Spring update

Suddenly it's time to do everything. So far, in the last two weeks it seems, I've put in peas, carrots, lettuce, onions, beetroot, perpetual spinach, radish, spring onions, parsnip and broad beans.
The Italians, of course, are ahead of me. Though Joe, my next-door neighbour surprised me by saying he'd only just come back from a trip to Australia two weeks ago. Nevertheless, he has already put up most of his tomato stakes and bean sticks, despite the fact it's only mid-March and they won't be needed for a couple of months. Angelo is not well enough to do any gardening. He's got diabetes, and is waiting for an operation on his leg. This means that Joe is struggling to get Angelo's plot ready as well as his own two. He's enlisted the help of Gwillym to rotovate part of Angelo's plot. Gwillym's already rotovated one of Joe's plots, plus half the plots on the allotment from what I can gather. He will never starve. He told me today he is sixteen, and said, "I don't look it, do I?" I thought he was 14 at the most. He said he was doing a part-time college course in motor mechanics while he is still at school doing his GCSEs, which he finishes this year. His dad, Mark (Taffy) is moving back to Wales because his mother has cancer. Gwillym is staying on until the end of the school year, then moving back also. They have put so much into their allotment. They have built a chicken shed like no other: it doubles as a shebeen. Their friend and allotment-sharer will keep it on, and Gwillym will come up now and again to visit friends.
In this picture, Joe is talking to the other Joe, while Gwillym rotovates. I got very annoyed with the other Joe last year and avoid talking to him. I suppose he was only being a typical Italian male, but I got very pissed off with him whistling at me every time he saw me on my allotment, then laughing at me when I said I didn't like it. "It's flattering!" he said. "It's sexist," I replied. Whereupon he burst out laughing again and said "Sexy! Sexy! She says it's sexy!" He had had a few glasses of his home-made wine at the time. I think he realised later, when he saw how annoyed I was, that he'd made a mistake. Now I just avoid him. I found it so embarrassing. I think he's got the message. Fortunately, he's found another girl to chat up, the one on the allotment opposite whose partner is an alcoholic.

Onions

These are my onions drying. I have harvested them already, though it seems ridiculously early. I was going to leave them in a bit longer, but Joe 2 told me to take them up or they would split (that was after Joe #1 had told me the same thing, only Joe #2 said it more persuasively and in better English). Joe #2 is the one with the gammy leg. I thought he had polio, but someone told me he damaged it in a motorbike accident.

I want to put some onions in the show this year, and learnt from last year that you have to peel off the outer layers so that the top layer is unbroken, and you must do this before they dry. But I think I may have gone too far with the peeling, as they all look very bald and white.

I also didn't know where to dry them. I put them on the path at home to start with, then in my mini-greenhouse, but was afraid someone might steal them. Then I came across these two racks at the car boot sale yesterday, and they seem to be ideal. Last year's onions (of which I still have a few left) dried out very nicely in that corner, in a hessian bag inside a wooden box. But this time I am trying to make sure that at least three come out near-perfect for the show. I wish I had a book on how to present things for the show, because I'm making it up as I go along.

Joe #3, Plot 354

This is the man whom I referred to in my earlier blogs as "the miserable git" because he was always complaining about something or other (e.g. Hazel's partner asking for the gate to be left unlocked). Well, I misjudged him. He seems to be okay. I had a long conversation with him about a fortnight ago about just about everything, though I can't remember what now. His name is Joe (yes, another Joe, the third), and his real name is Giuseppe.

This is a photograph I took of him rotovating his plot in autumn of 2007, before I knew any of the Italians, and just wanted to document their Italianness and their gardening methods (both of which remain important aims for me).

I love the colour of this photo, which is entirely accidental, and results from scanning black and white film with a colour scanner.