Plants which remind you of people, contd.

Today I planted a long row of raspberry canes at the Lechlade allotment. They may not produce anything this year, but next year there'll be a bumper crop. The ancestors of these canes were given to me by Shirley three years ago in deep November, and I was astonished that they survived having their ankles in soaking wet clay over the winter. The year before last they started producing, and last year they really started to come on song. The jam made with fresh raspberries is incomparable.

I though of Shirley as I was planting them, and of how pleased she would be to hear about it.

I also planted the rhubarb plant at one end of the row of raspberries and an asparagus plant at the other end. The rhubarb plant was given me by the nice Dutch lady who used to keep Indian running ducks and other fowl on her allotment, but was driven away by a combination of the alleged nastiness of Deanna (I think it was Taffy who alleged it, so it probably is fictional) and the thieving that was going on. Oh, no, I remember - (this is what I was told by someone else anyway) (was it even about them?) - apparently, the young lad who used to cycle in to feed the ducks had left them without food or water one day, so Taffy or his son took the fowl and said that if it ever happened again they wouldn't give them back. Oh dear, you can see how confused the story has got in the memory and the re-telling.  Anyway, when she gave up, the Dutch lady gave me that rhubarb plant.

The artichokes will remind me of Joe and Angelo. In the end, they were Joe's plants, which I dug up last year and planted on my old allotment, but which I hadn't yet got a crop from. But it reminded me of a time really early on when I was on the Salvation Army allotment when I must have been talking to Angelo about having some plants, but it was Joe who gave me some (which incidentally didn't survive), and Angelo, coming along later, said, "Oh, are my plants not good enough then?"

At Lechlade, I also established my water butt next to the compost heap, and put some bricks in the bottom to stop it blowing away or being easily stolen. You never know. The last thing I did was plant some tiny marjoram plants that I'd salvaged from my own allotment. They will in time grow massive and provide lots of nectar for the bees. The strawberry plants I put in last week have already picked up and are thriving.

Dom said he had forgotten about rotovating the allotment, because his father-in-law had died and the funeral was next week, but he would bring the rotovator in on Monday and start it off for me and "watch it run away with me" before going off to do something else.

In memory of Angelo

Angelo died during the winter. He was a lovely bloke, who never stopped telling me how to do things. Joe was very unforthcoming about it. Domenico told me when I met him in town one day, but if he hadn't, Joe would probably have said nothing. Now, Joe is working all three allotments, his two (plots 56 and 58) and Angelo's (plot 57). He says he will give up the one next to my old allotment, but it looks as if he won't give it up until October at the earliest, when the rent falls due. Even though Angelo couldn't do any work by last October, and Joe had kept his allotment more or less tended and planted, Angelo still told him he wanted to keep it on. For these old Italians, growing food is in the blood and they will carry on until they drop.

I loved Angelo. I have the grapevine he gave me to remind me of him. He gave me it when it was only two or three feet high; now it's a monster and has spread all over the front of my house, and last year I got about twelve bunches of small, purple grapes off it. One day I'll make wine from it in memory of Angelo.

Joe

This is Joe just about to go home. He works mornings, and I get there just after lunch when he's just about to go. Then, when he arrives back after his siesta at 4 pm, I go home for my dinner. He has no hard feelings about this.

He'd just spent the morning pruning his tomatoes for the nth time (he said the next time will be the last), and was complaining that he had to look after Angelo's allotment as well as his two.

Au revoir, Angelo!

Angelo has gone to Italy until September. Yesterday, he stood at the top of my allotment on his way home, waiting to say goodbye. He said he would be back in September "...if God allows". His health is so poor that as I watched him walk away, I wondered if I would ever see him again.

He is fed up with the weather here, even though it's been nice and sunny: it's too dry. Most gardeners will complain whatever the weather: it's always too something - wet, dry, hot, cold. But when he described the weather in Calabria, you can understand his point. He said they can grow two crops a year down there: two crops of beans a year, and they are already taking off the first crop already.

He has kept up with the work on his allotment this year - just - despite a very slow start. Now I expect his brother, Joe, will do the minimum to keep it going, while keeping his own two allotments up to scratch too.

Making blackberry and apple (bramble) jelly

I have made two batches of blackberry and apple jelly already, even though it's only early August. Because of the dry weather and sunshine, the blackberries are really good this year. I picked the ones on my allotment, then decided to fill the punnet with ones from the perimeter of the site. I got them home, weighed them, and found I had only 1lb, and the recipe called for 2lbs, so next day, I went to Small Pickards Field, which used to be allotments (and where Joe and Angelo and lots of others had plots before they were chucked off). They closed Small Pickards Field because some TV personality decided to build eco-friendly houses on the site, and Swindon Council, great lovers of gimmicks, fell for it. The houses never materialised.

When I got there, I found the gate padlocked and temporary fencing blocking all the gaps. Why? What harm was there in leaving the field accessible to children, and to adults who want to pick blackberries? But there has been a campaign to designate the site a village green, so I guess our stupid council didn't want to take any risks.

However, I made my way down the fence, and when I went through the woods by the stream to join the cycle path, I found a way into the field behind Small Pickards Field, and there were plenty of untouched blackberry bushes there, so I could easily fill my second punnet. (I got rained on at the same time, the first rain for ages, but it was too light to do much).

