Pretty perennial sweet pea from Beth Chatto
Sometimes I wonder whether I am turning into Jack Spratt (bear with me: it may become clear). Or maybe it's just me going mad. Saturday morning I wake at 4am to the sound of the television downstairs. My wife cannot sleep, but soon she is back in bed and drifting off. And, of course, I am now wide awake.
Crimson beet leaves, but is it Bulls Blood, anyone know?
You see, I have been meaning to get to the plot at dawn (still very early despite shortening days) to do a silica spray on the flowers and fruit. So at 4.45am, my wife is asleep and I am heading to the allotment.
I am not sure I can properly articulate the hold the plot has over me but (right-thinking people turn away now) I guess the easiest analogy is that it is something like being in love. You think about her all the time, wondering how she is, what she is doing now, the care and nurture she needs. But then maybe it is more like having a cat than being in love (we lost our last cat a couple of years ago and there is a similarity in the way an animal can quietly comfort, even heal you).
Flat leaf parsley and bay leaves, ready for supper
It is also not unlike being a child when a friend asks if you can come out to play. There is a lot of play in having a plot. Of course you are mostly there to weed, seed, maybe pick some crops, but there is much satisfaction in just 'being there', looking under leaves, mooching, sitting, sharing (though it is understanding what sort of sharing that is our difficulty here).
Anyway, enough of that for now. Back to Saturday 6am. I stir the preparation, spray our baby beans, the podding peas, the tiny tomato trusses, the budding sunflowers. I lift a few weeds, bag up breakfast radishes, some salad leaves, herbs and a couple of handful of beans. Then I head home happy in the knowledge that unlike Mr and Mrs Spratt, my wife and I both like smoked streaky bacon.
