The little gardener

The ideal image I have of myself is one of a divinely gifted gardener, producing most of the vegetables and fruit for our household on our allotment. The allotment is – in this image – superbly cared for, no weed in sight and it’s heaving with an abundance of traditional and exotic produce.

Let’s dwell on that image for a little while longer, just long enough for us to not have to grab our tools and go down to the muddy and weed infested place.

I love my allotment – or rather, I love the image of myself as a self supporting member of the producing society it allows me to have. Of course the reality of the whole thing is slightly different…

Have you ever tried to dig, rotate and weed 70 m2 of land, where the “wild flowers” grow waist high? It’s bloody hard work! However, I have thought of a solution. In the autumn, when all our neighbours are enjoying their produce we shall turn the soil over and cover the whole damn place with this kind of nifty plastic you can buy, which basically suffocates everything beneath it. Then we’ll leave it for a year or two until all the weeds are dead as Dodos. Clever, isn’t it!?

You just wait and see. We’ll have a lovely allotment in no time – or at least in a few years.