Anyhow, I had decided to make jelly, because wild blackberries are often full of crap, including maggots. I'd bought some cooking apples, and put one of those chopped up into the pan with 2lbs blackberries, well washed, and a quarter of a pint of water. You don't need to peel or core the apples: in fact, it's better if you don't because the pectin is in the peel. Then I simmered them until the apples were soft and I could mash them down with a potato masher.

One of the hard parts of making jelly is rigging up the jelly bag. I had some muslin I bought in Malmesbury a year ago, so I tied string to the corners of a large square of it, and hung it over my laundry basket, with a mixing bowl underneath it to catch the juice. Then you leave it to drip for at least a couple of hours. You must never squeeze it, because that makes the jelly cloudy.

When you've done that, you measure out 1lb of sugar to each pint of juice (this recipe gives approx. 1 pint of juice). Then you make it as you would jam by boiling till it sets. Then comes the hard part - getting it in those jars before it cools and without the scum. I did not succeed on either attempt, but the second was better than the first, so I guess it just takes lots of practice. But the jelly must be poured hot if you want a clear, consistent jelly. This recipe makes about 1.5 jars, so have a small jar ready in case there isn't sufficient for two big ones (you should do that anyway - I always have a small jar ready for the dregs, which I keep in my cupboard to taste occasionally, because I'm on a diet and am not eating bread and jam till after the Garden Show in September).

Grapevine

Angelo gave me a grape vine he'd grown from a pip. I decided to plant it outside my back door. There was some wooden trellis there when I moved in that had supported a clematis, but every year the clematis got mildew and the flowers were few and died. I decided to use the trellis for the vine, so I dug up the clematis and put in the grapevine instead. I had some Morning Glory plants, too, and I planted one next to it. But the grapevine didn't like that kind of support, and what was worse, it was attacked by some kind of leaf miner that seemed to emanate from the trellis. So I have taken the trellis down, and taken it down the allotment to use as firewood, and I have asked Greg to come and see me and bring a heavy-duty drill so that I can put up some wires to support the grapevine. He is coming tomorrow. Meanwhile the grapevine and the Morning Glory are clinging to each other for support.

Someone down the allotments has got a grapevine, and has a full-sized wire support. I am envious. One day I might have my own down there, though I think it might be too cold down there: it is warmer outside my back door. Dom says they have a grapevine in their greenhouse at home. And of course Joe makes his own wine from grapes brought on a lorry from Italy every year.

Blackcurrant jam

Today I made some blackcurrant jam. It took me an hour (at least) last night and two hours (at least) this morning to top and tail a pound and a half of blackcurrants. I put these with a pound and a half of sugar and steeped them overnight/over the afternoon. Then I added three-quarters of a pint of water and brought it all to the boil in my new preserving pan. I then added a further pound of sugar (warmed in the oven), and boiled it until it reached setting point (220 degrees). The jam is gorgeous, though not as gorgeous as my strawberry jam, which tastes ineffable (I'm not sure what that means, but it appears in hymns when talking about God, so it seems about right).

I got the blackcurrants off Hazel's allotment, and this is the sad part. Hazel (plots 54 and 55) is so ill she can no longer do her garden, and her husband is looking after it for her. But he's not obsessed like she is, and it is going downhill. Joe (plots 56 and 58) offered to do some hoeing and watering for her, though he's got his work cut out on his own two plots, and is also looking after Angelo's plot while he's on holiday in Italy. Yesterday, when I arrived, Domenico (Joe's son) was there, and he asked me, in his slightly goofy way how to pick blackcurrants. He said Hazel's husband had told Joe to help himself, as they were going to waste. Well, I got a bucket and followed him over to Hazel's plot. He lost interest a bit when I told him you have to top and tail them if you want to stew them or anything, and after a phone call he left me to it. But not before I'd noticed her raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes, the latter laden with ripe fruit. I said to Dom, do you think she'd mind if I took some of those too? He said he didn't think she would, so I got enough raspberries for a snackette at supper time, and enough gorgeous ripe gooseberries to make a gooseberry crumble for my brother, Greg, who's coming up tomorrow (I am trying to persuade him to help me mend the shed). So I returned home in seventh heaven, while poor Hazel is probably heartbroken that she can't make any jam this year. I felt guilty about picking from her fruit bushes after Dom was gone, but I guess she intended the stuff to go to a good home, and I can't imagine Domenico doing anything much with the blackcurrants. (He didn't even know what elderberries were - he thought they were poisonous. Unless he's confusing them with ivy berries, in which case, I told him you could make an excellent wine out of them).

Pigeon peas

Angelo gave me a huge bag of pigeon peas. The plants look just like broad beans, but the pods are much smaller, and the peas are bigger than ordinary peas, but taste like broad beans without the charm. You feel they are doing you good, but so they ought to after you've spent so long shelling them - they're very fiddly. It will take me two weeks to eat the ones Angelo has given me. He also gave me about six lettuces because they were about to bolt, which means I have to put mine on the back burner (while they bolt too). Today, Joe, his brother, offered me more pigeon peas and lettuces. I politely refused.