in the parking area and disgorge an officious looking fellow. Seeing as I was the only one about, it wasn’t long before he had made his way down to my plot and stood at the gate. As I had my Ipod in, I thought I might get away with just ignoring him, but seeing him gesturing like a demented Orang Utan meant I had to acknowledge him. Care in the community just isn’t working I thought.

“I am the Councillor responsible for allotments and we have had a complaint about vegetable matter being deposited in the hedgerows, do you know anything about it ?” he boomed.

I tried hard to keep my composure. “ And your name is... ?” I enquired.

Realising he had broken the first rule of good customer relations, and that there is an election coming up soon, he replied “Parker…N.” of course I should have known.

Was that Nigel? Neil? or Nosy? I tried unsuccesfully to stifle the snigger.

“Are you enquiring as to whether I’m the culprit or the complainer”, I asked, genuinely confused, but it seemed to go straight over his head. “There’s a few old carrots and onions someone's dumped over there”, I went on, “But it’s hardly a hanging matter is it, they’ll rot down”.

“That’s not the point though, we can’t have people just dumping things everywhere now can we”, he pontificated.

“What about the parking on the road into the site, now there’s something worthwhile you should be investigating”, I protested. But to no avail, he was there to catch the carrot fly-tipper, and nothing would deter him.

By this time I was getting pretty wound up, when along came Mary, the lady who has the next plot, and before long she was getting the third degree, but not for long.

“I hope you’re not accusing me, my good man !” she said, with enough venom to send him on his way with a flea in his ear. “Pompous idiot” she added loud enough for him to hear as he went to have a look around the rest of the site.

Well she’s a nice quiet lady, and I was a little taken a back by her reaction. A while later, she had need to fetch some water from the communal tap, near to where little Hitler had parked his panzer.

Passing my plot on her return, she said, “You’re going to think I’m rather awful at what I’ve just done”.

“ I hope you haven’t let his tyres down Mary”, I said jokingly.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t do anything like that”, she replied, “But I did spit on his car though!!!”.

He must have really rattled her.