Anyone want some home-grown courgettes, fresh picked from the lotty? At 6am this morning. Come on, if you don’t like courgette quiche you could do courgette wine, or courgette curry, there’ll be another sackful tomorrow, help yourself, try a courgette cake, apparently you can’t even taste the courgettes. Take a couple more, just cut those bits off, course they’re not rat bites, even the rats are fed up with courgettes, no seriously the allotment was amazing today, you pick up a trowel and the stress just drains away, then there’s the sheer satisfaction of producing your own courgettes, I mean produce.
So we’ve got onions, courgettes, potatoes, courgettes, beans, I think, if the rats haven’t got them, but that’s our first season, next year we’re doing salsify, kohlrabi, cavolo nero, daikon, patty pan squashes, you know how much those cost in Waitrose? No, me neither, but the saving’s incredible even when you factor in our time, plus the shed, the water butt, the compost maker and the manure – well, without it we’d never have courgettes this size, don’t worry, totally organic. Though you might want to wash them anyway, God knows how much weedkiller we sprayed on the couch grass and brambles from the last people.
Complete nightmare, don’t know if we’ll ever clear it, we’ve had to put carpet down everywhere and now the old boy next door’s complaining we’ve ruined the place, I’m like, seriously, we’re supposed to take lessons from a guy who’s never – I kid you not – heard of Derek Jarman?
That’s what you don’t realise until you get one, the unbelievable stress of these ancient allotment dictators threatening to chuck you out if you’re not hoeing 24/7, when you’ve already told them you’re planning an arid sculpture garden that could take years of benign neglect. But it’s still fantastically rewarding, for an hour – or so – a day, why don’t you pick some courgettes while we’re away? While you’re there, there’s just the bit of watering and weeding we’ve promised to do to pass the inspection, wait – unless you’d be interested in taking it on?
