Despite the early rain we had a wonderful Sunday on the allotment. Four sets of pre-school and primary age kids planting and picking flowers and beans (though, admittedly, that was the girls). The boys mostly delighted in digging huge holes in the mud (sorry, soil) in search of any potatoes we may have missed, arguing over whose turn it was to use the big fork and generally acting like Pigpen in Peanuts. We adults did some digging and weeding but mostly we stood around marveling at the Reubens-tinted Fire King tagetes and fabulous sunflowers, nine-feet now we think, using our less than scientific method. Namely: standing our tallest grower (6ft 4in Howard Sooley) next to the tallest plant and guessing how much higher our flowers are than his right arm held in the air (Howard is also the only one who wouldn't need a stepladder to pick the topmost beanpods from the wigwams). But as you might have guessed by now, that isn't Howard in the photo, but 5ft 7in Kala instead.
The rain mosly held off with different people arriving at different times (with and without tea), but by the end of afternoon six sets of families had gone home with happily exhausted kids and laden with swag: bags of beans, potatoes, pak choi, onions, rocket, mustard and other assorted salad leaves, otherwise known as Sunday dinner (I have also become irritatingly obsessed with taking pictures of nearly every bag of homegrown food I bring into the house, whereas my wife just wishes I washed it). Does anyone else feel similarly compelled or is it the sign of insipient insanity she insists?
