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.

Phil (Plots 339 & 340)

This is Phil. He was born in 1941. He has two plots, one of which he has just cleared. He was rotovating his first plot when I saw him, and we had a long conversation about rotovators. He was a fitter during his working life, so machines are close to his heart. He loves his allotment, and prefers working on it and a nice cup of tea to going out at night. He was just about to make a cup of tea in his shed when I left him.

About his rotovator, he said it was made in India, but seemed to be a close copy of a Honda. It cost around £300, but was not as good as a Merry Tiller, which is an American make and costs around £700. He said his best rotovator was a JAP, which had been manufactured over 40 years ago, and was very heavy, but very efficient. He finally wore it out though. He'd had problems with the current one because the belt slipped, but he got another kind of belt, with better friction, and now it didn't slip and overheat like it used to (he used to be able to smell it burning!). He said the place to buy rotovators was Shrewsbury (?) because they had no allotments there - the council has got rid of them all. I said I thought councils were obliged to provide allotments, but I will have to check this out.

He told me about some allotments he saw in Germany, when he was visiting his son, who is in the forces. They had proper metalled roads instead of tracks, concrete paths, and a veritable bunglow for a shed, with sleeping accommodation, a kitchen and everything, so that people could go down and spend the weekend there (as in a Russian dacha, I suppose). They even had kids' play areas.

Elizabeth (Plots 327 & 328)

This is Elizabeth. She is Italian. She wouldn't let me photograph her, so I had to content myself with photographing her one and a half plots (the top half of her second plot was taken by an English man, who clearly was doing nothing with it, but she said she doesn't want it). She said that plot 327 was taken on by her father-in-law in the late fifties (I think), and when he died (30 years ago?), his wife kept it on, then passed it on to their son (her husband). He wanted to keep it because it reminded him of happy times with his father, but now Elizabeth is the one that does most of the work. She says, if he wants to be reminded of his father, he should come down here and do some work!

When I saw her, she was clearing the potato patch to plant onions and garlic. She pointed out that there were lots of weed seeds from annual weeds like speedwell. She said, if you let them flourish, they'll kill even big plants like cos lettuce and chicory, because they contain salt. Also, if you rotovate instead of digging, this leaves the seeds on the surface and they come back very quickly, whereas if you rough-dig a plot, the seeds are buried so deep they can't come back for a long time.

She was pleased when I told her that the plots either side of hers might soon be let out. They have been cleared recently by the tractor, but before that, they were very overgrown (I know because I was considering having one of them). She said the weeds from those plots had been a problem, as had the pigeons from the trees in the hedge. She wished one of the trees could be pruned, as it cast a shadow half way down her allotment at times. She also corroborated what the [looney] man said about these plots being wet - she told me a story about some English men on a nearby allotment who had dug trenches for their potatoes which were filling with water as they dug. "It's not Africa," she said. "We're not growing rice!"